Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Ex Machina Blu-ray Movie Review

Open the pod bay doors, Caleb.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 8, 2015

There’s no deus in Ex Machina, unless you count the seemingly semi-divine intelligence of Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), a character who might be thought of as something of a cross between internet and computing entrepreneurs like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and/or Bill Gates. Bateman is described as a “Mozart” of coding, having invented a search engine called Blue Book when he was still a teen, a search engine which in this film’s universe has come to handle well over 90% of internet snark hunts (take that, Google). You might throw a soupçon of Howard Hughes into this character’s psychological makeup, for Bateman has largely withdrawn from the world to an isolated high tech manse out in the wild which is accessible only by helicopter. As Ex Machina opens, a Blue Book employee named Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is gobsmacked to find out he’s won an in house lottery which offers a first prize of going to Bateman’s home and staying with him for a week. That sets up an intellectual cage match of sorts, for when Caleb gets to the house, he finds that he’s not there for a mere vacation, but has instead been selected to administer a so-called Turing Test on a new prototype artificial intelligence program Bateman has been working on. This is not some “gray box” software that Caleb must determine is self aware, but instead a fully functioning robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), a “machine” whom Bateman keeps locked away in a glass cage until he has “proof” that she (or it, as the case may be) has achieved full consciousness and is not simply mimicking human thought processes through complicated algorithms.

After quickly detailing the lottery win, the film segues immediately to Caleb’s helicopter ride into Nathan’s fortress of solitude. When Caleb asks when they’ll be getting to Nathan’s estate, the helicopter pilot laughs and informs him they’ve been flying over Nathan’s estate for two hours, an indicator of just how isolated Nathan’s home is. The helicopter pilot isn’t even allowed to get very close to Nathan’s actual domicile, instead dropping Caleb off in a field and telling the excited but anxious kid to “follow the river.” The waterway does indeed finally reveal a home seemingly literally tucked into the verdant hillside. When Caleb pauses for a moment outside, a robotic voice suddenly asks if he is Caleb, at which point it gives him instructions on how to proceed and gain access to the home. After his “ID key card” is issued (in a somewhat humorous moment), Caleb enters the rather luxe house, which does indeed seem to be one with the surrounding countryside, to the point that some rooms actually have walls made of the mountainous rocks surrounding the home.

Caleb finds Nathan as the entrepreneur is completing a workout, evidently one of his preferred methods to overcome a hangover. In one of the film’s more curious formulations, Nathan is a rather hard drinking type, something which would seem to be at odds with his rather outsized achievements, especially considering the fact that his AI exploits are at least relatively recent. Nathan pretty much forces Caleb to sign a non disclosure agreement, after which Nathan discloses that he wants Caleb to conduct a Turing Test on Ava. There then ensues several “sessions” between Caleb and Ava (each with an interstitial title card just for good measure) where the young coder attempts to ferret out whether or not Ava is truly conscious. A recurrent power supply issue afflicts a complex series of closed circuit cameras Nathan has had installed around his labyrinthine facility, and during one of these “technical breakdowns,” Ava, aware that she’s finally not being monitored, quickly whispers to Caleb that Nathan can’t be trusted. And so seeds of dysfunction and even paranoia are sown which will then spill out as a somewhat hackneyed plot then unfolds.

Writer-director Alex Garland is helming for the first time here, after having written 28 Days Later, Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later, Never Let Me Go and Dredd 3D. Though he only occasionally employs patently artificial symmetry in his framings, there’s nonetheless a Kubrickian quality to Garland’s direction here, especially with regard to a somewhat languid pace and a tendency to favor long (or at least longish) takes, sometimes with little to no dialogue. Several scenes have dialogue playing in the background while Nathan's mute housekeeper Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) is front and center, evidently taking it all in, despite Nathan's insistence that she doesn't understand a word of English. (The subplot involving Kyoko is not especially subtle, and any "surprise" about this character's genesis will probably be obvious to anyone who's ever seen "The Lateness of the Hour" from The Twilight Zone: Season 2.) Frequent static looking interstitials of the rather awesome looking countryside reinforce the Kubrickian ambience, while also drawing none too subtle parallels between Nathan playing God in his underground laboratory while an actual creative Divinity is working wonders outside.

