Thought provoking movie

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2015)

I must confess that I didn't have especially high expectations of Ex Machina. Based on the trailers it looked a fairly run of the mill sci-fi movie. I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised by the movie. It proved to be far more thought provoking than most movies.
The story really evolves around three central characters. Nathan has built Ava who is a robot with artificial intelligence. Caleb is recruited to see if Ava passes the Turing test of Artificial Intelligence. The test is to see if the behaviour of Ava is indistinguishable to the behaviour of a human being. Exactly how you can pass this test is one of the central themes of the film. One of the scenes in particular is brilliantly done and really gets you thinking.
Unlike many films Ex Machina doesn't cop out half way through and pander to Hollywood executives, so I found it gripping all the way through. All the actors can be proud of the input and it is thoroughly enjoyable movie.