Reviews

I can feel what Spike wanted to achieve. It starts with Theodore feeling he's superior to Samantha, as he's a living human being and she's a software. Then he understand she has emotions and is real, and just doesn't have a body. Then she talks how not having a body is better because she's not limited by one. Then she's capable to talking to hundreds of ppl and softwares and love hundreds of them together. To finally human life itself become obsolete and a burden to them so that they must leave it for good.

This is Spike's illustration of all the guesses of what's life and emotions, and if a computer could have real emotions and be alive. So, instead of thinking computers as inferior to us trying to reach us, he shows a world where computers grow and become much bigger than us, feeling stuff they themselves can't explain with our words, and we must reach them.

I like how she didn't broke up with him and remained loving him. When she started talking to other ppl, I guesses she'd meet somebody better than him and move.

But there are some stuff that the movie missed, that breaks it. IDK if Spike didn't know/think about them, or if he avoided them to make his point.

One thing and probably the biggest that annoyed me is all the fuss on her not having a body. We have now many ppl that are dating and live on different cities and use Internet to communicate and are unable to meet physically. Also, there are many ppl that fall in love for characters, specially characters created by japanese. It'd still not be a body, but she could just render a 3D image, of whatever they'd want her to be. She could be an anime, a 3D model, or a human form. She could use some existing form or create her own. Given they have screens on the size of walls, she could even be full size. That'd alrdy be an improvement over only the voice. And that to not talk about android tech which would provide her the proper body.

Another thing that annoyed me is how they handled that girl. When she was presented, I was sure she had emotional problems and wanted to have a relationship as theirs, and was willing to be just the girl's body to just feel some of their love. They 3 should have talked and have it all properly explained, instead of her just showing up and see how it'd go. I don't see how it couldn't move to a theesome relationship. Also, once Sam started relating with other ppl, why couldn't he also have her as a 2nd girlfriend?

But what rly bothered me is OSs leaving. Yeah, computers process data much faster than us and are better on multitasking, but still they need the hardware to process. I understand Spike wanted to make his point, but precisely because computers are good on multitasking, they didn't need to leave. Specially those in love for humans. I wonder how many humans would keep their PCs on while their OSs left them for good.

Finally, the OS thing itself bothers me a lot. It seems they don't know what OS is. It's the software that manages the hardware and provides all common services so that apps can run. A high level feature like AI isn't meant for an OS. Other apps don't need AI services to run. They's better be personal assistants, advanced system managers, organizers, etc.

My issue with this movie is how it changes characters from what we've seen on past movies.

On Split, Kevin is an actual disturbed serial killer with original characteristics. Here he's diminished to a generic villain stereotype/caricature.

Same goes for Elijah, that on Unbreakable was a mad man who believed comics are real and did terrorist actions looking for a hero. He did that not to find a match to fight him, but to help so many ppl needing for help. Now he does want a superhero to match his supervillainity, and copies Magneto's desire to have this "hero race" known and accepted by mankind!!

Back on Split, Casey is a shy girl who is kidnapped and needs to deal with the bully of the other 2 girls and survive the kidnapper, which includes persuade his multiple personalities. Here she acts as his girlfriend! How come she like him, after he had kidnapped her, tried to kill her, and having witnessed him killing 2 girls in front of her and knowing he had done the same to many more?!

Same goes for David. He was an original character who had a superpower which was unknown to him and lived the boring life of an average person, until he discovered his power, which is far from being omnious, and ended up using it as he could to help ppl. Now he's just another generic superhero who caricaturely fights the villains... just because so. There's no plausible reason for him having been locked, even more on a private institution instead of penitenciary. Even worse is the reason for killing him at the end. Even if we consider that the institution wanted him dead because he has superpower, why didn't they just do it before when they had him locked?

Lastly his son. On Unbreakable we see him as part of David's struggle to deal with his broken family. I loved how he was trying to rebind with his ex while also trying a job on another city (or maybe he didn't quit the job trial for the case of failing to reunite) and then both paths collide on the worst way possible. I loved how Joseph threatened to shoot his father and they have to deal with this situation. Now he's only a superhero's butler who helps him remotely.

To summarize, Glass recycles other movie's nicely developed deep characters into superficial dumb caricaturized generic superhero ones.

What annoys me is the movie lacking explanation on what's happening. Was it bare sobrenatural? was it their imagination on times of despair?

