What a waste of time. The movie wasn't complete garbage, the plot was coherent although there was plenty of stupid stuff in it and it wasn't very complex and the scenery was very nice. That's practically all the good things I can say about this movie. It's boring as hell, the characters are extremely shallow, the suspense just isn't there and you can see all the plot twists from miles away - including their outcome.
I really don't know what they wanted to achieve with this movie. There's absolutely nothing innovative in it, very little character development and what little there is can be summarised as laughable, the plot is as simple as it gets (probably one of the reasons they didn't screw it up), etc. etc.
Super genious guy who coded Google at the age of 13 can't figure out what's causing power outages in the system he wrote.
Said system in the super advanced research facility has virtually no protection against something as simple as power surges.
Facility's defense against power surges being the backup generator. When it runs on it the lights change color, all doors are locked and all security cameras are made to turn away and shut down...
Hacking the system apparently requires writing the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm in Python even though you already have admin credentials...
Hack, which was a permanent change to the system (trivial one at that, changing one thing from 1 to 0 really) apparently only works once.
I can't go on, it's too painful...
Skip it if you can. You'll save yourself 2 hours of time to do something fun.
I think you're being a bit too critical of some of it. I agree that the movie is superficial at best, but that doesn't mean it has absolutely no worth.
I think the character development is somewhat accurate, but they purposefully left it somewhat ambiguous. I'm not saying whether I think it was a good decision or not, but the movie's meaning changes if you know what Nathan's actual ambitions were and whether or not it's Nathan or Ava who was the villain. I don't think it was a particularly profound theme, but that's the message regardless.
There was some really ridiculous shit in it though. The reveal that Ava was causing the power outages wasn't even a twist. They showed it on the camera. Did they really feel the need to then explicitly tell us that she was causing the power outages? Same thing with the Japanese AI. I thought that was another really obvious twist and was kind of stupid at best. It wasn't like it was even particularly helpful to the story because it wouldn't even be a fair test to Caleb to see if he could discern that it was an AI since he couldn't have a conversation with it.
Criticizing the hacking is just a suspension of disbelief. It's possible that Ava also changed the system back to the original settings and we just weren't made aware of it to add to the shock. I know people want movies to be realistic, but real-life is pretty mundane. I think it's okay to use artistic license in order to make the movie interesting. By the way, the Sieve of Eratosthenes code actually had a purpose that someone on Reddit figured out. It actually spits out the ISBN to this. I think that's kind of gimmicky and it's pretty likely that someone in the studio leaked that (who the fuck would think of that? lol), but it's a cool piece of attention to detail.
I think that the worst part of Ex Machina was that it felt underdeveloped, despite being two hours. It was overall a decent film (not an 8/10 but probably like a 7/10), but it felt like a lot of exposition for the little action it had. It wasn't like The Usual Suspects where the end is what helped shape the entire movie either. Obviously the ending is critical to understanding everything that happened before it, but it didn't add that much depth to the movie as a whole. I enjoyed Mad Max much, much more.
I didn't really mind the stupid things I've listed. When it comes to movies I'm willing to suspend all belief. What I did mind was that the entire movie felt pretty pointless. At first it seemed like a good take on some philosophical aspects of "What it means to be human" and such, but it quickly degraded and left a lot to desire.
I mean, if we compare it to movies that touched on the subject before it is but a shadow. Even Bicentennial Man, which scores rather poorly on various movie portals, had more going for it. Or a movie like I, Robot, which I disliked - still much better than this.
It seems like a worse version of Android from 1982.
It's like Her in that the AI is a vehicle to examine normal humans and relationships, not the AI itself.
What a waste of time. The movie wasn't complete garbage, the plot was coherent although there was plenty of stupid stuff in it and it wasn't very complex and the scenery was very nice. That's practically all the good things I can say about this movie. It's boring as hell, the characters are extremely shallow, the suspense just isn't there and you can see all the plot twists from miles away - including their outcome.
I really don't know what they wanted to achieve with this movie. There's absolutely nothing innovative in it, very little character development and what little there is can be summarised as laughable, the plot is as simple as it gets (probably one of the reasons they didn't screw it up), etc. etc.
Super genious guy who coded Google at the age of 13 can't figure out what's causing power outages in the system he wrote.
Said system in the super advanced research facility has virtually no protection against something as simple as power surges.
