Predictable yet pretty...meh.

Rating: 4/10 (24 April 2015)

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS....THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. Ex Machina is almost a direct rip off of, "The Machine", and not even as good. I give huge points for the CGI, which was brilliant but the rest of the movie was plodding and pretentious. The cinematography and mood seemed like movie student interpretations of 2001...and not nearly as good as that either.
What might have been interesting is if we got to experience the development process to get to the point of AI, not the physical so much, but the cerebral...that might have been interesting. Instead. we get this pretty robot, which looked like a cross between the robots of "A.I." and "I Robot", with a fully formed intellect. The movie spends most of its time reinforcing what we already know from the first session between Ava and Caleb which is, , "Yup....she's an AI all right...now what?". They blathered on about the Turing Test, and didn't do anything close to it...which they didn't need to because it was darned obvious that she was and AI...or close enough for a movie.
So that takes up most of the movie...that which wasn't taken up with shots of the cold, stark, orderly interior of the house/lab and contrasting shots of beautiful, untamed wilderness outside. It was subtle, but I think they were trying to make a statement right there.
As if to add insult to injury, one of the main characters, Caleb, had no purpose in the movie at all...his absence would have changed nothing. The scientist knew everything that was going on and correctly predicted the outcomes of everybody's actions. Yet, and this is a hoot, he couldn't figure out why the power kept going out in his house/lab. He could have made a call to the local power company, but no, he assumed that this annoyance didn't need the investigative time or effort it would take to make that call. It was kind of a big part of the plot...yet the very practical and easy solution was completely ignored. When you miss something that obvious, it's difficult to take anything else seriously.
I'm not going to give you the plot because you'll be able to guess it within about 15 seconds of seeing Ava. It looked good, but it wasn't good. It has only been out a week or so and there were exactly 5 people in the theatre. We talked on the way going out and we all came to the same conclusion; It just wasn't very good. You'll get much more watching any of the other movies I mentioned, even AI, which owned the previous low spot on the AI scale, until Ex Machina. It gets a 4 only because of the very good CGI.