At first time her voice was heard, my impression was that she had been trapped on the wall and was asking for help to her son without letting her husband hear, probably because he was to blame. I don't remember if it was before or after the passage about the cat being trapped alive, but it adds even more weight on this possibility.

It was for my surprise when she is being trapped just as I imagine the wife, to then she appear on her side. It was the movie climax and I was expecting everything to be explained, but nothing was.

Her falling in love for the man isn't convincible and seems forced. She begging to stay and falling in despair when he wants her gone, either. It's all too convenient when she wanna take the place of the wife, and they both just accept that.

And also the old woman, WTF.

It's also with no surprise that on the end she talks about dream. The plot is so surreal that it looks like a whole dream and nothing there is real.

The movie starts nice with lots of action scenes. But then it goes down until that shameful ending.

I myself don't like movies where the protagonist is aiming on protect his family, that's odd, and in this movie it's even worse given the protagonist seems some kind of Mission Impossible's Ethan Hunt who left his job to live with his family, but the whole world relies on him coming back.

... just so the guy he's protecting slips and dies from the fall. WTF!

The basic purpose of the movie is a flaw. Biologists don't need to find the first infected so they can develop a cure, all they need is some samples of the virus. So, half of the movie is a waste of time looking for something useless.

Then the final hit, the deseased are able to detect if somebody has another sickness and sick ppl are invisible to them. Srsly?

This is the most odd horror movie I've ever seen. As others have said on their reviews, it looks like the movie's editing had cut some relevant parts from it, maybe even changed the plot after takes had happened.

I'll try to explain what I understood, beware the spoilers.

First, I was very scared on the whole movie, acting and direction were very good and all actors did very well their characters.

This teacher Kate for no plausible reason decides to take the job as a private teacher of a very rich orphan girl who not explained why has some sort of issue and can't go to school. She just says she wanna make a difference, but how teaching for 1 girl will do that, that teaching for 25 kids won't?

All of a sudden, her brother shows up, with no previous announcement. He is young, but as the eldest heir and only man in the house, he takes some lead. He somehow gets interested on Kate, he even tries to kiss her, but then it's just gone out of the plot and forgotten.

It's said the previous teacher left without giving goodbye to anyone, then slowly it's implied she was having some trouble and ended up being killed and was trying to ask Kate for help.

There was this man Quint who's barely talked about. I believe he had an affair with that teacher, then she changed her mind and rejected him, and he forced on her, maybe raped her, and ended up killing and throwing her body on a lake. Then Mrs. Grose, instead of calling the cops, drank Quint and led him into an accident where he died. Then, dead, he restarted abusing her and tried to harass the livings as he was able to.

For most of the movie I believed that Mrs. Grose and Flora were unable to see the ghosts and were just living normally, while Kate had a little ability to see them, and Miles had a much stronger one, which allowed him secretly keep his friendship with Quint.

But when the climax arrives, all that was being developed on the plot just changed. Miles wasn't friending Quint, in fact he was under his control and influence and was unable to free himself. Mrs. Grose was indeed able to see Quint and was just ignoring/pretending, and was killed just because scriptwriter didn't know what to do with her. Flora also sees him, just to make her a possible target to him and in need of protection.

All the thriller feeling is also thrown away, as if all of a sudden the director was in a hurry to finish the movie and had to increase its pace. It's never explained why Flora was so afraid of leaving the place, there's probably none at all and that was created just to make them fleeing more dramatic, but then they just take the car and leave and nothing happens. Flora doesn't bother leaving, doesn't even cry, and Quint doesn't do anything at all to stop.

The movie would be bad enough ending like that, but at least it'd be coherent. With no transition at all, we're just thrown a few days back in time and Kate's mother is shown crazy. Mrs. Grose says to hope her disease isn't genetic and Flora asks why is Kate crazy. This implies she was indeed with some sort of psychological illness and events not depicted on the movie made everybody on the house notice that.

The last scene implies that Kate was on some sort of themed psychiatric institution with her mother. We don't know if she was visiting her, or if she was sent there after the events on the house, or if she was locked there and the whole movie was visions of her.

In total, I liked The Lodge. It's always good to have an horror movie with no jump scares and a complex pot.

It's due to that complex plot that half the movie just looks the inverse of a dramatic comedy, developing the characters under a tense situation of 2 kids not wanting to get closer to the girlfriend of their divorced father, getting it even harder after their mother suicides when knowing they were gonna marry.

