Ex Machina (2015)

[FTF]

^ No

 

Also, I watched this again over the weekend (third time) and it's still my favorite movie of the year.  Great film.

[Blankments]

Ex Machina is an intriguing sci-fi with three powerful performances in it. Gleeson is merely good, but that's fine since he has the least interesting character to work with. Oscar Isaac is pretty great, as his character is a real creep and he can sell that despite the dancing. Alicia Vikander is a true breakout in this, being magnetically seductive and the obvious centerpiece of the movie. The direction is just okay, and the writing is pretty good except for the last fifteen minutes. If this had a better last fifteen minutes, it'd be significantly higher. What an awful ending. It's rare that an ending totally ruins a movie for me, but Ex Machina did it. Shame, considering the first hour and fifteen minutes are some of the most enticing science-fiction on film in the past few years. Disappointing overall, Ex Machina is all set-up with extremely poor pay-off. C+

[Jake Gittes]

What's bad about the ending?

[Blankments]

I just felt it was really contrived from when Oscar Isaac is like "Hell, no, I'm not getting drunk" onward. First he monologues the big speech to Gleeson and is like

 

Isaac: "You fool, I hid a camera there the whole time, so I know your whole plan."

Gleeson: "Well, I knew you hid the camera; that's why I did it earlier a day earlier"

Isaac: "What???"

 

Gleeson, why did you tell Ava then when Isaac was watching besides the whole "trigger a power outage at 10pm and leave"? And then Isaac knocks Gleeson out with literally a single punch. Ava relies on the loyalty of Kyoko, even though Ava and Kyoko literally have a single scene of interaction, and Kyoko does save the day.

 

Finally, Ava leaves Gleeson to be framed for the murder of Oscar Isaac, despite he helped her out, so Isaac was right all along. I understand it was a bit of a point that Ava had to be totally free, even of Gleeson, but it just didn't work for me at all, especially where the film had seemed to be building since before then. The only part of the ending I liked was Ava becoming "human," because Vikander sold it perfectly. But Gleeson didn't deserve that ending, at least from what the film had given us.

 

It just didn't work for me at all, which is a shame because I loved this movie from about the 20 minute mark (beginning was slow) to right before the last twenty minutes.

[Jake Gittes]

As an old wise man once said in a different movie, deserve's got nothing to do with it. Neither does the need to have him framed for Isaac's murder. She didn't need him anymore, so she left him, and he really should have known better. 

 

[CoolioD1]

Gleeson was an asshole too. they're both like two sides of the shitty ways men treat women as objects. I'm astounded how many people don't get that.

[4815162342]

1 hour ago, CoolioD1 said:

Gleeson was an asshole too. they're both like two sides of the shitty ways men treat women as objects. I'm astounded how many people don't get that.

 

Yeah, Gleeson definitely does represent men who think women need to be protected and have someone take care of their interests for them and believe that this entitles them to the woman's love and affection and loyalty.

 

Now Gleeson's other flaw is that he doesn't realize this. He thinks he is just being nice and that Ava feels for him what he believes he feels for her. He's considering what he thinks she will do based on what he thinks she should do, and he doesn't even know it. So you do feel bad for his character to a degree since he's somewhat oblivious to his own faults.

Edited January 3, 2016 by 4815162342

[rahvinn87]

1 hour ago, Jake Gittes said:

As an old wise man once said in a different movie, deserve's got nothing to do with it. Neither does the need to have him framed for Isaac's murder. She didn't need him anymore, so she left him, and he really should have known better. 

 

 

Precisely. Feeling that Gleeson's character deserved better, and not liking the way things turned out for him, is not an objective criticism of the movie. If anything it is a strength because clearly the film manages to make one feel empathy for him.

 

I personally had no problem with the ending and the idea that it could ruin the movie for someone is incomprehensible to me.

[Blankments]

Who said I was objectively critiquing the film? I just said I didn't like it, not that it was a poorly made film. I also knew I was gonna get "deserves nothing to do with it" lol.

 

Anyway, after sleeping on it, I'm a bit more okay with Gleeson being left behind, if just because I realize he's gonna be okay seeing how Kyoko/Ava killed Isaac while the security cameras were still on, even if I still don't think there's enough in Ava's character that we see that makes her willing to leave Gleeson behind.

 

That said, I still think the ending is shit for the contrivances it uses to get there.

[4815162342]

12 minutes ago, Blan Solo said:

even if I still don't think there's enough in Ava's character that we see that makes her willing to leave Gleeson behind.

 

That's the whole point. Almost all of the film is from Gleeson's perspective, so we only see what Ava allows him to see about her. She was basically lying and manipulating the whole time once she realized Gleeson was drawn to her.

[Jake Gittes]

Yeah, Ava fooled you just like she did Gleeson.

[Blankments]

Then I don't particularly like the way the film is constructed since based on what we see of both her interaction with Gleeson and Isaac, her choice for Gleeson at the end makes no sense to me. But regardless, that's nothing compared to the bullshit stuff that happens between Isaac and Gleeson before it all goes down