Cautionary Tale
Friday night’s movie fix, courtesy of Netflix by mail, was a good one, an old theme updated to modern technology, cerebral as sci-fi gets. Ex Machina (2014) is the story of a young man who wins a company contest to assist the owner in an AI project at a remote location. He is to test a female robot by interaction to see whether or not it truly has its own consciousness or is simply mimicking it. The four prominent members of the cast are excellent: Ireland’s Domhall Gleeson, son of Brendan, as the recruit; Sweden’s Alicia Vikander as the bot; Guatemala’s Oscar Isaac as the genius; and Japan’s Sonoya Mizuno as the housemaid/droid. Will it end badly? I will not play the spoiler. This film would likely bore those who prefer action. It is dialogue and character driven. It was director Alex Garland’s first stint at the helm after beginning his career writing novels and screenplays. It is a stunning debut. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. I don’t know why it took me so long to get to it. Gleeson is an alum of the Harry Potter and most recent Star Wars franchises. Vikander received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress a year later for her performance in The Danish Girl (2015). Isaac has 58 titles under his name at IMDb and is also a Star Wars vet. He won a Golden Globe for his performance in the Coen brothers’ Inside LLewyn Davis (2013). Mizuno was in the cast of Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and two mini-series. As one would expect, Ex Machina’s effects are first rate. Made on a budget of $15 million, it returned almost $37 million worldwide and probably a whole lot more in DVD sales, rentals and streaming. 479,000+ users at IMDb have rated it, forging to a consensus of 7.7 on a scale of ten. The violence is minimal. There is profanity and nudity. The title is shortened from the Latin Deus ex machina, defined as a “plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence,” literally as “God from the Machine.” Here are Isaac, Vikander & Gleeson:
Love it when a dismal weather forecast is completely wrong. There was plenty of sunshine at today’s session of the floating book shop. My thanks to the gentleman who donated about eight books in Russian, and to the kind folks who made purchases. Here’s what sold: a Robert B. Parker mystery featuring the iconic Spenser, The Grey Beginning by Barbara Michaels, Bad Girlz by Shannon Holmes, The Fine Art Of Erotic Talk: How To Entice, Excite, And Enchant Your Lover With Words by Bonnie Gabriel, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays by Albert Camus, a hardcover thriller in Russian, and ¿Dónde Está Shmata? a kids book by Tana Ross, illustrated by Elisa Kleven.
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