SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES:

The Martian.

Based on a most entertaining novel, the movie looks more like science fact than science fiction.  Matt Damon stars as an astronaut abandoned on Mars who embarks on a solitary quest to survive on the alien landscape.  His ingenuity in using the materials, equipment, and tools left behind by the mission, the very process of his existence, provide the main plot, the survival of another Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  The movie also employs two other connected plots, the response of the various people who run NASA, and the crew of the spaceship that left Damon, believing he was dead, on the red planet; both work in some ingenious ways to communicate with him and to bring him home.  Naturally, for a picture directed by Ridley Scott, everything works wonderfully well, from the convincing Martian landscape—I’ve never been there myself—to the scenes back on Earth and in the spaceship, and the connected plots all mesh smoothly, with a suspenseful and exciting resolution.

Spectre. 

Despite the signature line in all the Bond movies, which comes straight from the Ian Fleming novels, oddly forgotten, both martinis and audiences should be stirred rather than shaken.  Unfortunately, in Spectre, the latest addition to the series, not much pleases beyond the whole lot of shaking going on.  The film resurrects a good deal of material from previous entries in the franchise, including the presence of Ernst Blofeld (Christoph Walz), a villain with the usual tiresome plans for world domination.  It also features the usual shootouts and explosions, two terrific car chases with two terrific cars, and of course Bond’s eventual and predictable triumph.  Daniel Craig once again makes a good Bond, but displays the fatigue he has confessed with a role he has promised to abandon, and the excellent Christoph Walz is entirely wasted in his silly part.  Aside from all the special effects, the repetition of so much familiar stuff suggests that the franchise seems to be running out of both energy and ideas.