Film: Ex Machina

It's very nearly gone, thank goodness. My flu, that is. And I have these three Tesco vouchers for Cineworld that will have expired by next week, so I had to get them used - and what with flying back to Ireland at the weekend, that means these three nights are it, starting tonight. Otherwise, I might have stayed in. Unfortunately, the things aren't valid at my local Cineworld - funny definition of a "West End" cinema - so I have to take transport to the nearest cinemas where I can use them. So they're not as cheap as they might have been - but still represent a saving. Still, I probably won't buy them again.

The nearest to work is Cineworld Hammersmith, which is, hopefully, where I'll be able to use them for the rest of the week. Looking at the IMDB ratings, the highest rated Cineworld film for today is Baby, an Indian thriller. However, upon reflection - I'm so sick of Indian thrillers full of gratuitous violence. Specifically, the scenes in the trailer that put me off were those with interrogations that involved beatings. Now, it might be a good film - and I can handle violence in film - but the implicit condonement of that behaviour bothers me. Plus, I find Indian films generally overrated. So I'm skipping it.

Which, led me, delightfully, to Ex Machina tonight. I've been intrigued by this since someone mentioned it at work, and was glad to get a chance to see it. So off I went, straight from work, to the early evening showing. It's ages since I got the Tube at rush hour, and I'm glad of that - also glad I wasn't in a hurry, considering how long it took to arrive! Thirdly, I was glad to see the crush of people that got off at West Kensington, just in time for me to get on. Truly, I don't think I'd have managed to squeeze on further down the track. Getting off at Ravenscourt Park was interesting, as I was at the opposite side of the carriage to the door that opened..

I used to live around there, but it's been a long while now since I got off at that stop, and I'd had to look it up on Google Maps earlier today. So it wasn't surprising that I failed to find the fastest way onto King Street. Still, I had no problem finding the street, just not by the very fastest route. There's a zebra crossing right in front of the cinema (oh, the feeling of power!) and I was shortly inside and smugly watching the guy at the till say "of course you can!" to my question as to whether I could get a ticket with this voucher. Screen 3 was just to the side, and seating there is in one block. I picked a seat in the middle - what's nice about this cinema is the seating plan is on a printed sheet in front of you.

Saw a couple of interesting trailers - one for Kingsman: the Secret Service, which previews on Thursday and is currently top of my list for then, and one for Fifty Shades of Grey. Which isn't on my list at all - I daresay it'll be useless, like the book on which it's based. As someone remarked today, the film would have to be pornographic to make anything of the story watchable. Unlikely.

And so to tonight's film. I hadn't even seen the trailer, so it was a surprise to me to be confronted almost immediately with one of the Gleesons. "Gosh," I thought, "isn't that..?" Red-haired, Irish acting family. Can't mistake them. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember this guy's name (it's Domhnall). Anyway, turns out he's a programmer for a major software company, and as the film opens, he's won the company lottery. The prize is a week at the CEO's exclusive estate!

So in no time at all, he's whisked off in a private helicopter to this vast estate, looking like the wilds of Scotland really. The house itself is practically a bunker, and it's some time before he can even find his host. And they're the only ones there - apart from a taciturn, Japanese-looking maid, and Alicia Vikander. Who hardly counts as a house guest.. you see, the purpose of this little trip is really to conduct a Turing test between Gleeson and Vikander. Because she's absolutely the last word in AI, a humanoid robot that is kept in a glass-walled room for the purposes of questioning.

The film looks and sounds absolutely beautiful. It's all clean lines, the swish of automatic doors, and classical music playing softly. Kind of like a modern hotel - with no windows. (This guy wants to keep his research private - although any potential thief would have some trek across that estate!) And, as with the best science fiction, it's extremely thought-provoking. How do you define intelligence? How do you figure out whether an entity is lying? And what do you do with an intelligent being you've created?

Hats off to Alicia Vikander. She's the hot starlet of the moment, and she plays a blinder here as the ingénue robot. I can't give any more away, but the ending is brilliantly thought out. It's a stylish, thought-provoking, and gripping film. Very highly recommended. About the trailer though - having watched it since, it does occur to me that you could go into this expecting a straightforward thriller about a rogue robot. Not at all what's going on here.

I just missed a bus across the road - irony is, I'd have caught it if there hadn't been another in front of it that blocked the driver's view. So I had a cold ten-minute wait for the next one. Decided to hop off one stop early and head to my local Chinese - I hadn't had a chance to eat after work. It so happened that I was sat beside a businessman staying in a local hotel, who had decided that venturing out to eat was the better option, and was very pleasantly surprised by what he found there. Well yes, I agree!

Tomorrow night, next on the list is The Theory of Everything - then, as I say, Kingsman the day after. Both also in Cineworld Hammersmith, but later in the evening, so I can eat at home. At least I'm getting to see some of the big releases.. next Monday, when I'm back from Ireland, I've got a ticket to the ballet Onegin, at the Opera House. Nice and far forward in the Amphitheatre, too. I'm delighted about that - sounds lovely. And on Tuesday, I'm heading to the Print Room in Notting Hill for the first time in ages - the show is called Title and Deed, and is a monologue about being an outsider. Oh, and I think getting out and about has done my flu a power of good!