The film’s screenplay is intentionally dense, but it also tends to simply state conundra rather than trying to “solve” logical problems like what if anything a Turing Test can accomplish. Within a context of a kind of stoner (or beer guzzling) buddy tête–à–tête, Garland has Caleb and Nathan gloss over any number of philosophical and even existential phenomena, giving things a pseudo-intellectual patina that just may not bear really fulsome scrutiny. That said, the film, while somewhat brooding in a Kubrickian way, ticks off its plot points resolutely and firmly, with Caleb slowly becoming aware that he’s at best a pawn in a chess game he doesn’t fully understand, and at worst a puppet with several sets of hands (human and robotic) pulling the strings.

As silly as this may sound, Ex Machina ends up playing out as a somewhat more high minded prequel to fare like Eve of Destruction, with a self aware android simply wanting people to stop fencing her in. The film’s denouement in fact seems to suggest that Ava’s adventures are only just beginning. Strong on tone and mood if at times slightly lacking in the logic department, Ex Machina proves that human intelligence, at least in the form of Alex Garland, is alive and kicking.

Ex Machina Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ex Machina is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. According to the IMDb, a variety of digital cameras were utilized to capture the film, including a GoPro Hero 3, and two Sony CineAlta models, the F65 and the PMW-F55. While parts of the film, especially some of the exteriors, have a slightly gauzy feel, the bulk of this film is nicely sharp and precise looking, with excellent fine detail revealing textures like the rubbery ribbed body assembly of Ava, or the occasionally scraggly beard hairs on Nathan's face. While black levels are superb, shadow detail is occasionally fairly murky looking, especially in some of the dimly lit scenes with Caleb tooling about his room or other nooks and crannies of Nathan's lair. The film has not really been aggressively color graded in any major way, and so the palette is refreshingly accurate looking, if at times slightly (and no doubt intentionally) on the drab side. A couple of brief moments, including the lunatic dance sequence with Nathan and Kyoko, are shrouded in odd lighting schemes (in this case, red), choices which tend to diminish detail appreciably. There are several instances of very light noise dusting the image in some of the less well lit scenes.

Ex Machina Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Take that, Dolby Atmos. DTS has stepped up to plate with so-called "object based surround sound", offering its new DTS X approach for the first time on Blu-ray with Ex Machina. My receiver is not new enough to decode DTS X, and so defaulted to the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 core track, but the results were spectacular in any case. This might seem to be a somewhat odd choice for such a supposedly game changing surround sound scheme, for Ex Machina is rather reserved most of the time from a sound design standpoint. While a low frequency synth rumble starts the film off with an appropriately subliminal feeling of dread and ominous foreboding, the film delivers its first real jolt of sonic activity when the helicopter whisking Caleb away to Nathan's estate flies overhead. Clear panning from rear to front is in evidence, with some really fulsome low end. Several times throughout the film, what almost amount to "startle" effects dot the premises, oftentimes associated with the power outages that prove to be a salient plot point. That said, these abrupt moments of sonic activity are the exception rather than the rule, and for the most part, this soundtrack achieves most of its immersive qualities courtesy of the pulsing score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury. A couple of outdoor sequences offer good spaciousness and well placed ambient environmental effects, but for the most part the film plays out in the claustrophobic confines of Nathan's home and lab, and while the mix doesn't offer "in your face" (and/or ears) nonstop aggressive tactics, it achieves a fine balance of moodiness and occasional wallops of sonic activity, all adding up to a really remarkable listening experience.

Ex Machina Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Through the Looking Glass: Making Ex Machina (1080p; 39:59) features some excellent interviews which get into some of the philosophical as well as the technical issues confronting the filmmakers.


• SXSW Q&A with Cast and Crew (1080p; 1:00:57) is a really fun and at times in depth conversation from March 2015 featuring Alex Garland, Oscar Isaac, Rob Hardy, Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury.


• Behind the Scenes Vignettes (1080p; 28:40) include:

  Making Ava

  Nathan's World

  New Consciousness

  Becoming Ava

  Director

  Cast

  Meet Ava

  God Complex

  Music

Ex Machina Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ex Machina posits some interesting if ultimately fairly trite ideas about machines achieving true consciousness. What perhaps works better than any high falutin' philosophizing in this film is the incipient paranoia which slowly takes hold of Caleb as he attempts to complete his Turing Test. Performances are uniformly excellent here, and Alex Garland proves he's a directorial talent to watch. Technical merits are generally excellent, the supplemental package is decent, and Ex Machina comes Highly recommended.