Facility's defense against power surges being the backup generator. When it runs on it the lights change color, all doors are locked and all security cameras are made to turn away and shut down...
Hacking the system apparently requires writing the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm in Python even though you already have admin credentials...
Hack, which was a permanent change to the system (trivial one at that, changing one thing from 1 to 0 really) apparently only works once.
I can't go on, it's too painful...
Skip it if you can. You'll save yourself 2 hours of time to do something fun.
I think you're being a bit too critical of some of it. I agree that the movie is superficial at best, but that doesn't mean it has absolutely no worth.
I think the character development is somewhat accurate, but they purposefully left it somewhat ambiguous. I'm not saying whether I think it was a good decision or not, but the movie's meaning changes if you know what Nathan's actual ambitions were and whether or not it's Nathan or Ava who was the villain. I don't think it was a particularly profound theme, but that's the message regardless.
There was some really ridiculous shit in it though. The reveal that Ava was causing the power outages wasn't even a twist. They showed it on the camera. Did they really feel the need to then explicitly tell us that she was causing the power outages? Same thing with the Japanese AI. I thought that was another really obvious twist and was kind of stupid at best. It wasn't like it was even particularly helpful to the story because it wouldn't even be a fair test to Caleb to see if he could discern that it was an AI since he couldn't have a conversation with it.
Criticizing the hacking is just a suspension of disbelief. It's possible that Ava also changed the system back to the original settings and we just weren't made aware of it to add to the shock. I know people want movies to be realistic, but real-life is pretty mundane. I think it's okay to use artistic license in order to make the movie interesting. By the way, the Sieve of Eratosthenes code actually had a purpose that someone on Reddit figured out. It actually spits out the ISBN to this. I think that's kind of gimmicky and it's pretty likely that someone in the studio leaked that (who the fuck would think of that? lol), but it's a cool piece of attention to detail.
I think that the worst part of Ex Machina was that it felt underdeveloped, despite being two hours. It was overall a decent film (not an 8/10 but probably like a 7/10), but it felt like a lot of exposition for the little action it had. It wasn't like The Usual Suspects where the end is what helped shape the entire movie either. Obviously the ending is critical to understanding everything that happened before it, but it didn't add that much depth to the movie as a whole. I enjoyed Mad Max much, much more.
I didn't really mind the stupid things I've listed. When it comes to movies I'm willing to suspend all belief. What I did mind was that the entire movie felt pretty pointless. At first it seemed like a good take on some philosophical aspects of "What it means to be human" and such, but it quickly degraded and left a lot to desire.
I mean, if we compare it to movies that touched on the subject before it is but a shadow. Even Bicentennial Man, which scores rather poorly on various movie portals, had more going for it. Or a movie like I, Robot, which I disliked - still much better than this.
It seems like a worse version of Android from 1982.
It's like Her in that the AI is a vehicle to examine normal humans and relationships, not the AI itself.
How so? I thought Her was definitely about normal relationships, but this movie seemed to be about immersion in an AI world.
That guitar guy, man. That raid party was fueled by the power of rock
Guitar guy totally stole the show; I've heard more people talking about how awesome he was than any other part of the movie.
I'm pretty much in the same boat. That guy was my favorite part of the movie by far. The character design really carries the entire movie. The rest I thought was pretty monotonous. Very impressive action, but basically the same exact type of action for 2 hours.
What a waste of time. The movie wasn't complete garbage, the plot was coherent although there was plenty of stupid stuff in it and it wasn't very complex and the scenery was very nice. That's practically all the good things I can say about this movie. It's boring as hell, the characters are extremely shallow, the suspense just isn't there and you can see all the plot twists from miles away - including their outcome.
I really don't know what they wanted to achieve with this movie. There's absolutely nothing innovative in it, very little character development and what little there is can be summarised as laughable, the plot is as simple as it gets (probably one of the reasons they didn't screw it up), etc. etc.
Super genious guy who coded Google at the age of 13 can't figure out what's causing power outages in the system he wrote.
Said system in the super advanced research facility has virtually no protection against something as simple as power surges.
Facility's defense against power surges being the backup generator. When it runs on it the lights change color, all doors are locked and all security cameras are made to turn away and shut down...
Hacking the system apparently requires writing the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm in Python even though you already have admin credentials...
Hack, which was a permanent change to the system (trivial one at that, changing one thing from 1 to 0 really) apparently only works once.
I can't go on, it's too painful...
