The Martian 3 Stars

I liked this movie and would see it again. It's Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting), who is hard not to like and, I'm told, not hard to look at. The supporting cast does well, led by Jeff Daniels  (Pleasantville) and Jessica Chastain (The Help).

The story is as described in the trailer. It takes a different point of view on being stranded than the story in Cast Away. In both movies it takes time to set up the isolation and the feelings that go with it. And accordingly, the movie is long and does drag in places. While the feelings of loneliness, depression, and occasional spurts of joy (amongst other feelings) are well-conveyed, I expect that those emotions are developed in more detail in the book.

And that is the challenge of these types of stories - that it may be hard to create a setting that is so isolated that communications and travel take hours and days and months. And equally challenging for many of us to imagine it.