What to Watch: Ex Machina

After seeing the Golden Globes I was so interested in Alicia Vikander, and I love Oscar Issac and Domhnall Gleeson, so this movie was calling my name. Though. Though... I just wasn't sure I was into robots and AI and all of that stuff. One night after work I made dinner and decided to watch.

I'm so very glad I did. The acting in this movie was superb. The character arcs were so incremental that you barely notice them happening until everything comes to a head. I was enthralled by the plot, I believed Vikander was an AI, I sympathized with Gleeson's character, I disliked but was fascinated by Issac's character.

This movie was haunting, beautiful, disturbing, a love story, a story about science, and a story about consciousness. It was just much more than I was expecting. Vikander absolutely deserved to be nominated for her role, and I'm surprised she's not running against herself at the Oscars. She was just amazing.

If you;re on the fence, if you think the plot isn't for you, I recommend just watching. I think you'll be surprised by how engaging you find the movie.

You can watch Ex Machina for free on Amazon Prime if you're a member.

Alex Garland, writer of 28 Days Later and Sunshine, makes his directorial debut with the stylish and cerebral thriller, EX MACHINA. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer at an internet-search giant, wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company's brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a Turing Test--charging him with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan's latest experiment in artificial intelligence. That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated--and more deceptive--than the two men could have imagined.

I actually find that the trailer below is not as great as the movie is. But it does give you a sense of the plot: