Film Review—Ex Machina

Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a rare opportunity of a one week session at the home of Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the reclusive internet billionaire who founded Blue Book, the company for which he works. Once he arrives he realizes just how isolated the home is, with the only other person being Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), Nathan’s maid who does not speak English. Nathan explains the need for this seclusion: he has been working on an AI humanoid called Ava (Alicia Vikander) and needs Caleb to perform a Turing Test (where an AI must convince its tester that it is human). Over the course of his chats with Ava she expresses her longings and desires, as well as revealing dark secrets about Nathan. Caleb’s thoughts become blurred by the effectiveness of Ava and the realisation that Nathan is not completely honest with him, leading to decisions that have unexpected consequences.

Vikander’s performance leads the film in style and content. Being a skeletal machine with the exception of her face, the expectation is for something cold and calculating, but instead the humanity seeps through the small window. The film has a stripped back yet highly polished design, laying bare the actors and the writing, leaving no room to hide. Added to this is the film's working within neo-noir conventions, with Ava the alluring femme fatale to Caleb’s sole detective, and Nathan as the corrupt, untrustworthy authority that holds all the cards. As each hand is dealt and each truth revealed another turn diminishes those assertions until the unexpected results take their toll. All the ideas swirling around, from the nature of intelligence to role of inspiration, longing, desire and the deliberateness of actions, work within this thriller framework.

Suspenseful and highly intelligent, Ex Machina makes the most of its minimalist setting with ever expansive ideas. 

Andreas

Film Review—Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

By day Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) works a menial administrative job. Her mother is over bearing, wanting her to move back home until she finds a man and has children, and constantly questions her about promotions. At work, her colleagues are all younger than her with perfect figures and bright carers ahead of them, and her former school mates are living the life her mother dreams for her. But by night Kumiko obsessively studies an old scratched video cassette of Fargo, wanting to pinpoint the exact place where Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) buried the briefcase of money. One day, after having enough of her oppressive life, Kumiko goes on an all or nothing trip to Minnesota to hunt for her treasure.

The links with Fargo are plentiful. From the amped up personalities of the characters to the bleak white of the Minnesota snow. The other worldly Minnesota gives the second half of the film a dream like quality in comparison to the stifling, tinted Japan. The cinematography alone tells the story, shifting from Kuniko’s dingy home life to the expanse of the wilderness until she becomes a lone ghoul searching the forest until her final, blisteringly white triumph. The interplay with Fargo, a film where the intersection of dreams has fatal results, is appropriately at the heart of Kumiko’s obsession and quest. The treasure, the fictional prize that for Kumiko must, at all cost, be real and found, becomes an object worth risking everything for, and in the end, it is only by sacrificing her all that the dream has any chance of coming true.

Disparaging and beautiful, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter reveals the treasure of dreams and the dangers of following them.
Andreas