Light.

Rating: 9/10 (14 November 2015)

This is a curious trend going on: each year the space movie comes out on October. Gravity in 2013, Interstellar in 2014, and this year, The Martian.
This year, like in 2013, I wasn't disappointed. The Martian begins quite fast, without any cliché exposure, but directly in the action. So fast, actually, that I wondered how the movie was going to last its 140 minutes without being boring at some point. When the screening was over, I realized that I never encountered any second of boredom thanks to a great storytelling and a perfectly managed rhythm.
The Martian is kind of a humble movie. The pitch is quite simple as is its development. If the movie doesn't hesitate to explain and vulgarize the science used by the main character to survive, it never slips in psychodrama nor philosophy. It is very down to earth (I mean, down on mars) and only references current knowledge. This is quite refreshing when compared to some other space movies heavily loaded with speculations and vast reflections.
The cast is massive and impressive. I never thought I was going to see Sean Bean and Donald Glover (Troy from Community) in the same scene in some movie some day. Matt Damon deliver a solid performance which illustrates very well the emotional roller-coaster that its character is living.
What I liked very much with The Martian is how it promotes science. Basically any character in the movie is a scientist or an engineer or an astronaut, and they're all cool, fashionable or charismatic. This is one of the few movies with Apollo 13 which really put the scientists and engineers as the heroes and science and rationality as the true way to solve problems. Even though The Martian goes a little wild with the realism at the end, the rest of the movie convinced me to forgive and even enjoy these final elements. I read that it was a liberty that the movie took with the book, and I'm glad they did so. Another good difference with the book is the lack of exposition (cf. §2). While I didn't read the book, these two known differences make me think it's a great adaptation overall.