The Martian

“The Martian” opens in the midst of a NASA mission on Mars that aborts and heads for home aboard their ship, the Ares III, when a storm hits, save for astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), presumed dead. He is not, of course, and wakes up to find he’s been left behind, forced to square with a decided lack of food and the precariousness of the equipment necessary to keep him alive. His odds of surviving given the remote possibility of communicating with earth and the time it would take to mount a rescue mission are astronomical. It suggests a red planet “All Is Lost”, the 2013 film in which Robert Redford was stranded at sea. But that was a matter-of-fact survival movie giving way to a symbolism-infused parable, one man losing everything before he can spiritually begin anew, whereas “The Martian” remains strictly literal. In the aftermath of finding himself marooned, Mark sits in silence, the wind howling outside his window, weighing the options, as if reaching the decisive moment in a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The next morning he declares aloud: “I’m not going to die here.” It’s just that simple; time to get to work.

Director Ridley Scott takes no steps to establish Mark as a character before he’s seemingly left for dead, and though that suggests a film where Mark spends this cornucopia of alone time to find himself, this is an external movie. Damon doesn’t play the part haunted or fatalistic but practically ebullient in the way he goes about crafting solutions, colonizing Mars, so to speak, by employing his botanist background to extravagant creative effect by harvesting potatoes. He’s not a pessimist or a philosopher; he’s a problem solver. What, you think NASA teaches these people to brood when faced with Mission: Impossible? The entire movie comes coated in that can-do spirit, underlined by the film’s preponderance of disco music on the soundtrack. Choosing “Rock the Boat” over “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is positively revelatory.

That can do spirit comes through just as loud and clear back on earth. Sure, the director of NASA, Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), upon learning of Mark’s improbable survival, must weigh cost and the probability of failure, but Daniels does a sly job evincing a man outwardly maintaining bureaucratic appearances while deep down inside scrounging for any possibility to bring home his missing man. And working with his mission directors, Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), and a whole host of others, they are eventually able to forge rudimentary contact with their astronaut, formulating plans for a rescue, one that eventually involves Mark’s crew members aboard the Ares III going faux-rogue to lend a hand.

Drew Goddard’s screenplay, frankly, has no interest in legitimately posing the question Will He or Won't He Get Home? Although it tosses roadblocks into the narrative, those feel more like a matter of seeing how Mark and NASA will overcome them rather than if they will. And while this approach eliminates tension, it allows for a pervasive bounce in the film's step. This is an enjoyable jaunt, not a titanic struggle. At two hours and twenty-two minutes, “The Martian” never feels that along. If it’s Sci-Fi, it’s more like an old-fashioned Sci-Fi serial woven together into a single piece, one where an appreciation of ingenuity is more crucial than conflict.

The further “The Martian” goes, the more it opens up into a true ensemble, even if that ensemble is spread across billions and billions of miles, from the red dirt of Mars to the Johnson Space Center of Houston, Texas on Earth and to the Ares spaceship halfway between both. There is a moment when Daniels, Bean, Kristin Wiig (as NASA’s PR director) and Donald Glover (as an intelligent if social indelicate mathematician) share a scene, even though they are four actors you would never really expect to share a scene. And that abnormality only underscores the film’s intrinsic message of how everyone must come together in the face of a crisis to find a resolution. And if the all these characters, including Mark, are noticeably lacking in any kind of development or off screen life, that only enhances the message – they set themselves aside for the greater good.

“The Martian” could have been NASA agitprop, especially given a couple wholly unnecessary closing sequences, one of Mark speechifying to a room of new recruits and then a closing credits scene that feels like watching a post-Super Bowl celebration. Heck, some have gone so far as to seriously, or not-so-seriously, or both, suggest a conspiratorial tie-in between the film’s release and the real NASA’s announcement of water on Mars. Yet the film itself rarely offers pointed arguments on behalf of NASA. Its reasons for going to Mars in the first place deliberately remain vague; this is expressly a rescue mission. And as so many different entities (even China!) unite to rescue Mark, “The Martian’s” insistence that in the tortured, fractured climate of this country and the world around, we can, when called upon, stand together and get shit done doesn’t come across so alien. It comes across…inspiring.

