Ridley Scott, The Martian

The creators, unlike Interstellar and Gravity, carefully avoided illogical twists. All the stretching of technical/physical/biological facts has been performed accurately, without obvious violence done to the plot or elementary logic.

Yet, the author(s) forgot that all movies (or novels, for that matter) is about human conflict. It takes an enormous talent and ingenuity to infuse one-man show with the conflict sufficient to drive complex narrative, such as in the "Life of Pi." A few well-designed jokes as in "Martian" are not enough. While Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain are forever wed to sci-fi, another master actors such as Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean and, especially, Kirsten Wiig are being lost as the screen savers with little characterization. In these stock roles it would work better to cast relatively unknown, aspiring starlets such as McKenzie Davis ("Mindy Park").

P.S. Compare descriptions at http://mars2044.blogspot.com/

Black Mass

Johnny Depp got his acting grove back. Yet, with all his wealth he does not choose more deep roles with top directors preferring stock roles, which he plays excellently but which will not be remembered. Supporting cast is terrific, especially enigmatic Benedict Cumberbatch, playing his university president brother but the movie is just another well-made crime thriller.

Ricky and the Flash

It is easy to dismiss this movie just as a vehicle for Meryl Streep and her daughter.

The movie is subtly subversive with its overthrowing of the stereotypes and could not be made 20 years ago. That is, an indie rocker from California is a Tea Party-style conservative. She is shunned by her gay son. Her former husband, a corporate shill from Indiana masterfully played by Kevin Kline is a liberal and lives in a multiracial family. 

Ricki's lover, a much younger Latino man, is a sensitive and supportive guy. On the contrary, her son's future bride comes from visibly upper middle class, culturally conservative Hispanics disapproving of their future mother-in-law and rock in general. 

Too bad, that the rest is just a vehicle to showcase Meryl's fantastic capabilities. 

Inside Out

Perfect movie. Would be genial if it were not so emotionally detached and scripted.

Game of Thrones II

As an astronomical joke, I describe the world(s) of the Game of Thrones in my "technical" blog.

Seriously, one of the main attractions of the "Games" was its slow, "realistic" pace [GoT]. When the producers ratcheted it up more in line with the tempo of feature-length movies, it became more visually comprehensible but the charm is lost.

Mad Max

Mad Max: The producers thought (probably, correctly judging by 90%+ approval even on rottentomatoes) that scantily clad Charlize Theron and Rose Whiteley jumping around on moving vehicles can exculpate an absence of the plot.

Ex Machina vs. Her

Ex Machina is a retell of Dr. Frankenstein story for a new robotic era. It is stylish and well shot but it endows robot with human motivations and logic. Her is endowed with the strangeness of human-software relationship. Operational system is not so unhuman as to be totally opaque to human understanding, yet significantly different in its behavioral motivation and patterns. Furthermore, the Vicander-Gleeson duo does not stand up to the brilliance and subtlety of the Phoenix-Johansson duo.

P.S. There are also two bloopers in Ex Machina. When the mad billionaire-scientist's villa is out of juice, all doors must open, not shut down because they were reprogrammed that way. Second, the robot girl did not acquire autonomous source of energy to function in a human environment.