Geoff Marslett's Mars is immediately intriguing based on its visual style, which may be the closest a film ever came to looking like a graphic novel that I have yet to see. Sin City merged the styles of film noir and graphic novel to create a film that's dark and murky visual scheme gave it new layers of life, but Marslett's directorial debut includes the graininess that would ostensibly be visible in a graphic novel had it come to life before one's eyes. The result is a film that looks very similar to A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life, one of Richard Linklater's uniquely animated, existential films with an animation style that, to my knowledge, hasn't really been exploited since.Marslett achieved the unique animation style through the similar rotoscoping technology Linklater put to use with the aforementioned films, though through all the heavy colorization in the characters' features and details, the design doesn't mirror that shiny sleekness Linklater's films did. The film's animation likely comes into play due to Marslett's scope and ambition outweighing the mass of his bank account, and the result is a lot better than one would imagine, though its film school-style narrative and structure comes through when you realize the film doesn't really have any strong insights to cling to.More on that later. The film focuses on three astronauts, Charlie (Mark Duplass), a cocky, washed-up man who relishes in his great spacewalk victory years ago, Casey (Zoe Simpson), a New Zealand doctor who is about to fulfill her dream of being the first woman on Mars, and Hank (Paul Gordon), the gang's leader, who seems like he's forever wallowing in a cloud of bong exhaust with his slow, sometimes slurry, manner of speech, who are embarking on a trip to Mars. The three are constantly monitored by their boss Shep (Howe Gelb) at Mission Control, who instructs Hank to go against the grain numerous times without informing his crewmates, in addition to a group of Television journalists. All eyes are on these three brave souls and their uncertain futures as they embark on being the first astronauts to set foot on the red planet.Once your eyes have feasted on Marslett's beautiful and layered animation, in addition to embracing the hilarious sarcasm of Duplass and the listlessness of Gordon, Mars devolves into a romantic story, perhaps questioning "is there really love on Mars?" (read that twice, if need be). Marslett strays away from any kind of political or social commentary here, and unfortunately, that feels a bit like a copout with this film, as Marslett has gone all this way, literally out of this world, to basically craft a cutesy, hipster romance on another planet. Sure there's evident romanticism, and sure, Duplass and Simpson strike an amiable chemistry, but when the visuals are this unique, the plot is this significant, and the characters are deemed so important, it seems kind of elementary to confine them to a basic romance plot when they're Mars of all places.Mars gets a lot of creativity points in its visual scheme, and it's pleasantly short at barely eighty minutes, making this expedition a brief and marginally satisfying one overall. The problem this film - which is essentially a mumblecore film set in space - is that because it's so minimalist in plot, the screenplay must immediately rely on characters, themes, and dialog in order to be successful, and instead of soaring to new heights, like Marslett does with the visuals and the narrative, he keeps everything relatively grounded. The result is sweet, cheerful, but kind of forgettable.Starring: Mark Duplass, Zoe Simpson, Hank Gordon, and Howe Gelb. Directed by: Geoff Marslett.

Holy wow, guys, this is one interesting and entertaining movie. A trio of astronauts is sent by NASA to the Red Planet in hopes of finding sentient life. Or life of any kind. To paraphrase the noted mathematician Ian Malcolm, although the planet appears to be barren, life finds a way. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has sent up an artificially intelligent robot in an effort to beat the Americans.This is a stunning animated opus - yes, I said animated - that uses a technique similar to rotoscoping; director Geoff Marslett developed the technique specifically for this film, and it makes the movie look much more like an actual graphic novel. The technique is a real treat. Much like rotoscoping, for this technique scenes are shot as live action and then converted to animation, lending a realistic, colorful look and feel.The crew is composed of Hank Morrison (Paul Gordon), the captain and pilot; Dr. Casey Cook (Zoe Dean), the scientist; and Charlie Brownsville (Mark Duplass), who's, well, the backup. The redundancy may not fly in real life (no pun intended), but here we can suspend our disbelief. After all, this is science fiction, with a comic bent.The astronauts deal with the boredom of space travel, and in particular the well-named Charlie bemoans the fact that he's much more expendable than his crewmates. In fact, when the trio does arrive at Mars, Morrison and Cook are to head down to the planet in a shuttle while Charlie figuratively keeps the motor running. Morrison is the brooding type, harboring a secret; Cook is the imaginative, energetic type, quickly drawn to the everyman Charlie. And if hanging around doing nothing while the so-called real astronauts do their astronaut thing, Charlie has been directed by NASA to give live interviews to an Entertainment Tonight-like duo (Liza Weil and James Kochalka) that are designed to promote the expensive trip.Now, although Charlie has been deemed redundant (by the NASA chief Shep, played by Howe Gelb), he's actually a former hero. Did space walks and such, and was really good at them. So maybe he's not completely useless, and we can forgive NASA for tossing him in the ship. And what a ship! Although there's just the standard astronaut meals and accommodations, there's also a huge (!) garden for seeding Mars. This garden contains a pool, presumably to keep the flora watered, but a pool nonetheless. Pretty darn awesome spaceship, if you ask me. It might be worth noting that the movie, released in 2010, is set in the future - 2015. Okay, maybe the film makers missed this prediction.But this isn't a typical sci-fi film - there's philosophy afoot! Why do we want to discover? How do we react to what's out there? What is the worth of knowledge of the stars? All good questions, and thankfully the movie doesn't sit us down and lecture to us on each subject. In fact, the movie's pretty low key, with only a few action sequences - one of which does indeed involve a space walk. And the point of view we get to see isn't just that of the astronauts, because a probe sent by the ESA five years prior is, long thought to be lost, is somehow still active, taking pictures and recording video - just not transmitting. It, too, holds some interesting secrets.To some, Mars the movie may seem like just an experiment, something a film-school grad student knocked out for the fun of it. I would disagree. The movie both looks good and sounds good. The plot, although secondary to the characters and the visuals, is strong and open ended. Unlike most sci-fi stories told by Hollywood, this one offers no neat-and-tidy answers to the problems it brings up. And in this case, the ambiguity meshes very nicely with the conflicting emotions of the humans in the movie. Besides, any movie with Kinky Friedman as the president of the United States can't be all bad.

This is beyond rotoscoping. The animation is more on the live picture side than on the animated. If you saw WAKING LIFE, then you might be familiar with this style. Thick outlined drawings (or computer enhanced live action pictures) and intense colors. I love animation and when I saw Waking Life I didn't enjoyed it because of the variety of animation styles. At least this time, the whole movie follows the same style. The story is unusual and captivating. You won't be disappointed if you like original plots and original animation. Check out the little details too, they're plenty (eyes in the dark, cigar, hair, clothing items) and the outtakes during the credits. Also, check my 4000+ reviews here: www.cinematerapia.blogspot.com Thanks!

If I would rate this movie only on the visuals and soundtrack, I would give it a whole ten. But incorporating other important aspects of the movie, it is difficult to give such a high rating. The acting sucked! The story itself was very interesting, but the way it unraveled was so immature and predictable. The movie dragged on for almost 2 hours and again, the only reason I actually finished watching it was because of the cool, psychedelic visualizations and an amazing soundtrack. If I would have to, I would recommend this movie to someone who is looking for a laugh, because this movie is fun to ridicule. A similar type of movie but much better acting and story is "Waking Life", in case you need a comparison.