Movie review | Shockers await in ‘Ex Machina’
Ex Machina ****
The sense of foreboding is evident almost from the first frame of “Ex Machina,” a new British sci-fi film currently in wide release, and the unease only grows stronger from there through to a shocking climax.
When the eccentric and brilliant owner of the world’s largest Internet search engine company (think Google with a dark side) invites his company’s best young programmer to his creepy mountain research compound to help with an experiment, you want to scream “Run away!” and “Get while the getting is good!” which of course doesn’t happen.
The alcoholic eccentric, Nathan, is played by the cold and frightening 35-year-old Oscar Isaac. His naive protégée, Caleb, is played by Domhnall Gleeson, best known for his role as Bill Weasley in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part I.”
A popular sci-fi theme dating back to the 1940s, artificial intelligence is at the heart of the movie, which was written and directed by Alex Garland. The heroine, a hot robot named Ava, played by Swedish actress Alicia Amanda Vikander, is the focus of the experimentation, called a “Turing Test.”
The actual test, named for Alan Turing, the father of computer science as portrayed in the “The Imitation Game,” tests a human subject to see if he or she can distinguish between a computer’s behavior and that of a human, but playing God has its consequences.
What do those stars mean?
* Really, really, really bad. Don’t bother.
** Really bad, with one or more redeeming scenes.
*** Pretty good, but maybe not great, worth seeing for most
**** A winning combination of story, casting, and directing
***** The rarest gem, an all-around perfect motion picture
This story was originally published May 8, 2015 at 7:15 AM with the headline "Movie review | Shockers await in ‘Ex Machina’."