Thinking Man's Sci-Fi

Rating: 7/10 (25 April 2015)

I saw "Ex Machina", starring Domhnall Gleeson-Unbroken, True Grit_2010, FYI: he is in the upcoming Star Wars 7; Oscar Isaac-The Bourne Legacy, Sucker Punch, FYI: he is in both the upcoming Star Wars 7 & X-Men:Age of Apocalypse and Alicia Vikander-Seventh Son, The Fifth Estate, FYI: she is in the upcoming Man From U.N.C.L.E.
This is a sci-fi movie that leans more on the science fiction aspects and less on the action sequences that usually accompany a sci-fi movie. The title of the movie comes from the Latin phrase, 'Deus Ex-machina', which means, God From the Machine. Oh yeah, I have been told that it is actually pronounced with a hard 'k' sound, like 'Ex Ma-kina'. Anyway, Domhnall plays a computer programmer that works for Oscar, the CEO and creator of the world's largest search engine, Blue Book-it handles about 94% of the world's search traffic. Domhnall wins a company contest to spend a week at Oscar's remote, high security compound, where Oscar does all of his remote, high security work-you can only get there by helicopter. Domhnall is as giddy as a kid in a candy store when he is selected but when he arrives, he has to sign a waver that forbids him from talking about anything seen or worked on at the compound. He is still giddy, but just a little less so. Oscar then informs him that he has created A.I.-artificial intelligence-and wants Domhnall to help evaluate or test it. Alicia plays the A.I. and she looks part human-face, hands and feet-and part machine-all the rest. Domhnall & Alicia have sessions together, while Oscar watches from cameras but pretty soon, there are blackouts that occur under mysterious circumstances-Oscar can not see or hear them when they occur and during the blackouts, Alicia will tell Domhnall secrets that she does not want Oscar to hear. That is when it gets tricky; is Oscar behind the blackouts and he can still see & hear them? Or is Alicia trying to trick Domhnall into believing something false about Oscar? Or is Domhnall trying to trick everybody into believing it's Halloween? Well, not so much on that last one but you catch my drift. Lots of questions-and they are all answered. It's rated "R" for language, violence and sexual situations-including nudity-and has a running time of 1 hour & 50 minutes. This one will really make you think. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would buy it on DVD.