(Student writing) Review of Ex Machina by Matthieu

Matthieu

This was a very ambitious piece of writing with many ideas. I've changed the text a lot, to express and expand these ideas. I want to demonstrate how they would be expressed in fuller language. I've made some gaps in the text for you to think about.

Thanks for all the effort you put in

G

Ex Machina

This Alex Guarland movie is the story of Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a scientist ____ has created a famous search engine which is not named "google", ___ which is obviously meant to be google. Nathan works alone on Artificial Intelligence in an isolated research center. He wants to see if the A.I. ___ overcome the human being / A.I. threshold (The so-called Turing threshold). With this _______, Nathan organizes a phoney game as a pretext to invite the second character (and good guy) of the movie, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson). Caleb is required for one week to interview Nathan's cyborg, Ava. Caleb starts to interview Ava each day. He is supposed to determine _____ Ava's awareness qualifies ___ human. Obviously, everything will not happen according to ____.

Alex Guerland is famous mostly as a writer. He ___ written many best-selling  books, some of ____  have  been made into Hollywood films  such as The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Guillaume Cannet, and 28 Days Later,  starring Cillian Murphy. _____ working on these movies, Guerland met director/screen writer/producer Danny Boyle, and started work on the Ex Machina screenplay. Ex Machina is his debut as a film maker.

 Visually, this movie is highly aestheticised. But while many first-time film-makers in the sci-fi genre _______ the aesthetic aspect, not this one. The landscape and the bunker / research center are classy and sober at the same time which is lulls the spectator into a false _____ of comfort and security. Nevertheless, _____ is an underlying sense of claustrophobia. The ___ the space is shot makes it a fourth character of the movie. This is not sci-fi fantasy, but it submerges you all the ____ in an enthralling world.

In other ____ the movie reflects Guerland's literary background. In my opinion this is sometimes a little bit overdone, a bit self-conscious. That said, the script ____ give the characters more depth and individuality, especially Nathan, who is brilliant, decadent, contradictory and paradoxical. He is ___ an alcoholic and extremely healthy and athletic. The amazing performance by Oscar Isaac (Nathan) is in ___ responsible for bringing this personage so convincingly __ life.

The movie ___ have some other defects. Guerland the writer ____ many interesting points, but possibly so many ___ we are left dissatisfied. One example is  relationship between Nathan and the his androids, which crosses over ____ slavery and abuse. Here Nathan is supposed to be demonic yet he is never actually shown to cross the limits of acceptability. Everything is suggested conveniently outside the main plot, leaving Nathan unresolved as a _______. Another plot flaw is the search engine created by Nathan. We learn than Nathan has used ___ data from all around the world to create his AI - something which is currently problematic given the issue of user confidentiality - but this is not considered at all. This might ____ added some interesting layers of analysis.

In the ____, I feel that Ex Machina makes ____ progress in the AI genre. Even though it adds and exploits the sexual dimension of androids, the film doesn't add much to the work done long ago by sci-fi writers such as Huxley and Ballard. That aside, the relationships between the characters are very ______, and the dark themes of manipulation, power, and the terrifying idea of evolutionary nemesis are thought provoking. We glimpse fleeting stories, and witness Caleb's ultimate failure to ____ Ava's real motives and superior intelligence, which in turn symbolises our society's failure to address our self-destructive ______ with technology.

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