Now Showing: Red Planet

Red Planet
Genre: Sci-Fi
Director: Josh Trank
Writer: Dwight Gallo
Cast: Michelle Williams, Daniel Bruhl, Oscar Isaac, Paul Bettany, Michelle Monaghan, Connie Nielsen, Stanley Tucci

Plot: In 2044, the Ares spacecraft enters orbit around Mars. Mark Staal (Stanley Tucci) is the commander of an international space station crew of seven astronauts: Luca Vanek (Daniel Bruhl), technical systems engineer; Jill Stewart (Michelle Monaghan), doctor and mission specialist; Gustav Olofsson (Paul Bettany), astrobiologist; Susana Stadler (Michelle Williams), Mars lander pilot; Herbert Cullen (Oscar Isaac), geologist; and Patricia Dubnyk (Connie Nielsen), Mars orbiter pilot. They try to land, but the small landing craft crashes. Vishniac dies. The rest of his crew, is stranded inside the toppled landing craft, except for Dubnyk piloting the Ares. The crew unable to return to the waiting Ares. With no spare landing craft, Dubnyk has no choice but to return to Earth.

It will take two years for Dubnyk to send a rescue ship from Earth,  but the stranded landing +crew have less than a year's worth of supplies and need to find ways to extend the life support system. The main problem is the power generator, since air and water recycling require electric power.  Cullen proposes they use what fuel they have left to power an improvised silicate reactor to produce water vapor from the martian soil. They try to build the reactor, but the parts they planned to use are too damaged to salvage.

The landing crew tries to find ways to save electrical power. The required power lifetime can only be attained if the crew is reduced to two astronauts. Stadler, the new commander, decides that she, Cullen and Olofsson should abandon the craft since their specialist skills are less important to the survival of the mission. The put on their sapcesuits and walk to the edge of the Valles Marineris Valley. Their radar scans reveal a maze-like structure hidden beneath a thick cloud of water vapor in the valley. The three astronauts try to reach the bottom of the valley before they run out of oxygen.

Cullen dies of asphyxiation, but Stadler and Olofsson stumble upon an artifical tunnel near the bottom of the valley containing mummified bodies of humanoid alien beings. They find that the air pressure and oxygen levels in some of the tunnels is similar to Earth's. Olofsson dies when accidentally entering a tunnel with no atmosphere, but Stadler manages to contact the two astronauts still in the lander, Vanek and Stewart, who have recently discovered that the lander is losing air pressure due to an air leak. Stadler urges them to join her, as there is enough oxygen and water in the valley to survive until the rescue ship arrives.