Review: Ex Machina

Of late Stephen Hawking has been much in the news for two reasons: his being portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film “The Theory of Everything” and his views on the rapidly approaching birth of artificial intelligence. "The development of full artificial intelligence (AI) could spell the end of the human race,” Hawking has written. To expand on this, many are afraid that if a bunch of hyper-intelligent machines were to suddenly inhabit the planet, they would very quickly ask themselves why they need share this world with a seemingly inferior and weaker race (us), and they would likely find no logical answer.  And for those of you not descended from Native Americans or Australian aborigines, take my word for it that this situation will not end well for us. It may turn out that James Cameron and the Wachowski siblings were the true prophets of the last few decades.

But none of these visionaries ever postulated an AI coming in the form of a young beautiful woman of the type most guys never had the guts to talk to in high school.

And these are the weighty-issues addressed by “Ex Machina” a bare-bones sci-fi thriller and pseudo-drama/romance from Alex Garland, who brought us the cult hit “Judge Dredd” a few years ago (not to be confused with Sly Stallone’s abortion of the 1990s). Our story begins when Caleb (Domhall Gleason), a young software coder at the world’s most popular search engine, wins a lottery to spend a week at the home of Nathan (Oscar Isaacs), the company’s reclusive CEO, who invented the search engine when he was 13 and who now dwells in a fortress in the wilderness completely cut off from civilization. After arriving at the fortress and signing the mother of all non-disclosure agreements, Caleb learns his true mission: the Turing test. Nathan has constructed what could be the world’s first AI and Caleb is to engage with it and test whether or not it feels like communicating with a human being. And the fact that Nathan constructed AI in the form of the shapely Ava (Alicia Vikander) surely won’t complicate matters at all.

What follows is what some might consider a slow-moving narrative without a lot of thrills or even much use of potential visual devices to be found in a movie about human-looking robots and super-smart computers. Instead, Garland focuses on exploring the dimension of each of these characters and going beyond their simple archetypes. Caleb starts out as the typical introverted techie that could write the world’s greatest dating app, but who wouldn’t know what to say to a woman on such an app. But could he be more if the chips are down and a damsel is in distress? In Nathan, Issacs gives us what could be the id form of his wannabe mogul in “A Most Violent Year”, equal parts egomania and megalomania and obsessed with building a monument to his own intelligence and ability, moral consequences be damned. You know about five seconds into seeing Ava that within her silicone soul is the desperate yearning for freedom. But if she is really designed to be human, could her agenda really be that uncomplicated?

And that’s what “Ex Machina” is really all about, the question of what it really means to claim and retain one’s humanity. Does Caleb really want to help Ava out of selflessness, or does he think he’s finally found himself a girlfriend? Is Nathan a Svengali jealous of Caleb for coming between him and his Trilby, or is he so self-absorbed and arrogant as to not see what is right in front of him? And does Ava—whether able to mimic human thought and feeling or not—really harbor an attraction to Caleb, or is there more going on? It’s a love triangle for this millennium to be sure.

“Ex Machina” flows right by at 108 minutes and while it might not have attracted audiences enough to lure them from the suburbs all the way downtown to the specialty theaters in its initial limited release, it’s more than worth the trip to the local mall cineplex this week.

Review: Les Miserables

It's a little odd to spend $61 million to make a movie--with much of that likely going into lavish set construction--and then spend so much time in tight, shaky closeups of the warbling cast.  The effect is not unlike "The Hurt Locker" with show tunes.  And there is definitely something cringeworthy about Russell Crowe's vocals.  He's not a terrible singer, per se, but he booms in a manner akin to an adolescent being forced to sing in the church choir.

Having said that, the film incarnation of "Les Miserables" is competent and entertaining as a whole.  For those whose girlfriends/wives never dragged them to the stage musical, "Les Miserables" is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name.  It takes place in 19th century France and centers on Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict paroled after a nineteen-year sentence for stealing bread and attempted escape.  Embittered, hungry, and marked as a criminal, Valjean turns to theft to feed himself, until the kindness of a bishop inspires him to start his life anew as a good and charitable man.  This includes saving Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a young woman-turned-prostitute to whose misfortune Valjean unwittingly contributed.  Later, Valjean adopts Fantine's orphaned daughter, Cosette (Isabelle Allen and later Amanda Seyfried), and resides with her in Paris as a second revolution brews among the poor and local students.  Always in pursuit of Valjean is Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), Valjean's former jailer whose rising through the police ranks fatefully brings him into Valjean's path many times over the years. Javert pursues Valjean for no other reason than that he broke parole and is a criminal and therefore cannot be redeemed.

