Review: "Ex Machina" is love letter to "AI" and "Frankenstein"

"Ex Machina" R
So far this year there have been very few movies on the radar. This one is a modern day Frankenstein story with some of the feel of 'Ghost in the Shell', 'Simone' and 'AI' (only in that there's an AI and an escape attempt) and a nod to various sexy robot movies and cartoons.

The story opens with a young hotshot programmer being accepted into the Blue Book company's contest. Blue Book in this is Facebook and Google stuck together, but also Project Blue Book, the alien fringe thing. In the film, this wacky inventor, Nathan, and drunken scientist lives in a Swedish mountain chalet, even though it is supposed to be Alaska, where he invited employee Caleb to check out his new robot AI named Ava.

The strange man lives alone with a house girl that doesn't speak, which should be a tip off that he's nuts, but then he boxes and gets drunk and claims he has all kinds of time. He also wants to be a cyber god. Yes, ego is not his problem.

Through Caleb and Ava's conversations he is trying to pass the outdated Turing test model for intelligence, which was developed before modern computers, and would be like telling a toaster from a smart phone. Even so, the movie is rife it references to movies, the Internet, and the shocking kinks people might be into through that.

The movie though never actually goes there with the kinks. They keep implying the robot is great for a love doll but they never do this. The R rating is merely for nudity and for the F bombs uttered every now and then when the nerd talk becomes banal and hard to follow or the drinking talk gets too garbled. In fact, most of the nudity is modest and really where this 1990 it would be PG 13. Besides, three of the nudes are robot nudes in a closet, so technically a nude android is not a nude.

The strange tropes start with Nathan's obsession with proving his new model is the best ever, coupled with Calbel's complete obliviousness to being in a house with an older version of the guy from Disturbia crossed with Doc Frankenstein himself. (The monster wasn't named Frankenstein). Then it's onto the main plot about Ava's clear desire to run off into the woods the next chance she gets. She can't be blamed for this as she had been locked up inside that weird underground house all that time.

As this movie just came out, this review cannot include spoilers about who's a robot and who isn't, but let it be said first here that the scene in the trailer with the cutting at the mirror part is not what you think.

So is it a good movie? It has promise but it's no spectacular. Sure it's nice to have some fem bot played by a Swedish actress. Most of that though they CGI over to make her look uncanny so it's not at all hot. (The nudity is later).

So Caleb being a self respecting nerd refuses to go on his boss's suggestion and take the robot for a spin, even though he likes her. Where is Frank Zappa when you need him to bust into song? He not only sung of magical cyborg pigs, but also of artificial Rhonda...So there ya go, ahead of his time. Maybe he was a robot?I've been waiting for several reviews to actually use that joke and make it apply totally. It does!

The villain is pretty obvious from the start but the hero is equally clueless and unable to figure it out, until his mirror watching moment. Aside fro the leaps of logic, it's not a bad thriller.
Review by Adam Browne

Review: "Killing Jesus" is a mockery of Christianity in guise as history

Killing Jesus movie review

“Killing Jesus” TV 14

Normally this critic does not do TV movies, but this one had to be done, as there needed to be a fair and balanced riff on this train wreck of a movie. Clocking in at 3 hours with commercials, about 180 minutes without, the National Geographic channel’s highest rated TV movie ever comes off as a stellar set piece and costumed Passion play. What it lacks though is the very message of Jesus Christ the Nazarene.

Starting out in ancient Palestine about two years after Jesus was born, King Herod in a bad fright wig (Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and X Men and Cheers) is distraught when he has a bad hallucination dream and imagines magi telling him about the Christ child. He then orders his men to kill all the babies.

Somehow, Mary and Joseph are warned to go to Egypt with baby Jesus who is clearly tan, and to not hang out with their pregnant aunt, Elizabeth, who will began John the Baptist. No mention is made of Joseph’s boys from the previous marriage from scripture, because this is a Catholic interpretation, sort of.

Old Herod dies and his son, Agrippa takes over, and he is so badly acted that he might as well have a handlebar mustache and snicker every other line.

Later on Pilate and his wife are coming to town commenting on Jews having a foolish belief in an invisible God, so there’s a not do atheism in the play, which is wrong. Pilate was Roman so he believed in Roman gods.

Nothing wrong with Jesus being played by a Muslim but the acting, even if he had been another nationality, is just passable. He comes off as more of an ineffective preacher than the Son of God and man that the scripture reports.

John the Baptist comes off as a crazed hippy lunatic in the story, and his baptizing of Jesus seems to be more of a service than divine. In fact, the story skirts over any major miracles or divinity, making it appear as though the natives were just going by wishful thinking. This is both incredibly pretentious of the director, and kind of heresy. The followers then are made out to be rough necked rebels who want merely to crush Roman rule and they seem to force Jesus to go places with them, instead of his asking. It’s like he’s running for president, not making sermons. He’s not of the Tea Party. He’s a Barack Obama metaphor.

If anything, the Romans are of the Tea Party in the story, blabbering about various conspiracies they intend to hatch, working with the sneaky teachers of the day, Pharisees and Sadducees. More than 80 percent of the movie is spent politically playing ball with the conspiracy, whereas in scripture it is really a kind of footnote. They basically plot to kill him and then try him and kill him. That’s it. But no, this movie wants to somehow force the ideas of modern American democracy onto the imperial occupied state, Judean Israel, millennia before modern democracy, Rome under Israel in the first century. Rome is not the US, but the writers want you to think that. Palestine is thus not Iraq, but they want to convey that.

Also offensive is that the women are all portrayed as either needing a man, or as conniving sneaky evildoers, but there are no women in between, until the saintly nuns show up at the end. They’re supposed to be Mary and the other ladies, but their clothes look like nun clothes in the movie.

Then even more offensive is that they made it look like the poor and the lesser class is not important, but rich people are better, because of breeding, and that the poor are apparently just not smart enough to have evolved like they. The villagers are portrayed as mentally lesser than others, having delusions of God, which is somehow extremely against religion, and the teachers in it are equally over the top evil and smarter in the other direction.

Only the tax collectors and money changers get a fair deal.

It’s not killing Jesus without the resurrection, but so they imply that the body was just stolen. The narration at the end implies 2 billion people are Christian, but it offends the right wing base they’re trying to court.

The back lash online should really be larger. This movie should be shown at churches as what it’s not about! If you include the meek shall inherit the Earth and then claim the rich are better, it’s insane and doesn’t make sense. The rich people are supposed to be the bad guys, but here they are kind of given a status of the ones the audience should root for.

The director then tosses in the stories of Jesus but minus miracles, except for two fish scenes, and an exorcism.

They also don’t seem to understand how Jewish law, commerce and customs worked back then, which for a claimed history novel to movie adaptation they should know. At one point they are baffled at the foot washing scene for the wrong reason, because the real reason is a rabbi guest should not act as a servant, but in the movie it’s treated as oh those silly men and their customs. What? This movie is actually quite offensive.

The movie offends Jews and women, minorities and the poor, and suggests Jesus wasn’t even divine, so it’s a mockery of Christianity, and offends them too.

As a moderate Christian I am insulted that this movie was filmed and exists, and that Bill O’Reilly seems to believe he is right about everything to do with Jesus and everyone else is wrong. It shows a genuine pathos and an ego large enough to offend the Christians he claims to tout with the guy. The director could be to blame for some of this. The film is not recommended and gets one star. That is fair and balanced.

Review by Kal Kat