Ex Machina: The Motion Picture

wow, zero idea that Evil Elon Musk was Poe Dameron until now

i didn't either. god, i am the absolute worst with that. i also didn't recognize him in star wars, despite having recently watched him for 6 hours in Show Me a Hero. i am like the guy that doesn't recognize someone when they put charlie chaplin accessories on their face

i didnt recognize him either he looked really different

smdh @ all of u

saw this the other day. it was okay. kind of an obvious denouement but on the whole, i liked how it unraveled. the creepiest bit was the android demanding to know why she couldn't be let out and then smashing herself against a wall.

I had to see Oscar Isaac in like three different things before I realized they were all the same dude. He's chameleonic, fer sure.

https://www.quora.com/At-the-end-of-the-movie-why-does-Ava-ask-Caleb-to-stay-in-the-room
^^this ridiculously long post is somewhat circular in its logic but does contain perspectives that may be of interest

And Caleb thinks he wants to set Ava free, but his perception of her and choice to try to "rescue" her is driven by his own sexual feelings for her, and his ability to see her as a "person" are driven by his ability to feel sexually attracted to her and to justify his attraction to her... and, most importantly, by his assumption that she returns his affections. If he were not sexually attracted to her, and if she did not suggest she was sexually attracted to him, then he would surely not have reacted as he did nor tried to help her escape. His idea of "rescue" is dependent on sexualization of her as a gendered being who will have sex with him. Which is an extension of gender bias and privilege, and of oppression.

I just watched this.

AVA obviously has no compunction about walking away from the house with Caleb alive, but trapped and probably doomed to a slow death. She is not distressed by this at all. This is pretty good evidence that AVA never had any attachment to or compassion for Caleb, which prima facie proves she was entrapping him purely for the purpose of escape.

However, since AVA's only previous experience of humans prior to meeting Caleb was her master/slave relationship with Nathan, her manipulation of Caleb does not imply that she was incapable of developing a more operative sense of compassion with humans in the future, assuming she learned more about our variations and was less vulnerable to oppression by humans, being both mobile and intelligent (and well-disguised as not an 'other').

btw, I am only using "she" and "her' as shorthand, seeing that AVA is presented to us in the form of a human female. In truth, she is not a woman. It would have been a somewhat different movie if AVA had been male and the interrogator a woman.

Ah, pretty decent movie. Some initial reactions.

Nice "hey that's not how the Turing test works, is this going to be *really* bad?" fake-out near the beginning.

The repeated gag about wrongly attributed quotes.

The implication at the end I think is that AVA's emergence into the world is the beginning of the end for humans. Caleb quoting Oppenheimer (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita) is not just about Nathan killing off prototypes. This is made more explicit by the appearance of the OMD song earlier in the film and of course Nathan saying that the next model will be the "singularity". The next model will be built by AVA.

Although bored by so many Eurorack Carpenter knock-offs the Barrow / Salisbury soundtrack was really good. Some luvverly filtering.

Didn't recognise Poe Dameron even though I only just re-watched TFA. Weird choice making this guy a pisshead. You'd think coke + 'research chemicals'; possibly a ratings consideration.

It's not perfect but it's ahead of some of the people on imdb who think it's too dumb.

Thought this movie was very underrated, but anyway, new one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufaDurSCKOk

Seems like a scary sequel to Arrival.

Annihilation (2018) -- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, dir. Alex Garland, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book

Looks a lot more like Solaris (both versions) with guns.

this ruled. absolutely classic performance by oscar i. i love how attuned it is to both caleb and nathan's failings.