"Ex Machina"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a nerdy computer programmer, wins first prize! Who knows for what, but hey, Caleb is pretty excited about it. All Caleb knows is he gets to spend a week with Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the founder of Blue Book (read: Google), which is a tech company that is best known for its search engine that handles almost all internet searches.

At first Nathan seems like some kind of burly bro hipster. He is personable at times, but he also has a mad scientist way about him. When Nathan jokes to Caleb that he had all the people who built his home killed to protect his secrets, you know it is a joke, but you also look into Nathan’s squirrely eyes and think, “Um, are you maybe serious?”

Nathan is also a hermit. He lives way out in the middle of nowhere in a very secure, high-tech compound. When Caleb is flown in by helicopter, the pilot has to leave him a ways off from the compound because the pilot is not allowed to get any closer.

So what’s the prize? Well, Caleb gets to stay with Nathan, hang out with Nathan, party with Nathan (oh, yeah, Nathan is an alcoholic). But most importantly, Caleb gets to see Nathan’s latest work—his work on artificial intelligence.

Hence, Caleb meets Ava (Alice Vikander). Ava is artificial. That is clear from the humming machinery visible through the transparent skin covering most of her body. But Ava is also intelligent. Her speech, while a tad formal, is smooth and responsive to nuanced questions, and her facial expressions are subtle and remarkably human.

And so it turns out that this “prize” week is really Nathan’s way of getting Caleb to put Ava through the so-called “Turing Test”. The Turing Test has someone interface via a computer with one human and one robot/computer, and if this someone cannot tell which is which, the robot passes the test. Some people think this is a test for intelligence, thought, a mind, or even consciousness (though even Turing himself recognized its limitations with respect to the latter). But Nathan brings Caleb in for a sort of extended Turing Test: Caleb does not interact with Ava via a computer. He talks to her, interviews her, confides in her, listens to her desires and worries, gauges her facial expressions, weighs her movements, and so on. This is supposed to be the ultimate, decisive test for intelligence.

And that is what this film is all about. It has a singular focus: The Turing(-ish) Test. It is all about the test in one form or another. And one of the beauties is that we, the audience, are the ones running the test. Caleb is the interviewer, but we are the judges. Is Ava a person? Does she have a mind? Is she conscious? And it’s not just Ava. More generally: Who are the real people, and who are mere automata? And, by extension: Who is to be praised or blamed, who deserves freedom or punishment, and whose life is worth preserving?

I like that filmmaker Alex Garland is so obsessed with this Turing Test idea. Focus is good. But it is also risky. It is risky because if the heady AI stuff fails to come off, there isn’t anything else to back it up. There is little else driving this movie.

But, at the end of the day, who really cares? This is a sci-fi movie. Risks are what it’s all about. What matters is that “Ex Machina” stokes the imagination. It succeeds in its playing around with ideas—with this notion of external marks of the mental, in particular, and with the forms and importance of observation more generally. I say, “playing around” because “Ex Machina” is a sandbox. It is play—an exploration. It is not about answers (though it does eventually offer some answers, which is regrettable given how the rest of the film goes). This movie is about possibilities, what-ifs, potential advances and dangers, and an examination of what we are, could be, or could do.

Now, “Ex Machina” does not ask any new questions or raise any new puzzles. But it does offer a fun look at some really good questions and some really interesting puzzles.

"Get Hard"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

James (Will Ferrell) is rich. How rich? Well, when James’ fiancée tells him she thinks they should get a bigger house, her voice echoes down the corridors of their enormous mansion replete with arches and balconies and fountains and servants busy making it all sparkle. That’s how rich.

In “Get Hard”, James wants for nothing. He is a day trader who spins gold from straw. If he wanted to, he could swim in his money a la Scrooge McDuck.

That is, until the feds show up and charge him with fraud. James promises he didn’t do it, and he is sure his team of lawyers will get him off. But he is wrong. Then he thinks at least he will be safe in a minimum-security, white-collar resort prison. Wrong again. The judge decides to send a message and gives James 30 days before he has to report to San Quentin, a maximum-security prison teeming with murderers and rapists.

James is concerned. Surely his delicate, pampered frame will not withstand the hardships of prison. If he is going to survive, he needs to get hard.

So he goes to Darnell (Kevin Hart), the only black guy he knows. Actually, he doesn’t even really know him. They just ran into each other one day in a parking garage. James thought Darnell was trying to rob him. But cooler heads prevailed, and James promised he would have had the same reaction if Darnell were white.

But, given that Darnell is black, James does assume that he has been to prison and is therefore quite hard. So he offers to pay Darnell 30 grand to turn him into a bruiser. Darnell needs the money. So he agrees to help.

The problem: Darnell is not hard. He has never been to prison. He has never committed a crime. He knows nothing about gangs, toughness, fighting, or surviving prison. He is an average, middle class family man who owns a small business.

But, again, Darnell needs the money. So he plays along, acting like he knows what he is talking about, and putting James through his paces. James is a joke at first, big surprise. He can barely handle trash talk, let alone faux solitary confinement or a mild beating. His case looks hopeless.

Yet, over time, in his own silly and peculiar way, James starts to get a little a tougher, a little more savvy, and just a little bit harder. His trash talk is weird, but effective. He still cannot take a beating, but he weirds people out enough to keep them at bay.

All the while further details about his case are emerging. The closer James gets to going to jail, the closer he gets to figuring out why, and the closer he gets to being able to demonstrate his innocence. But time is running out.

Now, I should say, before seeing “Get Hard”, I was 100% committed to panning it. I pictured myself writing something like, “This movie is just a gimmick,” or “Every good joke is in the trailer. So don’t waste your time,” or “Just another goofy Will Ferrell movie exploiting his lumpy white male lameness.”

Now after seeing the movie, I admit that I have lost some of my resolve. Everything I was going to say is probably still true. The movie is a gimmick. It is one-dimensional. And so much of it does trade on the deep biological incongruence between Ferrell’s pasty body and the demands of being hard. But this movie is also kind of funny. Ferrell and Hart are charming, and they do have good chemistry. The jokes are extraordinarily predictable. But they are well executed, and easy to chuckle at.

So although “Get Hard” is a bad movie, it is a bad movie that is tough not to like just a little.

"Kingsman: The Secret Service"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

The post-Oscar hangover is harsh. The highs of movies like “Boyhood”, “Birdman”, and “The Grand Budapest Hotel”—which, by my estimation, are higher than most years’ highs—are replaced by the crushing lows of “Hot Tub Time Machine 2”, “The Lazarus Effect”, and “Fifty Shades of Grey”. A year in cinema always has peaks and troughs. This, alas, is no peak.

Which is not to say that there is nothing worth seeing out there. For example, “Kingsman: The Secret Service”, whilst, again, hardly being a high point, is enjoyable. This movie—which was actually released just before the Oscars—is a wild ride. It is way over the top. It is fantastical. And it is so earnestly unserious about itself that it makes for a good time.

The Kingsman—the group, not the movie—is a very secret, very elite British spy organization responsible for responding to and eliminating the world’s biggest threats. Well, actually, that’s not quite right. After all, global warming is plausibly one of the world’s biggest threats. And, ironically, it is this film’s villain—media mogul, Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson)—who is all about eliminating global warming (by eliminating its cause—i.e., us!). But more on that in a moment.

The Kingsman does, at very least, deal with a lot of the conventional spy organization, James Bond-style threats—you know, terrorists, Nazis, communists, etc.

This is dangerous work, as you might expect, and full of tragedy. So when agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) loses a fellow Kingsman one day, he takes it hard. So hard, in fact, that he dedicates his life to making it up to his fallen comrade’s baby son, Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin (Taron Egerton).

By the time he has grown up, Eggsy is a smart, talented, and sometimes charming kid. But he is also rough around the edges. He comes from a tough neighborhood. The streets are his playground. So when Harry comes knocking to recruit Eggsy for the Kingsman, both know there will be some growing pains.

And growing pains there are. Eggsy endures brutal and exhausting training as part of a competition with other recruits for the single open spot in the Kingsman. The way that Eggsy responds to challenges is unconventional and sometimes awkward. However, to his credit, he rather quickly learns to use his out-of-the-box approach to his advantage.

Unfortunately evil does not wait for training to complete. While Eggsy and his fellow candidates are still in their learning phase, Valentine is busy plotting the demise of the civilized world. His thing is global warming. He thinks of the human race as a virus or parasite feeding off the earth. And since us viruses are just ignoring what we are doing to the environment, Valentine sees it as his prerogative to cure Mother Earth of its disease.

The Kingsman do not agree, of course—well, at least not for the most part. So, ready or not, Harry, Eggsy and crew must spring into action.

“The Kingsman” has several immediate advantages that have nothing to do with plot, character development, conflict, catharsis, metaphor, or anything very sophisticated like that. First: immensely charming actors in snappy clothes. This advantage should not be underestimated. Second, this movie’s choreography and cinematography—particularly during the many comically brutal fight scenes—are stunningly engaging. Again, the force of this advantage should not be underestimated.

The question is whether “The Kingsman” can do what a movie like, say, the second “Matrix” could not do—that is, either transcend its immediate, relatively superficial advantages, or else ply those advantages to such great effect that it is possible to ignore its other deficiencies. It is a close call whether “The Kingsman” does either of these things. Its plot is formulaic and predictable. And there is not a whole lot else to grab onto and love. But it is not a disaster, either. It is plenty fun. And it certainly is no “Matrix Reloaded”.

Thank God.

"Black Sea"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

I tend not to like submarine movies. They just remind me that stressfulness and boredom are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, all those depth charges, red flashing lights, sweaty faces, and steam are plenty stressful. But, my goodness, they can be pretty dull. It’s like a slow, constant drip of water on your skin: both monotonous and torture.

I would not call “Black Sea” torture, though. It’s not a day in the park either, nor is it a quiet evening in, or even a swashbuckling adventure. It is predictably watchable.

“Black Sea” makes sure to remind you of the darker, and perhaps more intriguing, days of submarining—the Cold War, in particular, but also some of the Nazi U-Boats and WWII. But this movie is not really about all that. It is about Captain Robinson (Jude Law), who is a present-day submarine captain working for a corporation that, you know, needs submarines. That is, until he gets laid off. After all, who really needs submarines these days?

Robinson is pissed and doesn’t know what to do. He dedicated his whole life to submarining—and even sacrificed relationships with his son and former wife—and doesn’t really have anything to fall back on

But then a friend—also an out-of-sorts ex-submariner—tells him about this really hush-hush, really dangerous, certainly very illegal, opportunity. He tells Robinson that once upon a time the Soviets made a deal with the Nazis that involved shipping (via submarine) tens of millions of dollars in solid gold back over to the Third Reich. But on the way back through the Black Sea, the gold-laden submarine crashed. Either everyone forgot about the submarine—kinda a lot going on back then—or else they could not get to it, because, according to Robinson’s friend, the submarine is still there.

So of course what could be better for out-of-work sailors than to go on a treasure hunt? So that’s just what they do. They get their hands on an old Soviet sub, assemble a half-Russian, half-British crew, and set sail for the wreck.

The good-hearted, magnanimous Robinson tells his crew that, after paying their backers, they are going to split the treasure evenly between them. Jackpot! Right? Well, the problem is, the divers start to think, “Why does that there cook get as much as me?” And the beastly Russian engine-room worker thinks, “Well if one of these Brits happens to die on the job, there is more for the rest of us.” In other words, discontent is sown.

And of course it only gets worse, because, as we all know, a ride on a submarine is never smooth—whether it is a power failure, sinking below crush depth, enemy torpedoes and depth charges (which, mercifully, do not make an appearance in this film), or just those random yet seemingly ubiquitous hull breaches, something must go awry. I’m pretty sure Murphy Law’s was made with submarining in mind.

All that is to say, “Black Sea” has plenty of the stress and tension you would expect from a submarine movie. You really do feel like it would absolutely definitely suck to be on a submarine when something goes wrong. And I, at least, had the opportunity to once again thank my lucky stars that I am a landlubber.

But, for all its heart-pounding, stress-inducing drama, “Black Sea” remains strikingly conventional. This or that particular scene may not be predictable, but the movie as a whole sure is. Jude Law and the rest of the cast do an admirable job bringing the amusing (albeit contrived) story to life. But all the plot points just feel too familiar.

So yes, you will still feel the stress, just like you will still feel a punch in the gut even if you know it (or something like it) is coming. But whereas a punch in the gut always feels pretty fresh—it never gets old, if you know what I mean—“Black Sea” does feel somewhat stale.

"The Interview"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

“The Interview” is not entirely humorless. But by far the funniest thing about this movie is that some dictator halfway around the world thought that it was so seriously provocative, so worthy of outrage, that it called for an act of so-called “cyber vandalism”. This movie isn’t so seriously anything. And it is at most worthy of a languid wave of the hand, perhaps a derisive sneer, or maybe—just maybe—a chuckle or two. If you’ve burned more than three calories in the process, you’ve overreacted. So what’s truly hilarious is that “The Interview” has gotten the attention (and profits) that it decidedly does not deserve evidently because Kim Jong-un was so worried about it getting the attention that, again, it does not deserve.

Why doesn’t it deserve attention? Well, just watch the trailer. Also if you want to know the entire plot of the movie, just watch a trailer. Dave Skylark (James Franco), half-Barbara Walters, half-Perez Hilton, has a popular TV show where celebrities debase themselves. Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) is its producer. These two bottom-feeders get a chance to do something important when they land an interview with Kim Jong-un (Randall Park), who turns out to be a big fan of the show. But the CIA wants them to use their insider access to assassinate Kim Jong-un instead.

The rest of the movie is epicycles fluttering around the same plot points and gags. Skylark and Rapaport find out that Kim is surprisingly down-to-earth. Then they find out he’s not. They discover that Kim isn’t so bad. Then they find out he is. They think for just a second that Kim has his own side of the story and really cares about his people and actually isn’t doing such a bad job. Then they found out: Uh, nope.

Meanwhile they ride a tank while listening to Katy Perry, tangle with a Siberian tiger, hide things where even the TSA wouldn’t look, and play basketball with topless strippers. Yes, it is that kind of movie.

But with that said, “The Interview” is not as awful as I thought it would be. It has a certain level of self-awareness to it—awareness that it is, in fact, quite a dumb movie—that makes it hard to criticize too harshly. James Franco, in particular, should be lauded for the drunken smirk he wears on his glossy, contorted face throughout the movie—a smirk that says, “Yeah, I don’t know what this is either … so I’m just going to be relentlessly goofy.” At least he seems to be having fun. It reminds me of a sixth-grade slumber party: By midnight everyone in their soda- and pizza-induced stupor is giggling themselves sick over jokes they all know are ridiculously unfunny … but hey, why not?

Don’t get me wrong, “The Interview” is not a good movie. It is unabashedly dumb—nothing more, nothing less. Its guiding thoughts seem to be: “Wouldn’t it be funny if we made Kim Jong-un do this?” “Wouldn’t it be great if he turned out to be really into Katy Perry, margaritas, and gossip shows?” and “Kim should poop his pants at some point, right?”

The lasting legacy of “The Interview” will always be that, once upon a time, North Korea thought it was worth getting bent out of shape over. And yet ironically the only thing less effectual—less capable of being taken seriously—than North Korea’s threats is this movie.