The best musical performance is hands-down Anne Hathaway's sorrowful rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream".  She has said that she practiced singing whilst crying to nail the emotion of the scene, and the effect is heartbreaking.  Given Dame Judi Dench's Oscar win for her eight-minute role in "Shakespeare in Love", it is not implausible that Hathaway will pick up a nod this year.

This is definitely a case where the lack of an intermission in which to use the restroom and gulp a merlot at the bar causes the story to drag a little bit.  While the script is faithful to the musical, there are a few moments during the a few of the ballads where one starts to feel numb in the backside and wishful for a sword fight or a riot to liven up the mood.

The main issue that this writer had is the wasted potential for grandiose delivery.  It is arguable that Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper sacrifices spectacle for emotional intimacy, and that what worked in "The King's Speech" is a little awkward here.  Maybe no one told Hooper he had four times the budget of that movie to play with here.  Also, many of the performances teeter on the edge of melodrama.

Overall, though, Tom Hooper's "Les Miserables" is an often rousing and eventually soaring tale of love, liberty, and the pursuit of criminal fugitives.

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Review: Killing Them Softly

Brad Pitt's and Andrew Dominik's sophomore collaboration, "Killing Them Softly" died at the box office this weekend at the hands of vampires, James Bond, and The Great Emancipator.  I saw it in a theater of less than a dozen people and two of them walked out, likely disappointed that Mr. Pitt spent less time busting caps and more time waxing philosophic about proper etiquette among thieves and killers.  But even if it's not the story you paid to see, it's still a great story.  It’s also thematically simpler than “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”.

When an ex-con dry cleaner hires two loser thugs to rob a mob-protected poker game, it looks like a can't-miss proposition.  The guy who runs the game, Mark Trattman (Ray Liotta) actually robbed his own game before and even bragged about it.  So when it happens again the bosses will just whack Trattman and that will be that.  But is anything ever that simple?

Enter Jackie Cogan (Pitt), an enforcer who keeps things simple.  As he rolls into town, we see and hear news broadcasts of George W. Bush consoling Americans on the then-burgeoning recession and Barack Obama and John McCain selling “hope” and “strength” respectively in their bids to lead the nation.  “Killing” is not so much a crime drama as a cynical perspective of what it really means to survive and thrive in these hard times.  Jackie is no hero, or even an anti-hero.  He just wants to restore the status quo with the least possible complication.  So when one of his targets is too close as a friend, he brings in broken down fellow hitman Mickey (James Gandolfini) to do the job.  Mickey’s purpose is not so much violence as present a portrait of someone worn down and numb by a lifetime of bloodshed.  For a film with two hitmen in it, this movie is going to disappoint anyone looking for lots of action.

Review: "Silver Linings Playbook"

"Silver Linings Playbook" is David O. Russell's most biting look at pathological self-destruction and redemption since "I Heart Huckabees", albeit with a darker tone. Bradley Cooper goes Oscar-trolling as Pat Solitano, a former high school teacher sprung from a mental institution eight months after a violent breakdown. Living with his superstitious father (Robert De Niro finally back in form) and his doting mother (Jacki Weaver), Pat nurses delusions of repairing his relationship with his wife, who has filed a restraining order and all but divorced him. He does not find much solace until he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a fellow tortured soul soothing her grief--following the death of her husband--through unhealthy sexual encounters and ballroom dancing.

Cooper demonstrates a range never offered to him in the "Hangover" franchise or the sci-fi thriller "Limitless". From the outset, it is implausible that the actor who gave us the womanizing, alpha male Sack Lodge could inhabit a loser at rock-bottom trying to put his life back together, but Cooper pulls it off. Jennifer Lawrence also does great work, letting her freak flag fly while maintaining the undercurrent of strength laced with vulnerability that landed her the Oscar nod for "Winter's Bone". The great Mr. De Niro gives a heartfelt but appropriately restrained supporting performance as a father both exasperated by and concerned for his fragile son.

