Because: It's one of the great sci-fi films. A fully realised examination of the limits of control; of technology, of sex, of how the pleasures of the flesh are being manipulated for a digital age; of lust, of loneliness, of genius, of jealousy. It's Kubrickian, it's Promethean, it's a masterpiece. A film with only four real characters, Alex Garland's Ex Machina is a chilling, austere picture, played out entirely in the confines of a maverick inventor's luxury remote kingdom. It's a claustrophobic masterwork, a picture which builds and builds to its devastating ending by way of mythology and art, technology and sex. A multi-facted film, Ex Machina is many great things at once: part film noir, part straight-up sci-fi, part game of sexual politicking. It takes the classic idea of a genius who creates life (or at least something akin to it) and turns it into a study of millennial hubris, using sex as a motivation. Here the genius is not a geek, but a frat-bro, a beer-swilling asshole who invents the greatest thing "in the history of the Gods" so he can essentially f*ck it. It's a distillation of modern society's technology-plus-sex complex, a power play steeped in the traditional iconography of science fiction. Expertly designed and performed, Ex Machina is a disquieting film, all immaculate surfaces and lonely corridors and advanced but serious gadgetry. There's an unease that grows, a tension that finally snaps. But it's entertaining, too, even touching in parts, especially so when Ava (Alicia Vikander), the AI Nathan (Oscar Isaac) has created, tries on a dress or contemplates Caleb's (Domhnall Gleeson) wondrous face. Throughout it all, though, sounds a sorrowful lament, an eerie atonal noise which will end life as a scream. It is saying watch out, we can build anything we want, but what we want isn't advancement, it's something baser, something more primal, something deeply ingrained in Man. It is saying that we want sex and we want it now and we no longer care how manufactures itself. Which other great 2015 movies will become known as classics in years to come? Shout out your favourites down in the comments.
