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Rating: 10/10 (11 March 2015)

Alex Garland, a name that many will be familiar with but won't properly know, is a cult writer who has a flair for appealing to Danny Boyle (He wrote both the books which The Beach and 28 Days Later were based on, he also wrote the screenplay for Dredd) and has decided to take his talents a step further and direct as well, his debut? Ex Machina, So I suppose the reel question is can Ex Machina prove that androids dream of electric sheep? Ex Machina is a film that I'm sure will pass under many peoples radar, no matter how many buses it's written on or billboards with that one sterile face looking back at you, most of you will miss this, and that's a shame because it's a masterpiece, and I don't say that lightly. Ex Machina is a film that in 10 years' time people will look back and see it for the brilliance it so clearly is.
I think there is something to be said about a single human being both the writer and the director for a movie, it gives the film a purer feel, You don't get the notion that someone has changed a meaning, what you see on the screen is what the original source wanted you to feel, and in Ex Machina what Alex Garland wants you to feel is discomfort.
You could almost draw a line under the film at a certain point where it abandons normality and becomes the film it deserves to be. However for the entire movie there is an underlying and brooding power to it. Then there is a single scene in the middle of the film and everything changes. From that moment on Ex Machina is nothing short of a white knuckle rid into the human psyche. Then the ending happens and it leaves you open mouthed and in tatters.
Alex Garland must know what he's created in Ex Machina because the film holds itself with such grace and serenity, and it is so beautifully shot that I could barely look at some sequences for the shear perfection of it all. "The Brain" is a stand out moment of this and of cinema.
Ex Machina is far too much to take in on a single viewing, because it has so much to say, the film comments on quite literally everything but most largely the internet and our collective paranoia towards it all. Garland speaks with such elegance and simple truth that it's hard not to be challenged by it.
What Garland has successfully created is two dichotomous characters in Cleb and Nathan; Cleb being lost and confused while learning every moment more about his situation and Nathan having complete control over every aspect of what is produced and is calm and irrational. From the outset there is something untrustworthy about Nathan, the creator of the machine known as Ava. If you consider it for even a moment this is also the relationship between Director and Audience, the director controls everything that is seen and tries to use it to produce a desired effect while us the audience can only collect information and react accordingly.
Both roles are masterfully played by Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson. However, all of their talent becomes mute when Alicia Vikander is on screen. She steals the picture as Ava. It's in her movement more than her speech which makes Vikander's performance so incredible, they are somehow natural yet mechanical at the same time. It is impossible for me to explain.
Ex Machina is a movie like no other before it, people will ignore it because of the subject matter but I beg you, ignore what your mind tells you and seek out this film, because in the future it will be looked at in the same light as Blade Runner. To call it anything short of an instant classic is flat out wrong.