4.5/5

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2015)

I've said all year long that 2015 is the year of the blockbuster. James Bond, Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, The Avengers, Mad Max, and Terminator are all being released. Of those, a good percentage are science fiction, a genre that, due to these reboots and sequels, is rapidly declining. I've always wanted to talk to a bunch of studio executives in a room, and try to explain to them that most of these franchises came from original movies in the 80's and 90's that BECAME popular. They didn't need a brand or a name. Blockbusters that take a chance nowadays are buried. How refreshing then, that in the early months of 2015, a film has been released in limited and later wide, that stands up to both previously mentioned films. It's a statement of "I'm Still Here!" by original science fiction, a statement brought to the screen by Alex Garland(screenwriter of Sunshine, 28 Days Later, and Never Let Me Go.) More importantly, it's a great film, that feels like a classic in the making. In the beginning, a worker at a huge computer and phone company named Caleb(Domnhall Gleeson) wins a prize to visit the company's owner, Nathan(Oscar Isaac), in his secluded forest home. There, he witnesses the first AI ever to be introduced to mankind. This AI, built like a human woman, is named Ava(Alicia Vikander), and soon, trouble starts brewing, as Ava warns Caleb of evil goings on in the base, Nathan is acting stranger and stranger, and Caleb begins to actually fall in love with an artificial being. It's all stuff that's been covered before, but Garland puts a glossy yet minimalistic sheen over the whole affair. The film is beautiful to look at, but in a different way than "Snowpiercer" or "Interstellar." Shots of lush vegetation and roaring waterfalls bring us into the primal nature of it's core, while the neon lights and beautiful symmetry of Nathan's home makes for fantastic production design. A highlight is a perfectly designed scene where two characters stare at a painting. Of the three performances, Gleeson is the weak link. He's fine, but his character is generic, and he plays him that way. We don't really feel his love for Ava in the way we're supposed to. We view the whole thing with a sort of detachment. Garland must know this however, because by writing the thing as a locked-room mystery thriller, we're along for the ride just the same. Vikander and Oscar Isaac however are absolutely mesmerizing. Alicia Vikander exudes both an aloofness and an infant-like humanness as Ava in the beginning, and we totally buy it when she starts showing off her HAL 9000 side. The star of the show is Oscar Isaac. In a perfect world, he'd be nominated for an Oscar. He's funny and casual, but has a beautiful fire to him. We can understand why he's so smart, not an easy feat for an actor that previously has played only gangsters and struggling musicians. Of Garland's other films, this feels most like Never Let Me Go. Questions of humanity, and whether things that are not human can love are prominent, and just like that film, the answers are shrouded in ambiguity. Something that mainstream sci-fi seems to have forgotten about.