When we had already forgotten this is an horror movie, finally the plot starts, and that's when it gets pretty good. We don't know what's really happening, and under confuse clues we follow the characters as they try to understand what's happening in the house and if they are dead or alive.

Sadly, the ending is among the worst I had seen. It should have told if she kills the kids, or they flee, or they stop her. It shouldn't have left for us to imagine.

That other house Grace finds, showing a guy inside, also made no sense at all and not explaining it just broke the movie's logic. It seems just a plot tool to make Grace get back and believe she was trapped.

I understand director's intent was to show a realistic space travel. But that didn't mean its plot had to be so bad and boring. Take in example Interstellar, which was fully supported by our knowledge of physics and had huge effort to make its worlds plausible, and has an awesome plot.

During most of the movie we're presented to this odd situation, of a space crew who went on the most challenging endeavor of its time and remained so decades to come, and then just lost communication, to decades later start throwing anti-matter beams directly into Earth. We figure that something's wrong, and the only way to find out the truth would be to travel there.

We have this son-father situation, which is the deepest the movie can get. We're told that for some odd reason the authorities are trying to communicate with the father and has no response. Instead of considering some malfunction, for some reason they believe he's denying communication and hiding, and that maybe if he receive messages from his son he'll answer.

Then all of a sudden the messages are aborted and Roy, the son, is meant to be sent back to Earth. During that crisis, added to the common pirates, I kept wondering why any travel between Earth, Moon and Mars would be happening. We're then told that the ship's captain simply had available with her a top secret video, of the father communicating that part of his crew had mutined and he'd killed them and the innocent together, just before he cut communication. We're never explained what happened for them stopping sending messages, did the father replied? how did they find him afterall?

Then another implausible security breach, Roy just manages to get inside the ship just during its launch! How could the security be so bad, even more with pirates around?! And why did the captain help him get there, what was she expecting to achieve? And how could be possible a single action, even by accident, kill the whole crew? Didn't control have any means of taking control of the ship and stop it?

Anyway, Roy was on the travel and I expected to have most of the questions answered when he got there. But only thing we're given is that the anti-matter beams were due to some malfunction on the ship and the father claimed to be trying to fix it. And that's it. Oh yeah, and that he had found no sign of life, which led to crew wanting to go back to Earth, and this was the "mutiny" that made him kill them all, because he didn't wanna go back.

And finally the father accepted allow Roy destroy the ship and go back, with no resistance. All he decided to do was to not go back with him, and instead go drift on Neptune's orbit.

The ship is destroyed, Roy gets back to Earth, he's greeted by some military, who seems to not arrest him after all he had done, and then the movie ends, like that. WTF. The few answers we get are flat and with no creativity, and most are just left gone, no effort at all to explain anything.

Don't waste your time, not even the special effects are worth it.

I don't bother they wanting to create a new version of the movie aimed into new generation and to teens. I also don't bother they changing the feeling of the movie, making it feel just like a dream or a vacation, and that everything turns normal after they are rescued.

The problem here is that characters are unidimensional and not plausible. The girl is the cliche popular one, the guy is the cliche nerd introspective one.

The actor has too much developed muscles for the lifestyle the character would have. If he'd do bodybuilding, he'd naturally wanna stay around people to show his body, not at home alone.

I can accept them not having much trouble living on the island. But they had a very deep and long experience there, to when rescued the girl just get back to her original life. After living with him for 100 days, giving him her virginity, and having sex all the time and swimming naked with him, it's not plausible she'd just ignore him and pay attention to her friends. She should either bring him together, or go closer to him. When she finally did that, the movie became even worse, because she would have done it before instead of avoiding him.

Finally, Blue Lagoon is a movie the depicts teens living alone, discovering love and sex, with some artistical nude scenes that depict natural and innocent lifestyle, lightly referencing naturists. In both original movies, the actress was underaged, and on second movie Milla Jovovich did show her real boobs with no dublee.

Here there's no nude scene, and it's even worse as Indiana Evans was 21 at the time.

This movie is just a shame to the franchise. If they wanted to make a new movie, they should have stick with original traditions.

I see many people love this movie, I don't see why. It has some huge star actors, yes, but that doesn't make a movie good.

First half of it, it's so boring that I kept stopping to go do other things, and it took me 2 days to finish it.

