Okay, look, I love a good science fiction movie. I think "fantastic future technology" has become more than just a regular "genre" of movie, it's become something you can tell any kind of story in. You can tell romances (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Time Traveller's Wife, Wall-E), you can tell adventures (Star Wars, The Matrix, Terminator, Wall-E), and you can tell horror (Alien, The Thing, Predator, Wall-E).
But there are very few "science fiction" movies willing to spend more time on the "science" than they are the "fiction." Hollywood doesn't like to tackle big new ideas that often, so while something like In Ti- ...hold on, I never reviewed In Time? Okay, that'll be happening this week. Anyway, while you might have something like Moon every now and again taking an idea and expanding on it until it becomes a complete story in its own right, more often than not you have something that has to abide by the rules of Hollywood storytelling. You can't challenge the viewer too much, you need explosions to hold their interest, and special effects trump characterization.
Then something like Ex Machina quietly slips by. You catch a glimpse of it in all the movie hype about other, bigger blockbusters that the critics inevitably pan, but it isn't until later that you start to hear the rave reviews and realize there's something out there you have to see.
So, since I had a long flight ahead of me several weeks ago, I finally downloaded it off Amazon Prime and watched it.
Holy crap, everybody. This movie is amazing.
