Ex Machina (2015)

Ex Machina (2015)

(spoilers)

Ex Machina fulfills the expectations I had after reading and hearing so much about it in the last couple of months. It continues Alex Garland’s streak of writing thought-provoking stories that challenge common perceptions we have about ourselves and our society. The movie uses amazing performances (Isaac, Vikander and Gleeson are all excellent), impressive visual effects and its gorgeous locations to generate a very effective movie that is intriguing from beginning to end. Just when you think it becomes too conventional it takes an extra turn at the end to become even more than we thought. It might not be an absolutely amazing movie (it’s not Looper), but it nevertheless is very good.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Avengers: Age of Ultron is basically what you want it to be: an entertaining movie based on comic books that has exciting action and fun Joss Whedon dialogue. The movie delivers on all those promises and that’s enough for an enjoyable comic book movie for me. It doesn’t go that extra step that Guardians of the Galaxy went, but on the other hand it has a much more fascinating villain and a more coherent plot overall. The character interactions are fun and this, unlike the first movie, every character gets enough opportunities to shine. It is amazing to see how many actors these movies are able to gather. It’s hard for me to tell how much fun such a movie is without having the background knowledge of the comics, but as a comic reader it is hard to deny how much fun it is to see those characters come alive and do their thing. Not everything makes complete sense and, just to be clear, this is no masterpiece of moviemaking (despite some great shots). It’s a fun movie, a million times better than the dreadful Man of Steel, proving (likes Guardians) that comic book movies are not all alike. It was mostly what I wanted it to be.

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