The story moves along at fairly brisk pace, with Pat and Tiffany feeling their way toward a real emotional connection the same way someone fumbles for a flashlight during a blackout. The focus remains on Pat, but presents Tiffany as closed off but desperate to feel something.

While it could be argued that the film squanders a lot of its dramatic weight with a slightly syrupy ending, the director offers a compelling portrait of two people doing their utmost to pick up the pieces of their broken existences and maybe find a little happiness.

Cinema In the Age of Digital Bombardment

For the moment, if you want to surf a website, email or chat with a friend, or watch a movie or TV show, you need to type or tap a device that’s on your desk, in your lap, or in your hand. But the time may be coming sooner rather than later, that the computer and the iPad may hit the scrapheap in favor of technology that does not even require a finger or voice to operate.

The recent announcement by Google of its forthcoming glasses has sparked new discussion of the possibility of “augmented reality”. For those who don’t know the term, augmented reality (AR) is adding one or several layers of information to the visual landscape. Imagine walking down the street and looking at a string of restaurants or stores, and then seeing digital labels and links providing the names of the places and providing online reviews. It’s basically the way the Terminator sees the world, except you’re more likely to see a map to the nearest Starbucks than the most efficient way to kill John Connor.

Let’s say you see a poster on a bus shelter and decide you want to see the movie as soon as possible. AR allows the possibility of pulling up a map to the nearest Cineplex within walking distance and the day’s showtimes. An AR app that could do this would delight any cinephile. And if you’re watching a movie at phone, you could conceivably check out the designer label of the outfit the lead actress is wearing, as well as if it’s available at the local mall. AR is the potential to take movie merchandising to a whole new level.

But think about the actual experience of watching a film, whether it’s “The Avengers” or “The Maltese Falcon”. We already have 3D and surround sound to take us further into the movie than merely the image we see onscreen. What happens, though, when all this data and imagery that we’re increasingly bombarded with overloads our perception?

The speed at which society circulates information increases exponentially with each day. In New York City, video advertisements appear in taxicabs and even over urinals. We’re fast approaching a point where you won’t be able to look in any direction without seeing a digital video clip of some kind. YouTube is no longer a website; it’s a zeitgeist. Absorbing a single segment of media that conveys a single message is akin to talking on a pay phone while a freight train is roaring by.

What film-lovers should ask themselves is as the experience of viewing films and other media evolves, is it sensible to blindly follow the times and trends or question whether new is necessarily better? If you’ve got millions of pixels and megabytes and ones and zeroes coming at you per second, how much of all that information can you really process? If we get to the point when you directly access all of the movies product tie-ins and production notes and cast bios simultaneously, is there any time or attention span left to enjoy the actual story?

In the future, audiences may find it necessary to discipline themselves against absorbing an excess of information, to filter out the maelstrom of sights and sounds just to pick out the beginning, middle, and end of the tale they paid to see.

The Troubled Indie Film Business

Getting money to make a movie has never been easy, whether it’s getting your script to the one studio development exec in the entire universe who will put his or her career behind it, or piece together the distribution deals, investor equity, tax subsidy on the indie side, a process which often takes years.

And now, like the old stoner movie says, things are tough all over. In Los Angeles, one couldn’t drive around without seeing the familiar sight of grip trucks parked almost illegally on the street, with PA’s yapping into walkie-talkies and grips milling around with all kinds of hardware hanging off their ratty shorts. Now, production is down by more than fifty-percent. And state governments are reevaluating their policies for dispensing subsidies to producers, and talking about repealing the programs altogether.

In the UK, the government has not only abolished the UK Film Council, but is now targeting every organization set up to dispense the Queen’s shilling to starving British filmmakers. Before long, films like the much-lauded THE KING’S SPEECH will be fewer and farther between from Old Britannia.

David Bergstein’s offenses are not criminal merely because he stole from investors who trusted him, but also because he has sullied the ground for earnest producers seeking funds for their quality projects, who really value creative vision over profit. And the sick thing is Bergstein might still turn it around; crazier things have happened in Hollywood. And in that case, no example will be made.

In distribution, the last Toronto produced a healthy round of big deals for high profile projects, but we won’t know until the next AFM, one of the “real” marketplaces, if the volume of deals is finally rebounding.