The Counselor

If venturing to the theater for maverick Ridley Scott's "The Counselor", it's best to check your expectations at the door. I'm not talking about your expectations as to whether the film might be great, good, bad, or awful - no, I'm not talking about your expectations regarding the kind of film you are about to see. It's a crime thriller in so much as it involves cocaine and gunfire and it's a drama in so much as it features famous actors in showy parts, except it's not really either of those things, not in the traditional sense. And it's not style before substance, though there is an entire Texas-sized buffet of style (people are dressed so well in this film I started to feel insecure), because there is substance aplenty in the form of numerous dense meditations that purposely appear intent on biting their thumb at the ancient axiom "Show, Don't Tell." It's simply less a movie than cinematic metaphysics.

The setting is interesting. Most of the action takes place in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the two cities straddling the border, a hot spot in recent pop culture visual arts, but while the location is crucial in spurring along critical portions of the script it is not truly an integral part of the story that Scott and his writer, famed novelist Cormac McCarthy, seek to tell. "Do you know how many people were killed in Juarez last year?" a character asks The Counselor himself (Michael Fassbender.) The Counselor shrugs. "A lot?" he offers. He has no idea. He probably doesn't care. Cold, but the truth has no temperature. Sociology and politics are not the point.

It is also interesting how little of the crime at the quasi-center of the picture is discussed in detail. As stated, it involves the cocaine trade, yet explicit details of the requisite deal gone wrong are not really addressed. We see glimpses of it, snippets intercut with other goings-on, but it never conveniently lays out precisely what is happening and why. It is some event taking place in some other world, far, far away from the people putting it in motion. Crime is not the point.

Scott and McCarthy are more interested in what occurs around the crime. What motivates these people? What is the benefit of such risk-taking? What is the danger? What is the thrill? For the first quarter of the film, in fact, people try talking The Counselor out of agreeing to this criminal act, whatever it may be, and he continually smugly defers. You know what they say, that could never happen to me.

It happens to him, and to his two associates who also enter the deal - Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt). As characters all three are short on past and personal details, and instead McCarthy establishes them by the lackadaisical way in which they take on the crime and then defines them by the way they react when that crime inevitably goes wrong. Reiner is resigned, yet unrepentant for what his ways have wrought. His end seems as off the cuff as his lifestyle (and hair). Westray is almost humored, as if this is the punchline he's waited for all his life. In fact, he cuts off the typical reaction at the pass, dismissing regret as "sophomoric."

The Counselor, however, being a first-timer, is the one in terrified denial, the one convinced he can wash the sins from his hands with one phone call or one piece of advice. He doesn't realize he made an addendum to his lease on life, nor that this addendum directly influenced his bride-to-be, the ravishing Laura (Penelope Cruz). Ah yes. Laura. Underwritten and rarely present, until her presence is required by the plot and she is shuffled back on stage and then right back off stage.

But don't presume McCarthy has no interest in the female mind for there is another character we have yet to discuss......the arrestingly named Malkina, played by a devil-may-care Cameron Diaz with fingernails to die for and a leopard tattoo that forcefully (heavy-handedly) connects her to a couple precious pet leopards (this is what drug money buys) who are seen hunting in the makeshift Texas wilds as Malkina and Reiner watch from afar over Cosmos. Her presence is consistently felt, even if she often lingers out of sight of the scheming men, though the film returns to her again and again in brief increments suggesting she transcends her appearance as a traditional gold digger. Her final lines, Gold help me, made me think of "Jurassic Park's" Dr. Ellie Satler: "Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth." No, McCarthy may think most highly of women (though he doesn't think "highly" of anyone at all).

Of course, that just mentioned sequence is verbose and sensationally on the nose, and that does not make it rare. After all, McCarthy is a novelist, and so "The Counselor" is chock full of opulent tangents that speaking strictly in a Robert McKee sense are out of place on the silver screen. It's all talk. But then the majority of these characters are all talk. They talk, until they have nowhere to turn, and then they plead. Or just shut up and take their medicine.

Late in the film Rubén Blades suddenly appears on the opposite end of the phone. Frankly, I had no idea who his character was and I still don't. He may as well be Cormac McCarthy himself, laying out in monologue form his theme, how humans are too reluctant (frightened) to admit their actual predicament, their true place in life. Whether you are a goody two shoes, a cocaine cowboy or a Counselor, you cannot know peace without acceptance.

And you cannot see "The Counselor" for its raw, writhing, murky beauty without first accepting what it is.