Ex Machina

Mugino

A film that says more about the chasm between men and women (or Alex Garland and women) than human and A.I. Though wonderfully acted and elegantly executed, this just adds to the pile of SF cliches by posers who only pretend to understand A.I. and neuroscience. Calling this "thought provoking" betrays an absence of adequate thought.

Graveyard Poet

If you want to watch a thought provoking science fiction film about artificial intelligence, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner. Or, deepest and most profound of all, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. Skip this superficial sex robot story which pretends to be smart but is completely soulless.

Zach Closs

An ingenious, paranoid character study, one that plays against the expectations of genre nuts in particular. Glides on performances and dialogue, underplaying its Oscar-winning visual effects. Avoids Kubrickian detachment like the plague; it's tantalizingly alive, with eccentricities, humour, terror and consequence-laden eroticism.

Skinnedteen

The more I think about this film, the less meaningful it is. Too much emphasis on the binary and tries to be subversive even though it ends up succumbing to the male gaze in terms of how this gendered robot is just another projection of male fantasies.

Daniel S.

'Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul' used to say my friend François Rabelais some 600 years ago and he was damn right! Oscar -Nathan- Isaac may be extremely wealthy and very good at mathematics, he's nevertheless totally ignorant. If he simply had taken the time to read the Three Laws of Robotics Isaac Asimov (a good friend of mine too) established not so long ago, he'd have deserved my respect.

J. O.

Taut and mostly tense, but not without its moments of dragged-out meandering. Nothing particularly interesting about the story - predictably Shelley-esque in its monster/creator story. It takes no risks, it tries nothing new - even the climax is subdued and, well, anticlimactic. Many of the twists and turns could be seen a mile away, unfortunately. But regardless, it was quite beautiful and mostly kept my attention.

HKFanatic

"Ex Machina" proves one of 2015's top genre delights, bolstered by a smart, character-driven script and a trio of stellar performances. Images of stunning natural vistas and sterile hallways set to a droning synthesizer score help evoke a Kubrickian sense of dread. If the final act eventually devolves into your typical horror movie theatrics, at the very least it was an absorbing ride to get there.

Kamran

Apparently forgot to log this... Written for Aesthetics of the Mind: https://aestheticsofthemind.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/ex-machina-alex-garland-2015-usa/ A relatively imaginative undertaking of a not so original concept: artificial intelligence. The interesting difference is that notions of artificial intelligence are placed in the background of a truly more archaic humanity/morality piece. 68/100 - Decent (2.5)