Matt Damon in The Martian Atlaspix/Alamy
When your children range from 8 to 14 years old, it’s hard to find a weekend film for the whole family, particularly with a grandad in the mix as well. Happily, the 2015 film adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian, starring Matt Damon (pictured above) as Mark Watney, an astronaut who is accidentally abandoned on Mars, fitted the bill.
There’s something wonderfully enjoyable about watching people being very clever. From Mark’s brilliance growing his potato crop in Mars’s sterile soil to NASA’s ingenious idea for the slingshot manoeuvre to get him home, we lapped it up.…
