A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.
An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
A frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team.
A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger.
A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
Director:
James Cameron
Stars:
Sam Worthington,
Zoe Saldana,
Sigourney Weaver
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshiper, and a drifter named Max.
When Louis Bloom, a con man desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story.
Caleb, a 26 year old programmer at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.Written by
DNA FILMS
Ex Machina's plot is a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's play "The Tempest," and each of the film's three main characters are roughly analogous to characters from the play. Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a powerful, manipulative inventor who lives in a remote resort, corresponds to Prospero, a powerful magician who lives on a remote island and who manipulated the events and characters in the story to his liking. Though Nathan is a computer programmer and artificial intelligence pioneer, not a magician, his parallels to Prospero are a nod to Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Ava (Alicia Vikander) is analogous to Miranda, Prospero's daughter; both Miranda and Ava were created by Prospero/Nathan and neither has been exposed to experiences or people outside of their respective confines. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is equivalent to Ferdinand--in both the play and the movie, the Prospero character contrives to bring Caleb/Ferdinand to his isolated and remote home, and in both cases the Caleb/Ferdinand character falls in love with the Prospero character's daughter (or "daughter," in Ex Machina). See more »
Goofs
When Ava has put on clothes/"skin", her breasts become notably smaller. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Caleb:
How long until we get to his estate?
Pilot:
[laughs]
We've been flying over his estate for the past 2 hours.
See more »
Enola Gay
Written by Andrew McCluskey
Performed by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Published by BMG Dinsong Limited, a BMG Chrysalis company (c) 1980
Courtesy of Virgin/EMI Records Limited
Under license from Universal Music Operations Limited
Used with permission.
All Rights reserved. See more »
Don't mean to insult here, but who else wants to love a machine. Bear with me: this movie has a deep insight to communicate, whether intended or not is open to question.
The story is a modern telling of Bluebeard's Castle as the correct version of Beauty and the Beast. In other words, it seems to be about impotence. Except that this is geek love, love at an impossible distance, that is eroticism. And the movie itself tells you all you need to know about eros.
The insight. Ex Machina is ostensibly about Turing's Test, the thesis that a machine might be so human as to fool a human being. Does Ava pass this test? Depends on how you perceive the test. Ex Machina actually implies a more relevant Test: could a machine seem so human as to make the human being inteacting with it come to believe that he himself is a machine?
And the insight? It might be that the solution to the AI/human interface may not involve the humanising of robots, but the robotisation of humans.
Only 8/10 because it is not clear that this insight was actually part of the plot. But whether you find eros or AI in this movie, you will have a rewarding journey.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
Don't mean to insult here, but who else wants to love a machine. Bear with me: this movie has a deep insight to communicate, whether intended or not is open to question.
The story is a modern telling of Bluebeard's Castle as the correct version of Beauty and the Beast. In other words, it seems to be about impotence. Except that this is geek love, love at an impossible distance, that is eroticism. And the movie itself tells you all you need to know about eros.
The insight. Ex Machina is ostensibly about Turing's Test, the thesis that a machine might be so human as to fool a human being. Does Ava pass this test? Depends on how you perceive the test. Ex Machina actually implies a more relevant Test: could a machine seem so human as to make the human being inteacting with it come to believe that he himself is a machine?
And the insight? It might be that the solution to the AI/human interface may not involve the humanising of robots, but the robotisation of humans.
Only 8/10 because it is not clear that this insight was actually part of the plot. But whether you find eros or AI in this movie, you will have a rewarding journey.