Film Brief: 'Ex Machina'

Title: 'Ex Machina'
Writer and Director: Alex Garland

In Brief:
This one was watched knowing next-to-nothing about it and is perhaps best watched that way.  For at least half of it, it comes across as Black Mirror-lite with less of the biting satire but things then do turn nasty.  But whereas Black Mirror tended to be conceptually nasty (the conclusion of 2014's Christmas special being perhaps most delicious example and this film's ending is admittedly reminiscent of it), this relies more on being lurid (although a scene of self-harm does recall a chip-removal scene from 2011's The Entire History Of You).  Plus, there is significantly more nudity than is likely to be found in any future BM episode.  You may not miss much by waiting for a home-viewing release but it does have good key performances.  Oscar Isaac is consistently untrustworthy and Domhnall Gleeson is a good young vulernable Everyman (it makes for a good, albeit adult, opening cinematic bookend to be finished at the end of the year with their appearances in December's Star Wars: The Force Awakens).  A bewigged Alicia Vikander recalls what John Green would call a "mid-2000s Natalie Portman".