I think I can speak for the average, majority of Americans when I say...thank God that November 8th is almost here, and will soon be behind us....hopefully. Just as usual there isn't really a lot of good news being reported in the world, but I'm sure peppered throughout the world that there are decent, lovely people who are keeping the world from becoming totally dark. God bless them, and hopefully their numbers grow rather than shrink. So recently I watched this science fiction film Ex Machina after having it on my list for quite some time. When I first noted its release, I didn't feel that enthused about seeing it, and after watching the film now I know why I wasn't. It was extraordinarily boring for basically all 1hr and 50min of the running time. For some odd reason it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and who knows why as the writing wasn't that good. The story is basically this employee of a technology company goes and stays with the CEO of the company for a week to work and test on this robot to improve her artificial intelligence capabilities to make her more believably human. However, he begins to develop emotional feelings for the robotic woman, who is more complex than she lets on, or the CEO who designed her. The cast for this film was top notch, although their characters were rather boring, and not fleshed out quite well. Domhnall Gleeson plays the lead character, Caleb, who is the employee that assists the CEO. I thought he was completely miscast, and that actually may have been one of the death knells to the film for me. There were brief moments when his performance of the character was quite remarkable, but most of the time it was dull; also, his character was rather bland to begin with anyways, so he didn't have much to work with. Oscar Isaac played the CEO, Nathan, who was also a rather bland character and although the performance was better than Gleeson's, it wasn't better by much unfortunately. I found his character not compelling at all, or likable to any degree, yet his character had a lot to work with. Alicia Vikander played the robotic Ava, and she was perhaps the best, most compelling, and most interesting character in the film, but all of this wasn't effectively utilized at all in the writing or during many of the scenes. She had the best performance in my opinion, but once again she wasn't allowed to blossom that much. The film was pretty much only those three characters, so that might have something to do with why I disliked it so.
Alex Garland, who wrote and directed the film did a rather atrocious job putting all the pieces of the film together, but the concept behind the film was truly remarkable; he just didn't deliver. The editing also fell through really poorly I thought, and may have been another gigantic reason why the film was so boring; the pacing was very slow and choppy. The music was blandly ethereal with no good emotional anchors to help you fall in love with the characters, or feel what they were feeling. Perhaps the one good thing from the film was the cinematography by Rob Hardy; it was intimate, yet dynamic and edgy at times. The visual effects won an Oscar, which were good, I just don't think that they were that good. All in all, if you never watch it then you aren't missing a thing. I definitely do not recommend this film, even as a film experience unless you want to know what not to do if you make your own science fiction story or film. Well, even though 2017 isn't here yet, I hope that things get better after it starts out as one of the determining factors to a degree is just around the corner. May the Force be with us all.Ex Machina interview
Ex Machina scene
The Masque of the Red Death(something for Halloween)
