AI as a Greek Tragedy

Rating: 8/10 (13 May 2015)

Who would have thought that the Turing Test could be combined with nudity?
This film fulfills the unities of time and place extolled by Aristotle: a small cast, in a small place, over a small interval of time, work to an inevitable but unforeseen conclusion. The intensity is great, although there is no catharsis (for me anyway).
The reason I give Ex Machina 8 points instead of 10 is that it's not hard to find plot holes. Early in the movie Caleb, the winner of a contest among employees of Blue Book, a huge search-engine company, is flown to the isolated estate of Nathan, the owner of the company. Its isolation contributes to the classical unity I described earlier, but is hard to justify economically. (Who cleans all the glass the house seems to consist of? Robots? Morlocks? If so, they're offstage.)
The cast is great, especially Oscar Isaac as Nathan, who seems to radiate malicious intent. The special effects are terrific but never distract from the human (?) interactions among the players.