Alex Garland’s résumé reads like a laundry list of recent sci-fi and horror cult hits, with screenplay credits including 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), and Dredd (2012). His latest, Ex Machina, may stand to follow that same path of cult adoration – although hopefully for Garland, its box office will follow more in the footsteps of 28 Days Later than those of Dredd. The sparse, character-dr...[Read More]
Ex Machina may not be quite as profound an “ideas” movie as writer-director Alex Garland thinks it is, but I’m willing to cut it some slack for at least taking the shot. Garland’s film is intimate and intensely character-driven, with essentially only three main characters bouncing off each other in a very confined space. The film raises some interesting questions about human emotion, our desire to...[Read More]
A few months ago the pared, gritty World War II tank picture Fury, led with muted intensity by Brad Pitt, caused little stir though it was a modest, hard-won victory in an old genre. It was also a far more involving trawl through war hell than the miscast, timid Unbroken. We have served countless tours through combat documents, all that history on film, it comes as a surprise then that director An...[Read More]