From A Most Violent Year to Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac managed to show off an embarrassing amount of range in early 2015, switching from Year's super-focused Abel to a businessman of a different kind, the hyper-intelligent, megalomaniacal Nathan in Ex Machina. His co-star Alicia Vikander, however, is the one to give the iconic performance in the latter. Playing an A.I. designed to outsmart the Turing Test, Vikander has in Ex Machina to pretend she's a robot that's trying to be human that also uses her innate robot-ness to - SPOILER ALERT - elicit pity in order to escape from the facility she's lived in all her young life. It's a hugely demanding role, then, but Vikander makes the character something unique, a femme fatale with wires. Vikander has mainly been popping up in period pieces lately, and there is talk - muted talk, but talk all the same - of her getting some awards recognition down the line for her work in Testament Of Youth. Ex Machina is the kind of genre film that would never win any major awards, but if there's one performance Vikander truly deserves Oscar attention for, it's for sultry, deadly Ava.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