Skip it if you can. You'll save yourself 2 hours of time to do something fun.
I think you're being a bit too critical of some of it. I agree that the movie is superficial at best, but that doesn't mean it has absolutely no worth.
I think the character development is somewhat accurate, but they purposefully left it somewhat ambiguous. I'm not saying whether I think it was a good decision or not, but the movie's meaning changes if you know what Nathan's actual ambitions were and whether or not it's Nathan or Ava who was the villain. I don't think it was a particularly profound theme, but that's the message regardless.
There was some really ridiculous shit in it though. The reveal that Ava was causing the power outages wasn't even a twist. They showed it on the camera. Did they really feel the need to then explicitly tell us that she was causing the power outages? Same thing with the Japanese AI. I thought that was another really obvious twist and was kind of stupid at best. It wasn't like it was even particularly helpful to the story because it wouldn't even be a fair test to Caleb to see if he could discern that it was an AI since he couldn't have a conversation with it.
Criticizing the hacking is just a suspension of disbelief. It's possible that Ava also changed the system back to the original settings and we just weren't made aware of it to add to the shock. I know people want movies to be realistic, but real-life is pretty mundane. I think it's okay to use artistic license in order to make the movie interesting. By the way, the Sieve of Eratosthenes code actually had a purpose that someone on Reddit figured out. It actually spits out the ISBN to this. I think that's kind of gimmicky and it's pretty likely that someone in the studio leaked that (who the fuck would think of that? lol), but it's a cool piece of attention to detail.
I think that the worst part of Ex Machina was that it felt underdeveloped, despite being two hours. It was overall a decent film (not an 8/10 but probably like a 7/10), but it felt like a lot of exposition for the little action it had. It wasn't like The Usual Suspects where the end is what helped shape the entire movie either. Obviously the ending is critical to understanding everything that happened before it, but it didn't add that much depth to the movie as a whole. I enjoyed Mad Max much, much more.
I didn't really mind the stupid things I've listed. When it comes to movies I'm willing to suspend all belief. What I did mind was that the entire movie felt pretty pointless. At first it seemed like a good take on some philosophical aspects of "What it means to be human" and such, but it quickly degraded and left a lot to desire.
I mean, if we compare it to movies that touched on the subject before it is but a shadow. Even Bicentennial Man, which scores rather poorly on various movie portals, had more going for it. Or a movie like I, Robot, which I disliked - still much better than this.
It seems like a worse version of Android from 1982.
It's like Her in that the AI is a vehicle to examine normal humans and relationships, not the AI itself.
How so? I thought Her was definitely about normal relationships, but this movie seemed to be about immersion in an AI world.
I think part of it is you're meant to sympathize with Caleb, and then slowly realize he represents an oppressive force in his own way. By pulling the rug out on romance, it's really pulling the rug out on a large portion of society and the social influences that affect us. I read the film as very Foucault-ian, and I think Garland's statements and the imagery he uses support that. The self-awareness is what moves the plot, but the underlying content is societal power.
What a waste of time. The movie wasn't complete garbage, the plot was coherent although there was plenty of stupid stuff in it and it wasn't very complex and the scenery was very nice. That's practically all the good things I can say about this movie. It's boring as hell, the characters are extremely shallow, the suspense just isn't there and you can see all the plot twists from miles away - including their outcome.
I really don't know what they wanted to achieve with this movie. There's absolutely nothing innovative in it, very little character development and what little there is can be summarised as laughable, the plot is as simple as it gets (probably one of the reasons they didn't screw it up), etc. etc.
Super genious guy who coded Google at the age of 13 can't figure out what's causing power outages in the system he wrote.
Said system in the super advanced research facility has virtually no protection against something as simple as power surges.
Facility's defense against power surges being the backup generator. When it runs on it the lights change color, all doors are locked and all security cameras are made to turn away and shut down...
Hacking the system apparently requires writing the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm in Python even though you already have admin credentials...
Hack, which was a permanent change to the system (trivial one at that, changing one thing from 1 to 0 really) apparently only works once.
I can't go on, it's too painful...
Skip it if you can. You'll save yourself 2 hours of time to do something fun.
I think you're being a bit too critical of some of it. I agree that the movie is superficial at best, but that doesn't mean it has absolutely no worth.
