Ex Machina is a gorgeously arresting and thought-provoking film that will stay on your mind long after you leave the theater!

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2015)

Ex Machina- R, 2015 ➡️ Never have I been so thoroughly entertained and intellectually stimulated at the precise same time while watching a film as I was with Alex Garland's (28 days later) directorial debut, Ex Machina! Here, we are introduced to Caleb Smith (Domnhall Gleeson) who has just won a contest that will allow him to take an enigmatic retreat to the secluded home of a billionaire tech genius named Nathan (Oscar Isaac) . He is the equivalent to the creators of Google or Apple in our world and plans to have Caleb take part in a Turing test to discern if he has in fact created an artificially intelligent being. From here, Garland's excellent writing took me on a mind-trip that I found myself profoundly wanting more of after the film's curtain call. I never once lost interest in the film because all the elements of Ex Machina add to an incredibly taut and engaging film. The score creates a mood that heightens the terrible actions done by a character in the film while also executing a sense of delicacy when the film needed it. The acting is spectacular with Oscar Isaac coming off as a hulking, but lovable, oaf (even though he's a genius) who convinces us to like him even when his actions are despicable. Domnhall Gleeson is the emotionally layered lens through which the audience views the A.I., Ava, played brilliantly by Alicia Vikander (She's a star). This is very much a small Sci-Fi film that has little-to-no special effects. It takes jabs at big ideas and questions which, through excellent writing, can have the audience asking themselves what it means to be a human and how we know if something is conscious or not. It wrestled with the question of if we are born with specific tastes and beliefs or if our environment has unknowingly influenced us. The audience is left to choose whether or not artificial intelligence has been achieved at the end of the film with an ending that will leave any casual film fan breathless. Ex Machina is a gorgeously arresting and thought-provoking film that will stay on your mind long after you leave the theater! It gets a #9/10 #ExMachina