Dir - Alex Garland
Overall: GOOD
Visually impressive with post-production special effects that bypass cartoony motion capture, Ex Machina is an A.I. thriller that is both chilling and sophisticated. A promising directorial debut for screenwriter Alex Garland, it fuses together various psychological thought experiments such as the Turing test, the Chinese room argument, and the knowledge argument while going beyond merely examining when artificial intelligence achieves consciousness, probing further into the sexual objectification of mechanical beings who are made and studied by male scientists. "Why assign a sex to a robot?" is a question specifically asked by Domhnall Gleeson's protagonist to Oscar Isaac's billionaire CEO who has created Alicia Vikander's fully sentient android, and this is a question that proves to have dark undercurrents as things progress. While Gleeson's character may prove to be the biggest pawn in such a scheme, he is also not without his moral conundrums and insecurities, both of which are taken advantage of by both Isaac and Vikander. Wisely, Garland's script portrays everyone as both a victim and a perpetrator to some extent, which showcases the exploitative properties of such a technological undertaking in a male-driven industry as well as the dangers of artificial intelligence takeover, (which Isaac proclaims to be an inevitability and therefor gives him a free license to indulge in it).
Dir - Carter Smith
Overall: MEH
The first of Carter Smiths' full-length works to explore gay themes, Jamie Marks Is Dead maintains a compelling, somber atmosphere, yet its story is too eccentric to emotionally connect. An adaptation of Christopher Barzak's 2007 novel One for Sorrow, it concerns a closeted high school boy who was severely bullied, only to recently return from the grave in order to haunt both his unrequited crush and said crush's girlfriend. This is presented matter-of-factly, which makes the way that some characters easily go along with such supernatural elements seem quirky against the sincere presentation. This presentation is entirely void of humor and heartbreaking by film's end, but it does cast a compelling spell despite the murky storytelling. Unfortunately, the side-arc concerning Monaghan's family life and his antagonistic relationship with his friend and the recent friend of his mother who also put her in a wheelchair after a car accident are both unnecessary and completely abandoned by the third act. The performances are well-suited to the bleak material though, with both Cameron Monaghan and Noah Silver building a strange bond which says as much about the heartache of one-sided love as it does the acceptance of loss.
Dir - Ryan Gosling
Overall: MEH
For his to-date only written and directed work Lost River, Ryan Gosling has concocted a mess of an art film, yet its pretentiousness at least makes it interesting if not successful. A dark fairy tale set in a dilapidated Detroit where only a small handful of people seem to live and law enforcement officials have apparently gone extinct, the movie recalls the neon nihilism of Nicolas Refn, the suburbia underbelly and incoherence of David Lynch, and the floating poetic nature of Terrence Malick, fusing them together in a busy and confused manner that is visually captivating yet burdened by its own grandiosity. Gosling deserves points for going big on his debut and trying to make a midnight movie with gravitas, but the subject matter is as unfocused as it is mean-spirited. In this world, despair rules the day where the only people left are either the ones at rock bottom or the ones who take despicable advantage of those who are at rock bottom. Still, it is difficult to take your eyes off of the proceedings or tune out of them, with riveting cinematography from Benoît Debie and a top-tier cast that gets to explore a nebulous landscape full of unsettling quirkiness and dour circumstances. It is a shame that there does not appear to be any payoff within such an ordeal, but the film's boldness is something to appreciate at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment