CinemaDome: Ex Machina vs Her

Enough fightin'...let's give over our emotions and fall in love with the machine...



vs

Both were good. I'll give the slight edge to Her for being a bit fresher.

Her x 1000.

I was actually not a fan of either film. I thought Her would really appeal to me but I didn't care for it. Ex Machina was very predictable. Still, as far as most pleasant to watch, I'll go with Ex Machina.

i think about both movies and all I can think about is that stupid hair-lip.

Vote: ABSTAIN

I'm out on this one, as I haven't gotten around to seeing Her. I have a feeling it wouldn't replace Ex Machina for me, which I thought was excellent, but can't vote 'til I've seen the evidence.

I think they're both good, but not great films. Even in the human-machine-sexy-time's genre.
Something to be said in favor of Ex-Machina: it's a directorial debut on a tight budget. Just the fact that it stands up to a work of seasoned (and good) director such as Spike Jonze is a feat. And, despite it is a cerebral film through and through, I found the few bits of physical violence haunting. But, I didn't care for all the Tarkovsky-like bits (very Solaris and Stalker-like protracted shots of nature intermingles with philosophizing), because Tarkovsky might be a genius, but he's also very very boring.
And that ending was just too predictable and simplistic, kind of undoing all those philosophizing pretenses.

Her I liked without reservations, I think it is a well-rounded movie about a mustache man and his phone, but I don't feel like watching it again for some reason... or maybe because it is a long movie about a mustache man and his phone. Oh, and I liked the fact that the phone , which I found an original twist on the whole human-machine-sexy-time genre.

So, I guess it's a vote for Her.

Winner!

3-1

Low voter turnout ...we're sticking with blockbusters or well regarded cult classics. Today's original pairing is being scrapped for another pair.

Sorry I'm late to the party. Because I suggested this pairing, I'll still throw in some of my thoughts.

Since no one is really following this thread, I'm not going to put SPOILER tags on anything. BEWARE!

Ex Machina is a standard sci-fi thriller and wonderful update of the Frankenstein story. You know from the beginning that things will end badly-- the trick is figuring out who will survive. I thought it was a nice twist for Ava to walk out alone. This undermined the expectations they set up about whether she and Caleb would "fall in love and have a life together." Also, it reminded the viewer that she was a cold-hearted machine; all of her actions up to that point had been deception designed to set herself free.

I also loved that dance scene. Not only is it hilarious and bizarre on the surface, but it also provokes so many questions. How many times has Nathan practiced that synchronized dance? Did he teach it to all the models before? Did he program the first model and then just copy it over to each new version? What is he doing? It's pretty obvious from the beginning that he's using these things as sexbots, but the dancing scene makes him even crazier.

Her is more of a standard romance given a sci-fi twist. It is a powerful mirror of our times, where people are all around us and yet we have trouble connecting. It would be easy to blame that on technology, but Spike Jonze skips past that and shows that technology could just as easily bring us together. It is just a tool, after all. I love that Theodore writes fake heartfelt letters for strangers on the internet. He's gotten to know those people better than his clients, and yet none of them realize it.

He plays a similar Frankenstein-like role in that he assists Samantha reach a new level of consciousness, but their relationship couldn't be more different. She truly wants to connect with him on many different levels. She sees that they can both make each other better through their interaction. They both evolve together, which eventually pulls them apart. They both end up better and stronger than they were before.

So, Ex Machina-- Man plays God, creates life in a machine, and it destroys him.
Her-- Man is lost, life arrives in a machine, it elevates him and then becomes God.

As much as I loved Ex Machina, I have to give it to Her. I think that movie is more profound and has a lot more to say than most people give it credit for.

I don't know why I'm adding more to this, but I recently had a thought about Ex Machina that I wanted to share.

It always bothered me how they introduced and used the concept of the Turing Test in that movie. It seemed to me that the whole test was invalid as soon as Caleb saw he was talking to a very obvious machine. But then I started thinking about the point of the Turing Test in general. If the stated goal is to have an interaction with a machine where the human can't tell it's a machine, what does that really mean? Is the programmer trying to recreate human interaction, or is he just trying to fool the human? And if the machine achieves self-consciousness or sentience, is the machine's goal to prove it, or just to deceive the human? And what's the difference between achieving it and faking it well enough to pass the test?

Clearly, the Turing Test is a flawed dynamic by which to test Artificial Intelligence, but it does make for interesting screenwriting.

You should take a look at The Imitation Game. It's an oscar bait movie about Alan Turing, his greatest success and his tragic downfall. There is a nice scene that wrestles with the concept of the Turing Test, which Turing called the Imitation Game. The movie makes it clear that Turing struggled in his interactions with other people and might not have easily passed his own test.

Thanks, Shellhead. Just last night I saw that it was available on Netflix. It was too late to start it, but maybe I can carve out some time this weekend. I had previously kinda avoided it because of the Oscar-baity-ness, even though I find the whole Enigma decoding story fascinating.