Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the universe. Not when there's rations to number, schedules to draw up, and basic questions of survival to be answered (in an audio diary that works nicely to provide explanatory voiceover). As he puts it, "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this." Ridley Scott's (Exodus: Gods and Kings) nuts-and-bolts answer to the existential drama of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity works best when it keeps its camera on Damon — whose usually impervious puss actually manages to show signs of strain and stress — as he takes care of business and deals with various disasters. (Not pictured: what he does with the empty hours in between.) The film flattens out a bit when dealing with the thoroughly (and dully) decent crew who left him behind, and gets downright goofy when it touches down on earth to show NASA and Jet Propulsion Labs' scramble to save their man. (Donald Glover's visual reveal of his rescue plan is hilarious, but not in the way it intends to be.) With Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, et alia. (2015) — Matthew Lickona