Sometimes, when you see a movie that you know nothing about, you are treated with an unknown little treat – a film that will stick with you forever. Ex Machina is the movie this year. My comparison here is to the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman gem Seven. It was a movie I knew nothing about. I had only heard that it was a movie I must see through word of mouth. Seven probably has a place in my all-time top 25 forever. That’s how good it was. But a lot of this initially high rating was because of how in awe I was when I saw it in such a small, rickety stage theater converted into a movie theater in Lexington, VA, in the fall of 1997. Now, Ex Machina is not in the class of Seven. But like Seven, it is a gripping, carefully scripted movie that will stay with you long after you watch it. Ex Machina will challenge for best movie of the first half of 2015.
The best advice I got about this movie was to go into it knowing as little as possible. I almost got away without even seeing a single trailer for it, but I did happen to come across one right before another movie I was watching in the theater. It was enough to intrigue me, but I still didn’t know the premise. The best way to describe it is as A.I. Artificial Intelligence meets Her. It’s science fiction. It’s a fantasy. It’s a drama. It’s a mystery. It has it all. The storytelling is about as good as anything you’ll see this year (even when the Oscar contenders come out). So go in with an open mind and be prepared to be hooked. There isn’t a word that clearly describes this movie. It’s a culmination of many things, like a movie you’ve never seen before. It will open your mind and make you ask What if “ questions. It has so many plot twists that turn to add to the telling of the story. Before I get into enough details to whet your appetite, I’ll repeat it. I loved this movie. I haven’t researched enough to see which films will be the big hits of the year, but I’m hoping this movie finishes in my final 2015 top 10. It absolutely has the potential. If this were a 2014 release, it would have finished in the top 7 or 8.
Including Ava (Alicia Vikander – The Fifth Estate, Anna Karenina), who I will talk about in a moment, there are only four characters in this movie. The completely underrated Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year) is the most recognizable name, and he is at the top of his game. But the movie doesn’t succeed without impressive performances by Vikander and Domhnall Gleeson (Unbroken, About Time). The trio, along with Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), keeps you glued to the screen, wondering exactly who is who, what is what, and how the movie will continue to unfold. This movie has a lot of twists, and they’re genius. They come one after another. You might suspect or see some in advance, but you won’t see all of them before they occur. It’s almost like a game between Nathan (Isaac), Caleb (Gleeson), and Ava, except that no one is playing by any of the same rules, and no one is even admitting that it’s a game.
This movie certainly isn’t a horror, but it can be creepy at times. It certainly does not possess any of the carefree likability of Her. Still, it isn’t quite as uncomfortable as A.I. Artificial Intelligence (remember the scene where Haley Joel Osment sinks to the bottom of the swimming pool with the real-life boy?). Perhaps A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a little more uncomfortable than Ex Machina because the idea of robots portraying/replacing people was a new idea back in 2001 than in 2015. Ex Machina is the better movie, though. As much as I loved Her, Ex Machina was also better than this. I love how modern Ex Machina felt (not that A.I. Artificial Intelligence or Her ever felt dated because they did not. And while those movies both felt super fresh, there was just something more encompassing about Ex Machina. Maybe it had to do with the fact that there were so few characters, that it was a game of intrigue, or that you knew something big was coming but didn’t know what it was (it had that Hitchcock sort of vibe at times).
In any case, the movie is about billionaire Nathan, the founder of a search engine company called BlueBook that seems to put even Google to shame. Nathan lives in a research facility out in the Alaska wilderness. We learn in the film’s early moments that he owns miles upon miles of secluded land in the last frontier. He doesn’t call his home a home, though. Instead, he calls it his research facility. He lives there with just one other person (Koyko), who is his live-in housekeeper. She doesn’t speak a word of English, so that Nathan can talk about private matters without worrying about her hearing him, and then pass along any developments in his research.
Caleb wins a “random” contest that gives him a week’s visit to Nathan’s research facility. It just happens that Caleb is the top programmer at Nathan’s company. After signing a thorough non-disclosure agreement, Caleb receives an invitation to review Nathan’s current projects. He is creating droids that look like humans, are made of human flesh, and possess human qualities, specifically the ability to feel human emotion, love, and make conscious decisions based on reactions to feelings and their feelings. All of his droids are women, and all are beautiful. Their hands, feet, legs, arms, etc., are made of flesh, but the rest of their bodies are clearly cyborgs. The robot we come to know is Ava. And Caleb didn’t win a contest; Nathan personally picked him to test Ava (and to be a test subject for Nathan).
The characters’ dynamics are fascinating. This may be what watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was like when it premiered in theaters back in 1968. It was one of those movies that, while slow and methodical, was something you were fascinated by during each second. The cast was perfect. The setting couldn’t have been better. I can’t say enough good things about this movie. I want to say more, but I would ruin it for you. I may have said too much already, but I don’t think so.
Plot 10/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 9.5/10
Directing 10/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 9/10 (it is the unknown that is scary…this could be our reality one day)
96.5%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Moon
- I, Robot
- Beyond the Black Rainbow
- Her
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence