An incredibly well-acted drama with a fantastic soundtrack and top-notch script.

Rating: 10/10 (1 October 2015)

So The Martian is Ridley Scott's latest film and stars Matt Damon as an astronaut left behind on Mars by himself because his crew thought he was dead. Going in I wasn't sure what to expect, I thought what can you do for two hours on a desert planet? Well, it turns out that it's something good because The Martian is one of the best films of the year.
I mean seriously, this movie is so good in so many ways I couldn't believe it. The cast, first off, were amazing, you've got people like Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels and of course Matt Damon; they all do an amazing job in their roles, you couldn't fault them. But obviously one man has to carry the movie and Damon does it brilliantly, playing a man completely alone, isolated on an entire planet having to use only the stuff that was left behind and his own intelligence to survive, incredible acting there, especially with some of the darker moments when you can see this man is about to break but carries on relentlessly.
The story is also a fascinating one, there wasn't any point where I was bored watching The Martian; you mostly wanted to be with Damon on Mars watching him do various things as it was both thrilling, exciting, relieving and funny, yes that's right, this film is hilarious, it's just a fantastic script, the movie handles it's comedy really well and some parts are just so uplifting and makes you smile. The Earth scenes are entertaining as well, they didn't drag at all, watching these NASA guys trying to work out if they can actually save this Mark Watney from Mars and balancing that with handling the press and media it makes for some good acting and screenplay.
One other thing that surprised me was the music, the original score was amazing and adds real feeling to the scenes and then I'm not going to spoil it but you are going to remember the soundtrack and songs they use in The Martian.
The only negative I can say I had with this film was just the opening, I felt that from the very start to when the crew actually leave Watney on Mars it felt a little off or choppy and just wasn't as good as the rest of the movie but that may just be me, it didn't bother me too much because that's only like ten minutes of set-up.
In the end I loved The Martian, it's definitely one of the biggest surprises for me and like I said, one of the best films this year.