Not enough story for a feature length film

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2015)

I'll start this off by saying that I think this story could be put to screen with excellence if it was an episode of a TV show or a short film. But in the 108 minute runtime of Ex Machina, the events of the film became so repetitive that it seemed like the movie was on a 20 minute cycle. Our main character would wake up, talk to Nathan, talk to Ava, talk to Nathan some more over dinner, and at night discover something strange. This repetition made the movie very slowly paced and easily predictable. I found myself intrigued by the intelligent conversations between our main character and Ava, but none of the ideas they discussed felt new. And since 75% of the movie is their conversations, I was never enthralled or invested in the movie enough to feel any suspense or awe in the events in the final act of the movie (which I saw coming from a mile away). I think I could have found more enjoyment in the movie if there hadn't been enormous hype built up to it. Some have been comparing it to Kubrick and Spielberg, which unfortunately leads me to giving this movie the label of "overrated".