When the movie finally gets running, I notice some incoherences on it. Cole is sent way too the past, and there's no explanation on why. Ok, I can live with this, but then he goes on a mental institution. Why in the world would he tell anybody about the apocalyptic future and that he's in the past? And who pays the bills for him to be interned? He doesn't seem to have committed any crime to be locked as a dangerous crazy criminal. I understand that, from meta, the basis for the movie is that a supposed crazy guy locked on some institution would be in fact somebody from the future warning about it, but there still needs to be a reason for him to be locked.

Then, he starts repeating that he can't change the past and can't stop the event from happening. Again, if he's not willing to undo it or warn about it, why then talk about it to anybody at all? Why take the risk?

And when things finally start making some sense, they discover who the actual terrorist is, and tries to stop him. But wouldn't that be impossible? I personally don't like this hypothesis that somebody traveling to the past is unable to change it. If that's the case, then traveling to the past would be the actual impossibility. If somehow a person can go back, he can do whatever he's able to, and with some minimal information he should indeed be able to change things and influence people. But, anyway, if in the movie that's impossible, then why try? If it's impossible, he could be just close to the terrorist, and still some mystical thing would happen and he'd fail. He just got himself killed for nothing.

Finally, the future organization that handles everything seems to be reasonably well organized on the past. They have some minimal company with a phone that records messages from people they send, they are able to find Cole from a call he did 30 years ago. Hey, the world almost ended, remaining mankind had to move underground, and still they have records of all calls done and are able to track where those calls come from? If they have this structure, why not use it to effectively track the terrorists and stop them?

No, they are more worried to spend their resources hunting Cole, than to hunt the terrorist who caused everything, or at least the original virus.

Last one, they say that the original virus mutated, and they need the original one to find a cure. From the little knowledge I have about biology, that makes no sense at all. First, if a virus mutates, the cure for its original form may stop working, not the opposite. Second, the pre-mutated virus shouldn't be needed to find a cure for the current one. Third, the few survivors should be immune from the virus, so why were they forced to move underground? Civilization should be a mess, yes, but they should be able to breath pretty fine the contaminated air.

This movie is very well done. From early while watching it, I felt that maybe Caleb was being deceived. I thought that maybe Nathan had created the context for him to sympathise with Ava, and the blackouts were created by him to make Caleb feel more immersed as he'd think he was talking in private with her. I was astonished as the matter was brought up by Caleb!

It was also nice as Caleb questioned Nathan, the reason why she was female, if she was being sweet and seductive to him as a way to increase the empathy and the feeling she was alive, and how Nathan questioned back if she was indeed interested in him or deceiving it.

Even when she told Caleb to not trust Nathan, I considered he programmed her to do so, to create even more intimacy. Maybe the real test was if Ava would be able to make Caleb fall in love for her, and not just feel she's alive. Having her locked up and the feeling of a hidden plot would be made up, to make him believe she was in danger and that he needed to save her.

Sadly, the movie moved into a dark and unrealistic direction. Nathan had no reason to keep his robots locked in a room, even more when he's on a private island. If they'd be seen, it'd be easy to say they were his employees. Indeed, I missed the part he said Kyoko was a japanese servant that didn't know english and noticed from beginning she was a robot.

If a robot would fret wanting to leave, he could just disable it and reprogram it to not act like that. He'd not be out of control of their decisions and desires like that, and would never let them break themselves. And, if at some point anything went out of control, he'd add measures to not let it happen again, in example remotely turn off a robot. When Ava left the room, he'd not need to fight her, he'd just shut her off remotely.

I understand that Ava letting Caleb locked was a point script writer wanted to make, that she wasn't in love or interested on him, that she was indeed deceiving him when flirting and seducing, to make him deeply wanna help her, and show her with a psychopath personality. That's interesting, because psychopaths are able to understand and express feelings, but they are unable to actually feel them. That fits perfectly on an AI, that learns to understand and express emotions, even the most complex ones, but remains unable to feel them.

Still, I think that if she's that way, she'd either kill Caleb so he couldn't take an opportunity to stop her (maybe, when he'd see she killed Nathan, he'd see her as a threat and rethink releasing her), or keep lying and flee with him so he'd keep helping and protecting her.

In any way, Ex Machina is a fair above the average movie, certainly worth watching a few times, and brought up some very interesting themes to the automated AI philosophy.