The Martian

Where it feels good to be isolated on an alien planet.

The premise of this movie is so simple: An astronaut (Matt Damon) is trapped on Mars. How can he survive and/or escape? After a strong opening that set the scene right away, he combats the despair of being abandoned and the incredibly high probabilty of various horrible deaths with... humor. It's awesome. There's no weepy Tom Hanks Cast Away here!

It's good to be him. :P

This movie kept me very entertained and definitely wide awake and for a plot about a guy stuck on Mars there are certainly a lot of characters in this, each one with memorable enough quirks which actually strengthens it. I don't think there's any particular "bad guy" in this movie, just bad luck, which is awesome and adds to the whole feel good thing it has going. I mean, at least you've got disco music right? :P

Definitely a good watch and one I wouldn't mind seeing again! I give it four potatoes out of five.

Cast Away

I always thought this movie was about Tom Hanks and a volleyball until I actually got to see it for the first time a few days ago. While a big chunk of it is just Tom Hanks on a remote island, there are plenty of other people in the movie too - Helen Hunt of special note since I've always liked her. It's a pretty quiet (music wise) and nice yet sad tale of not giving up and taking things for granted. It also gives a lot of ideas for anyone who gets stranded on an island in the future and is a great ad for FedEx.

If this spawned from that old screen saver, it turned out to be a good movie!

I must say, I probably would have not survived what Hanks' character went through - especially the plane part. Ironic that the guy without a seat belt is the one that made it out. Also not sure why a whale would have hung around him so long. It was funny to watch him collect the packages at the start and sort them, as per his regular job. I'm not sure why he didn't open that last one and just kept the box, but oh well. Funnier still to then find out what might have been in it (spoilers). :P

All up, it was a decent enough flick for me to give three out of five coconuts to, and worth a watch if nothing else is on.