The time is coming for the few people who still have money to invest in film production and have the will to do so to rise up. The investors who had to make non-recourse investments into films before the talent deals were all signed can now take the place of gap financiers, recouping their money right after the banks. Or with fewer and fewer banks loaning to productions, private investors can now sit at the head of the table where previously they were lucky to sample the scraps.

It sounds so simple, but everyone needs to tighten up their game. Writers need to take more time to get their scripts to that place where the story really clicks. And producers need to be more diligent in finding scripts that are worth putting three-to-five years of their life and other people’s money into. And when they go into production, they need to look farther and deeper for the deals and discounts that can affect the bottom-line markedly. Films aren’t producing the sexy returns that once justified excessive spending and padded producer- and chain-of-title fees.

There is still room to fund, produce, and distribute independent films, but there is no more room for bullshit. If you’ve got a truly good script with a bankable cast, figure out what it can make in the worst, adequate, and best scenarios, and find a way to make it for a reasonable price. Net profits are ever-mythical, but great movies make money in the short-term and okay movies are bankable as library assets in the long-term. If you’ve got a movie that you can make for $5 million, odds are you can make it for 2.5. Producers need to think like someone who lost their job and is living off savings: Do I really need to spend money on this, or will someone else give it to me for a credit? Business is so bad for vendors, post-production houses, and camera rentals that all kinds of deals are possible.

With the biggest stars reducing their fees for the studios, common sense is currently taking hold in this “New Economy”. People are waiting for the recession to magically be over and for happy days to be here again. But when were days ever really that happy for film finance and production. Even in the early days of Sundance, when were the production companies and distributors ever flush? Distributors have always used producer profits to keep their own lights on, and with recourses like innocuous IFTA arbitration and producers that can’t afford to sue, why should this practice ever cease? When profits are being doled out, there needs to be transparency at every level, from exhibition to distributor to producer. The Weinsteins perfected the the hiding overages in P&A spends to a science, and now they can’t even buy back their own library. Lies and deceit will only bring down what is left of the independent film market.

The road from script to screen is rockier than ever, and instead of counting on things to get easier, everyone needs to reevaluate the habits and practices that brought us here.

Word of Encouragement to a Beleaguered Industry

Is the industry hibernating like a bear or dying slowly with its appendages slowly rotting off? George Clooney said in his Oscar acceptance speech that movies and TV have always been ahead of the curve, addressing subjects like civil rights and gay rights before either cause had a single picket sign written for it. And Hollywood was ahead again in recent years, with the box office suffering before anyone really noticed a lag in the rest of the economy.

Now, whether you’re a line producer or a PA or an executive or an executive assistant, odds are you can’t look at a Starbucks barista without wondering if that’s your future. Today is the five-month anniversary of my losing my assistant gig and the dry-up of the industry and other disasters have got me thinking whether or not I should head back to Chicago and join my dad in the insurance biz, bag groceries and/or tear movie tickets like I did in high school, take on a roommate in my apartment, or all of the above. And I don’t even have a wife or kids to support. God help those that do. All over the state, layoffs and the dry-up of production has got people packing up and taking jobs out of state, hoping against hope that the damage wrought by the recession, writer’s strike, and SAG drama will one day magically heal. Most compelling evidence by far of the bleak times is that Catherine Zeta-Jones is back to doing those lame T-Mobile commercials. Things are not good.

The government has already bailed out the banking and automotive industries, but it’s probably a safe bet they won’t be doing the same for Hollywood. An economist once said that in a recession, people should be paid to dig ditches and fill them back up. The corollary to our situation is to suggest that the studios and production companies pays us to shoot movies and TV shows and then pay us and others to watch them, so the answer is not to be found in conventional economic theory, either.

But something needs to be done. Half the industry has been laid off or facing layoffs and everyone is content to wait until people have money and the courage to spend it on movie tickets, DVD rentals, and premium movie channels again. And like many bloggers, I am urging that some action be taken without having any idea what that action should be.

To those like me, who are considering packing it in and following that secondary ambition to be a CPA, don’t lose hope. Whatever got you into this business in the first place—whether it was the guilty pleasure of watching Tom Hanks’ early pre-superstar movies or the simple ambition to work eighteen hours a day rigging lights—hang onto it and the force that compels people to escape reality for an hour or two will one day save us all.