Ex-Machina review

EX-MACHINA:

A.I. MEETS...GOOD!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: **** out of 4

A24/UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Artificial Intelligence robot, Ava in Ex-Machina

            Screenwriter, Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd) makes his directional debut with the latest sci-fi thriller about artificial intelligence, Ex-Machina. But don’t worry it’s nothing like the 2001 Steven Spielberg movie, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, it’s atmospheric, dramatic, and creepy all the way through, and it focuses more on sci-fi ideas and exposition over big budget special effects, so if you’re expecting a movie like I, Robot or Terminator where machines take over the world with big explosions and gunfire, you’re not going to find it here, I’d say wait for Terminator: Genysis, but if you love sci-fi films that make you think, then listen closely.

            Set in the future, young but talented programmer for a popular search engine, Bluebook, Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson-Dredd, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain estate, home of the company’s intelligent but reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Issac-Drive, Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year). While there, Nathan explains to Caleb a special project he’s working on, creating an artificial intelligent robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander-A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina, The Fifth Estate) and that Caleb was chosen to be the human component of a Turing Test and charging with evaluating her capabilities and consciousness.

            In time Ava’s emotional intelligence proves to be more sophisticated and deceptive than Caleb and Nathan could have imagined.

            Overall, Ex-Machina is a very thought-provoking and thoroughly suspenseful sci-fi thriller. Though I wouldn’t exactly consider it a horror movie like Alien, but during its third act, things get really frightening.

            Unlike most films these days in the sci-fi genre, Ex-Machina takes its time with the suspense and drama, there’s no heavy orchestra score or electric guitars for its music, it actually has a lot of silent moments that build atmosphere that will certainly make you get the chills in your seat, it’s actually quite similar to the atmosphere from Duncan Jones’ 2009 sci-fi flick, Moon, not to mention it’s closer to Stanley Kubrick style atmosphere than A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which was meant to be his last film before his death.

            Besides the atmosphere, the chemistry between Caleb and Ava is pretty strong, throughout the film the two of them learn more about each other and they spend a lot of time together and it leads up to a couple of unexpected twists and turns during the film’s climax. Oscar Issac as a vulgar, sex-referencing, inventor is perfect casting and easily one of his best performances alongside his roles in Inside Llewyn Davis or A Most Violent Year.

            If you’re a fan of sci-fi or films in the genre that are heavy on thinking and ideas like Minority Report, Moon, or Inception, chances are you’ll find something to enjoy in Ex-Machina. Even if you’re a horror fan, I can see you enjoying this flick, the entire film plays like a horror or slasher and throughout the movie gets very disturbing and creepy, but nothing extremely heavy like what the modern slasher flicks normally do.

            Don’t be fooled by its concept or trailer, Ex-Machina is nothing like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, it’s a clever, fascinating, and chilling sci-fi thriller that's brilliantly brought to the screen, and hopefully it will lead to more directed films by Alex Garland.          

Unfriended review

UNFRIENDED:

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MEETS THE SOCIAL NETWORK!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

The mystery of Laura Barns’ suicide will be revealed in Unfriended

         We all love social networking, don’t we? From MySpace to Facebook, to Twitter to Google Plus, and of course Skype and Text Messaging, it seems like once people discovered all these social media websites everything was perfect…right? Wrong, Russian film director Levan Gabriadze and producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, 9, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) brings us a Paranormal Activity-ish horror film about the Facebook and Skype accounts of a dead person killing young teenagers off one by one like a serial killer, I am of course talking about Unfriended.

         While I wouldn’t say the film was as scary or entertaining as other recent horror films like The Cabin in the Woods, The Conjuring, or It Follows, but the creativity and concept itself is enough to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd, even if it does rip off quite a few Paranormal Activity and Saw clichés. And when the jump scares work, they work and can leave a tingle down your spine that will get even bigger the moment you get on your computer after watching the movie.

         The film follows high school students, Blaire Lily (Shelley Hennig-The Secret Circle, Teen Wolf, Ouija), Mitch Roussel (Moses Jacob Storm), Jess Felton (Renee Olstead-The Insider, End of Days, 13 Going on 30), Ken Smith (Jacob Wysocki), and Adam Sewell (Will Peltz) chatting on Skype and having a great time, everything’s fine at first. That is until an anonymous account appears in their Skype group that claims to be one of their classmates that committed suicide named Laura Barns who informs them that they are going to die if they don’t do what she tells them.

          At first they think it’s a hacker or a glitch, but they soon realize that they can’t get rid of the account so they’re stuck doing what the account demands or die.

         Laura starts playing cruel pranks and games on all of them (Now that sounds familiar!) to get revenge on them for mocking her and wishing she killed herself and Blaire and her friends have to play to win…or die trying.

         Overall, Unfriended is a very unique scary film, though not exactly scary or even that original because we’ve seen a lot of this before with Paranormal Activity and Saw. But the camera work and low budget effects and scares are clever and creative enough to entertain. The characters are very stock and horror movie stereotypes, the good girl, the boyfriend, the naughty girl, the jock, and the nerd, however they seem slightly intentional but it doesn’t scream Cabin in the Woods character satire.

         The scares are very cheap and doesn’t rely on CG spirits or monsters, which I think works for this type of film, instead it consists of sudden collapses, shootings, stabbings, and blender hand slaughtering and it’s all through the social networking cameras which I think is very clever and adds to the suspense.

         If you enjoyed movies like Paranormal Activity and Saw, and happen to spend a lot of time on social media sites, chances are you might enjoy Unfriended, although I think they should have changed the title to Paranormal Activity 5: Revenge of The Social Network, but I digress. It’s a decent movie and a great way for parents to punish their misbehaving teens without exactly grounding them from their computers, so that means it’s better as a torture device than an actual movie…how deliciously cruel.

Sakura Con 2015 Recap

Hello once again my children, 

I attended Sakura Con 2015 the following week after Emerald City ComiCon 2015 and I have a ton of pics of wonderful costumes and displays that were at the Con to share with you all. I was only there for the first couple days and I had to cut it a bit short, but nevertheless, I took a lot of pics this year and hope you all like them. 

-The Psychopath!