Let's Go Out To The Movies: "Ex Machina" (R - Universal/A24 Films - 1hr, 48 mins)

Directed and Written by Alex Garland

Alo Party Peoples.

If you liked Inception or Alien or The Matrix, then you will likely enjoy Ex Machina. If you want sci-fi with some intellectual meat to chew on, something in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, then you will enjoy Ex Machina. If you were disappointed by Lucy and want to see its themes properly explored, then you will love Ex Machina. I meet those criteria, and I suspect that Ex Machina will be one of the best films of 2015.

The reason Ex Machina is such a great film is simple, it's a great script playing with big ideas paired to a good director and good actors, with an amazing technical department to boot. It all adds up to a lean, tight, no-nonsense sci-fi thriller that Lucy wanted to be but utterly failed to.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a computer programmer for a massive tech company that wins a contest to spend a week with the company's reclusive founder Nathan played by Oscar Issac, at his secluded mansion out in the middle of the wilderness. He finds out that it wasn't a contest, and that he was chosen by Nathan the human component of a Turing Test, sort of. Nathan has built Ava, an intellegent AI played by Alica Vikander, and he wants to find out if, even though she is obviously not a human, she acts enough like one for people to still empathize with her. She definitely passes, perhaps too well, and Caleb starts to suspect that Nathan has some ulterior purposes in mind.

Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, Oscar Issac as Nathan

This is the directorial debut for novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland, and it shows. Huge segments of the film are presented with chapter headings, the screenplay is filled to the brim with allusions to myths, legends, scriptures, and visual arts, and it is just so rare to see cinematic sci-fi these days asking deep questions about free will and authority and what it means to be human and society and technology's place therein. Most cinematic sci-fi tends towards the fanciful realms of action or horror, so when something like Ex Machina comes along, it is something to be deeply cherished.

The actors are great, Domhnall Gleeson's Caleb is a relatable schlub, but in a very connectable way. Alica Vikander as Ava is simply amazing. This role requires absolute muscle control to show just enough emotion so the audience can empathize with them, but hold enough back to remind them that she's still essentially the daughter of HAL 9000 and Siri. Oscar Issac, oh dear lord, Nathan is a great, complex character. He plays him like an amalgam of Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Larry Page that created the source code for a search engine at the age of thirteen, and grew stinking rich off of it, and isn't happy with it at all. He's so unhappy wit the rest of humanity, and has such a massive ego, that he's convinced he can create a better version of it, hence his creating Ava. (oh hey, that's really similar to Eve)

Alica Vikander as Ava

Ex Machina is practically the definition of a well produced film. Alex Garland seems to be taking his cues from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Apple. So there are a lot of stark, sterile whites, and greys, and the whole house looks like the inside of an iMac, the precision of design almost makes it look like Wes Anderson's The Shining. Not to mention the seamless effects work it took to make Ava look the way she does. It took  It also does amazing things with sound, like, it had better win the Oscar. Unlike, say, Interstellar, the pounding sonic weight of the soundtrack emphasizes the action onscreen instead of drowning it out.

Ex Machina is brainy, big idea sci-fi of the best possible kind, and an instant contender for the Best of the Year title. It has already played in much of Europe, but is currently playing at select theaters in the US before going national next week. It's definitely worth checking out if you get the chance.

Have a nice day

Greg.B