Movie Review - "Ex Machina"

The best independent movie of last year (2015), in my opinion, was “Ex Machina”. 

It’s a near-future sci-fi that taps into our legitimate concerns about what the inventor Kurzweil has called “the coming singularity”, that is, the emergence of artificial intelligence that may surpass humans in the evolutionary hierarchy. A tech billionaire brings a promising young coder to his totally isolated house/lab in Alaska so that the young man can conduct a Turing test on a humanoid A.I. that the genius has built. The test is to see whether it’s possible to tell if the A.I.’s responses in conversation are indistinguishable from a human’s. Complicating matters is the fact that the A.I., Ava, is a total babe, and that the young man is the first man (other than her maker) that she’s met.

Click on the image to purchase "Ex Machina".

The first-time director, Alex Garland, has written good sci-fi before, “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine”, both for Oscar-winner Danny Boyle (Best Picture “Slumdog Millionaire”). Garland uses many of Boyle’s British team, and they do him proud. The movie doesn’t look like it has a limited independent budget.

The cast is essentially the three leads and a lovely, silent Asian woman. And each of these three are major up-coming talents. The young man is played by Domhnall Gleeson, who was so excellent in the don’t-miss fun family fantasy “About Time”. The genius is played by Oscar Issac, who to me is the new Al Pacino; check his range from “Inside Llewlyn Davis” to “A Most Violent Year”. (Both actors appeared in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.) Alicia Vikander is Hollywood’s new “It” girl, and she ROCKS the part of Ava; you can tell by her movements that she’s trained as a ballerina.She won nan Oscar for “The Danish Girl”, and was captivating in the WWI drama “Testament of Youth”.

There’s a lot of dialogue. It’s pretty smart. You’ll be thinking about this one for a while, which I can’t say for tentpoles like “The Avengers: Age of Ultron”, “Jurassic World” or “Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation”. 

“Ex Machina” is out on Blu-ray now. I was into it pre-theatrical release, but I wasn’t blogging yet. In the future, I’ll try to be ahead of the curve for you.