Blew me away

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 2015)

This is one of the more memorable movies I have seen, in some ways it is very hard to describe how good I felt it was. Matt Damon shows what I always thought about him, that he is an intelligent actor able to give any role that special touch. He is playing a very intelligent character and he does it seamlessly. He also gives the character a sardonic sense of humor, which means this is not cold or pure hard science. Likewise, when he finally interacts with the rest of the crew of his ship, the interplay is what you would expect.
The movie is a rare thing, it is a hard science fiction movie that has the human touch, the casting was fantastic and you see the humanity.It has touches of Apollo 13 where the nerds with the pocket protectors and slide rules pull off a miracle, but it also has a lot of the human emotion, humor and at times sadness, that make it real. John Campbell, considered the founder of modern SF, said that science fiction was not about the technology, but about how human beings react to it, and that is the core of this movie. The fact that the technology here is not star wars level, but technology that either does or potentially could exist in the near future, and it makes it come off as something that might happen.
It is also nice to see a movie where the heroes are not all white nerdy guys, plenty of those, but plenty of other people, the mission is commanded by a woman, women play major roles, and you have a lot of non white people as scientists and such. I think that helps give the feeling of awe the movie generated in me, that it was a mish mash of people working to have this happen.
The movie is long, yet it didn't seem like that, and where you have a movie where a single character is on the screen most of the time and it doesn't drag, that says something. The filming is well done, and this has elements of a lot of Ridley Scott's work, though I personally think it is his masterpiece, if this is his last movie it is a doozie.