I think the character development is somewhat accurate, but they purposefully left it somewhat ambiguous. I'm not saying whether I think it was a good decision or not, but the movie's meaning changes if you know what Nathan's actual ambitions were and whether or not it's Nathan or Ava who was the villain. I don't think it was a particularly profound theme, but that's the message regardless.
There was some really ridiculous shit in it though. The reveal that Ava was causing the power outages wasn't even a twist. They showed it on the camera. Did they really feel the need to then explicitly tell us that she was causing the power outages? Same thing with the Japanese AI. I thought that was another really obvious twist and was kind of stupid at best. It wasn't like it was even particularly helpful to the story because it wouldn't even be a fair test to Caleb to see if he could discern that it was an AI since he couldn't have a conversation with it.
Criticizing the hacking is just a suspension of disbelief. It's possible that Ava also changed the system back to the original settings and we just weren't made aware of it to add to the shock. I know people want movies to be realistic, but real-life is pretty mundane. I think it's okay to use artistic license in order to make the movie interesting. By the way, the Sieve of Eratosthenes code actually had a purpose that someone on Reddit figured out. It actually spits out the ISBN to this. I think that's kind of gimmicky and it's pretty likely that someone in the studio leaked that (who the fuck would think of that? lol), but it's a cool piece of attention to detail.
I think that the worst part of Ex Machina was that it felt underdeveloped, despite being two hours. It was overall a decent film (not an 8/10 but probably like a 7/10), but it felt like a lot of exposition for the little action it had. It wasn't like The Usual Suspects where the end is what helped shape the entire movie either. Obviously the ending is critical to understanding everything that happened before it, but it didn't add that much depth to the movie as a whole. I enjoyed Mad Max much, much more.
I didn't really mind the stupid things I've listed. When it comes to movies I'm willing to suspend all belief. What I did mind was that the entire movie felt pretty pointless. At first it seemed like a good take on some philosophical aspects of "What it means to be human" and such, but it quickly degraded and left a lot to desire.
I mean, if we compare it to movies that touched on the subject before it is but a shadow. Even Bicentennial Man, which scores rather poorly on various movie portals, had more going for it. Or a movie like I, Robot, which I disliked - still much better than this.
It seems like a worse version of Android from 1982.
It's like Her in that the AI is a vehicle to examine normal humans and relationships, not the AI itself.
How so? I thought Her was definitely about normal relationships, but this movie seemed to be about immersion in an AI world.
I think part of it is you're meant to sympathize with Caleb, and then slowly realize he represents an oppressive force in his own way. By pulling the rug out on romance, it's really pulling the rug out on a large portion of society and the social influences that affect us. I read the film as very Foucault-ian, and I think Garland's statements and the imagery he uses support that. The self-awareness is what moves the plot, but the underlying content is societal power.
Which still doesn't change the fact that it could've been executed much better.
Excellent entertainment. I really hope it'll make other directors to move away from overreliance on CGI and push them towards real sets and practical effects.
Spare Parts
10/10. There should be more movies like it. Must see.
On May 23 2015 07:39 Manit0u wrote: Mad Max: Fury Road
Excellent entertainment. I really hope it'll make other directors to move away from overreliance on CGI and push them towards real sets and practical effects.
Spare Parts
10/10. There should be more movies like it. Must see.
I have to disagree on Mad Max. While it was decent, I hoped for much more and its not only due to hype. It could've been much better had they edited out all the scenes which suddenly stop you from going at 100 mph in a deserted land, to day dreaming with pipe smoking grannies...
They entirely left out the universe imagined or drawn in the earlier versions. Why present some hugely populated citadel, if not to explore it other than the room with 'human cows' or the apparently infinite water cistern.
The movie should've lasted 1h30, and been all about the chase/escape.
Yesterday I saw: A most violent year
It was a pretty decent film altough I'm unable to classify it, it merges elements of gangster movies with suspense and drama. I gave it bonus points for not surfing on some huge actor name (altough I admit to not knowing emerging actors that much). Admittedly a bit bland on the scenery, plainly representative of real-er life.
I may give Nicolas Cage a lot of grief for his acting skills, especially during this century, but his acting in the excellent Spike Jonze movie Adaptation is really good. Overall, a solid 8.6/10 I give Adaptation and I recommend it to anyone who only knows Nicolas Cage for movies like The Wicker Man, Left Behind, etc.
Adaptation is an amazing movie. It's also weird. It's gimmicky, and maybe technically not amazing, but somehow becomes more than its parts, in my opinion.
Nicolas Cage is a good actor. The problem is he has to pick bad movies to pay off outstanding debts.
Just watched Prometheus. What a disappointment. Whoever wrote the script should be branded and chased out of town.
On May 23 2015 08:57 AeroGear wrote:
I have to disagree on Mad Max. While it was decent, I hoped for much more and its not only due to hype. It could've been much better had they edited out all the scenes which suddenly stop you from going at 100 mph in a deserted land, to day dreaming with pipe smoking grannies...
They entirely left out the universe imagined or drawn in the earlier versions. Why present some hugely populated citadel, if not to explore it other than the room with 'human cows' or the apparently infinite water cistern.
The movie should've lasted 1h30, and been all about the chase/escape.
Yesterday I saw: A most violent year
It was a pretty decent film although I'm unable to classify it, it merges elements of gangster movies with suspense and drama. I gave it bonus points for not surfing on some huge actor name (altough I admit to not knowing emerging actors that much). Admittedly a bit bland on the scenery, plainly representative of real-er life.
You can't have a movie purely about action. Any constant state/mood provides diminishing returns over time.
Oscar Isaac killed it as the lead. The only missteps were the somewhat tinny exchanges with Chastain, and that was arguably Chandor's fault as the script writer.
Just watched Ex Machina and wow did not expect such a thought provoking and mindfucking movie. Really makes you second guess the concept of AI and the being human. 9/5/10 for a pretty damn good movie
Gravity I think what's nice about this movie is how it has very few characters so it can take time to talk about them and expand on their personalities while still maintaining a lot of action. And they keep the film surprisingly suspenseful for something with so few characters. + Show Spoiler +
Finally adding in the theme that one needs to continue living life even after heavy loss (the loss of a child) gave the movie some meaning. A place for the movie to focus on.
It's a really simple movie but at the same time it's powerful.
Anyone got other recommendations of movies with few speaking characters? Eg. Hard Candy, Ex Machina, Gravity?
On May 25 2015 16:14 obesechicken13 wrote: Gravity I think what's nice about this movie is how it has very few characters so it can take time to talk about them and expand on their personalities while still maintaining a lot of action. And they keep the film surprisingly suspenseful for something with so few characters. + Show Spoiler +
Finally adding in the theme that one needs to continue living life even after heavy loss (the loss of a child) gave the movie some meaning. A place for the movie to focus on.
It's a really simple movie but at the same time it's powerful.
Anyone got other recommendations of movies with few speaking characters? Eg. Hard Candy, Ex Machina, Gravity?
Moon is seriously good, imo one of the best movie in this style.
On May 25 2015 16:14 obesechicken13 wrote: Gravity I think what's nice about this movie is how it has very few characters so it can take time to talk about them and expand on their personalities while still maintaining a lot of action. And they keep the film surprisingly suspenseful for something with so few characters. + Show Spoiler +
Finally adding in the theme that one needs to continue living life even after heavy loss (the loss of a child) gave the movie some meaning. A place for the movie to focus on.
It's a really simple movie but at the same time it's powerful.
Anyone got other recommendations of movies with few speaking characters? Eg. Hard Candy, Ex Machina, Gravity?
I think that another purpose of limited characters is to give the viewer another level of how it feel to be in space, as we know there so few people in space and it feels lonely even before the whole accident happened. So yeah I liked that too. Talk about this movie being powerful, it hit some spots for me and I got so emotional at the ending. One of the top movies since 2000.
Honestly, I have very little idea what's going on in this movie. It starts off fairly intriguingly. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the main character; why he was living in an underground hole in a forest, his connection to this woman he claims he knows but which she denies, etc. But then... nothing's answered. The entire movie, everything seems to be a metaphor or symbol. Which is fine in of itself.
However, I think that in order for a movie to work on a deeper level, it first needs to work on a basic level. Being able to have some understanding of what the characters are doing, their motivations, what's at stake, etc. In Borgman, this is certainly not the case. The most that I could understand in this is "Mysterious people come into this family's life and somehow enchant them into fighting with each other." But why? Who are these people, and why are they doing this? How do they seem to be able to control the minds of this family?
Maybe it's a cultural thing and this movie makes more sense if you're German. For me, it was just a frustrating experience.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.chicagonow.com/cinemajaw-movies/files/2015/02/borgman1.jpg)
