FILM: The Martian
CAST: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena
DIRECTION: Ridley Scott

Maths, science and human will-power are the three components that propel The Martian into motion.
Directed by Ridley Scott, The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name which was released in 2011 and adapted for the screen by Drew Goddard, is a science fiction that works on two planes — as a survival and a rescue film.
The film begins with a team of Nasa astronauts, crew of the Ares 3, on their eighteenth day of exploration. While out collecting samples from the surface of the Red Planet, Mars, they are suddenly caught in an intense dust storm.
The team, along with their Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), is forced to evacuate their landing site in Acidalia Planitia, after being convinced that their injured colleague Mark Watney (Matt Damon), a botanist and mechanical engineer, has been killed in the sandstorm.
But it turns out that Mark, with his injuries, is still alive and stranded on Mars, trying to survive all by himself, with limited ration and with the knowledge that he would be stranded on Mars till he dies or for four years before the next mission — Ares 4 — can rescue him.
Back at the Nasa, they discover that Watney is alive when satellite images of the landing site show evidence of his activity. They begin working on ways to rescue him, but initially withhold the news of his survival from the rest of the Ares 3 crew, who are on their way back to Earth aboard the Hermes Spacecraft.
On the performance front, the ace cast offers nothing exceptional. Matt Damon as Mark Watney is staid and lacklustre, as he tries to grow food, make water or overcome his loneliness.
It is his occasional sarcastic one-liners during the recording of the video diaries, that lend some humour, but these are too few and far between.
Jessica Chastain, as the guilt-ridden Commander, and Michael Pena as the crew of Ares 3 are prominent in the scenes on the space-craft Hermes.
The narration progresses on an even keel, making the viewing experience a tad boring.
There is inconsistency on the direction front and careful viewing exposes these loopholes.
With excellent production values, the film is stylistically and meticulously assembled with flourishing hues of red and blue.
The three distinct settings — the planet Mars with its amazingly barren landscape, the spaceship Hermes with its crew in command of the actions around, and at times, ambiguously floating about and at the Space Mission on Earth — Nasa and CNSA (China) — the film excels visually in each sphere. —  IANS


A compelling portrait


By Colin Covert


FILM: Steve Jobs
CAST: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg
DIRECTION: Danny Boyle

The compelling biopic Steve Jobs transforms the folklore surrounding the late co-founder and CEO of Apple Incto fuel a magical mystery tour of three pivotal events in his life. Each breakneck act follows Jobs as he readies a different product launch over the course of 15 years.
Scenes of anxious backstage preparations bubble with Silicon Valley tech jargon as Jobs gets ready to introduce the Macintosh computer in 1984, then the NeXT cube he introduced after leaving Apple in 1988 and finally the iMac after his return in 1998.
The film evolves through a trio of visual formats across that time-travelling structure, shot in granular 16mm film for the opening act, progressing to gleaming 35mm, and climaxing in sleek, high-definition digital.
Masterfully directed by Danny Boyle, the story boils with in-the-wings turmoil like Birdman, The Artist and Love & Mercy. Each scene is a crescendo of aggressive arguments. The uber-controlling boss orders his battered, burned-out employees to about-face in ways they consider impossible.
But the guiding subtext of Aaron Sorkin’s hyper-verbose script, and Michael Fassbender’s magnetic performance owning every single scene as Jobs, isn’t corporate stage jitters. It’s Jobs’ slipshod relationship with a visitor to each of the publicity events — his out-of-wedlock daughter Lisa.
The story carries us from the neglectful era when Jobs denied the young girl’s paternity and unwillingly paid a court-ordered pittance of child support, to a grudging latter-day teenage reconciliation.
It’s really a psychological docudrama about a man with a faulty emotional operating system. Fassbender plays him as a perfectionist in everything except human connections, at a time when the world falls in love with him.
Sorkin’s signature fast-paced walk and talks and snarky jokes are rocketing here in hyper drive. While Jobs is the central focus of every moment, there are half a dozen demanding roles in the mix.
Steve Wozniak, the engineering mastermind who created Apple’s first breakthrough computers, gets a shaggy, milquetoast portrait from Seth Rogen. Though he tries to rise above sidekick status and talk Jobs down from his narcissistic heights, each of his attempts slips a noose around his own neck.
“What do you do?” Wozniak asks. “You’re not an engineer. You’re not a designer. You can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen. So, how come, 10 times in a day, I read, ‘Steve Jobs is a genius’? What do you do?”
“Musicians play their instruments,” answers Jobs, living as always several steps out of reality. “I play the orchestra.”
A different yet equally demanding relationship features Kate Winslet, playing Joanna Hoffman, former marketing chief of Macintosh. Jobs’ beleaguered work wife defends him in every crisis. She is flabbergasted when she’s ordered to bring him a new dress shirt minutes before he goes onstage.
Ever loyal to the man she confesses to platonically love, his Gal Friday complies, even grabbing an iron to smooth the shirt before he slips it on. She finally stands up to Jobs, rather than for him, late in the story.
Grayer and bespectacled, Jobs is still waging war on his daughter Lisa, now a Harvard student, until Hoffman aims an ultimatum of her own against him. While Winslet mismanages the Polish immigrant’s accent in several scenes, she never misses the woman’s soul. Like his other alienated colleagues, she is proof of Wozniak’s belief that “It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.” — Star Tribune/TNS


A fantasy tale


By Troy Ribeiro 


FILM: Pan
CAST: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara
DIRECTION: Joe Wright

Based on characters introduced by Scottish novelist and playwright JM Barrie, director Joe Wright’s film Pan is a manufactured story depicting the origins of Peter Pan and Captain Hook.
The film literally begins with, “This is a story of the boy who can fly and never grows up… we must know how it began…”
The fantasy tale starts off with little baby Peter being abandoned by his bereft mother outside the gates of an orphanage in London, with a locket that resembles a miniature pan and a note that states she hopes to see him soon.
As many as 12 years later, during World War II, Peter (Levi Miller), while leading a dreadful life in the orphanage, under the control of the tyrannical Sister Barnabas (Kathy Burke), stumbles upon his personal file and longs to meet his mother.
During his stay at the orphanage, he notices that boys go missing in the middle of the night and wonders if those disappearances have anything to do with the gold coins being hoarded in the nun’s “booby-trap” office.
And soon, in the middle of the night, pirates dressed as clowns, bungee jump into the orphanage, from their floating boat, that hovers around the roof, to snatch away the boys.
Peter too is whisked away in the flying ship to the mines of Neverland, which is ruled by the crafty and eloquent Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) and thence commences his journey and discovery of his true identity.
From here on, the film becomes a seriously extended chase, packed with a colourful palette of computer generated video effects and theatrical devices. — IANS

DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha