The Martian is just a great movie. It has all the elements you want, including excitement, fear, joy, laughs, etc. It stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney. His team is exploring Mars in what is supposed to be a 31 day trip, but when a bad storm forces the team to abandon the base and head back to Earth early, his fellows leave him behind because they think he died during the run to the shuttle. He is now faced with finding a way to survive on an inhospitable planet for years before help can arrive. His home base is designed for 31 days, with food supply for 6 people for a couple months, and he has no way to contact anyone to even tell them he is alive.
Mark gives himself a day or two to feel sorry for himself, and then decides he will not give up. He talks to himself (and us as viewers), ostensibly through the video journals he keeps recording to show his progress. Meanwhile those on Earth finally do realize he is still alive, and try to get a mission off the ground as fast as possible to get him rescued, or food at the least, because a shuttle trip would take a year or more to get there anyway. Throughout the film we feel a sense of a race against the clock, not in minutes or hours, but definitely in weeks and years, as we know at some point Mark will have nothing left to live on, 30 million miles away from home.
This is a highly enjoyable film with a huge re-watch factor, the kind of movie that has something for everyone. You will feel the gamiut of emotions in this one. Though it has the backdrop of a sci-fi film, it is more about the perseverance of human kind, to not give up, both for Mark alone on Mars, and for those on Earth trying to bring him home.
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