American battles. Films reviewed: G20, Drop, Warfare PLUS National Canadian Film Day!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Yearning for some Can-Con? We’ll mark your calendars: next Wednesday is Canada Film Day with over 1700 screenings and discussions about great Canadian movies across this country! In Toronto alone, directors and actors like Sophie Desraspe, Helen Lee, Eric Peterson, and Cody Lightning will be there at the screenings. There’s also a Town Hall discussion of Canadian culture with Don McKellar, Mary Walsh and Elle-Maija Tailfeathers. Canadian Films suddenly seem acutely relevant. Go to canfilmday.ca for showtimes.
But this week, I’m looking at three new movies from south of the border. There are Navy Seals in Iraq attacked by armed combatants; the US President locked in hand-to-hand combat with international terrorists; and a single mom terrorized by her cel phone.
G20
Dir: Patricia Riggen
It’s a resort hotel in Capetown, South Africa, and US President Danielle Sutton (Viola Davis), America’s first black female POTUS is preparing for the G20 summit. When she’s not practicing martial arts with her Secret Service bodyguard Manny (Ramón Rodríguez) she’s hanging with her family: loving husband Derek and her two teenaged kids. Serena, the older one, (Marsai Martin) is an accomplished hacker who can sneak, undetected, out of any building, even the White House. President Sutton is decked out in an elegant red evening gown — complete with cape — for the all-important photo-op. But something is rotten in the city of Capetown. There’s a conspiracy at work, led by evil Aussie mercenaries. And now armed soldiers are rounding up the presidents and their families! If they can pull this off, they’ll have trillions in “untraceable” crypto currency, and the leaders of the most powerful nations in the world will grovel at their feet.
But some of the leaders have escaped their clutches. Sutton, the elderly Korean First Lady, the pompous British PM, and a few others have form an impromptu posse. Can this ragtag group of heads of state beat the musclebound mercenaries in a contest of physical strength and mental acuity? Or is this world doomed?
G20 is a ludicrous but fun action thriller, told from the point
of view of a female, superhero-type president. This is not a unique movie theme: Many Americans love venerating their presidents. Think: Harrison Ford in Air Force One or even Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. But G20 is so silly… The villains carry the bitcoin wallet — with all the money — as if it’s a physical object, a MacGuffin they have to possess. And they eforce the leaders to read a nonsense speech (the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog) so they can make a deep-fake video… as if world leaders haven’t made hundreds of speeches already. A 60-year-old president who’s also an Iraq War hero and also a jiujitsu champ. Sure, why not…? It’s just a movie. The main story may be a hackneyed farce, but Viola Davis is a joy to watch.
Not a masterpiece but a watchable TV movie.
Drop
Dir: Christopher Landon
Violet (Meghann Fahy) is dressed-up but nervous. She’s on her first date since her husband died, five years ago. A single mom and an online therapist, she likes working from home so she can keep a close eye on Toby, her adorable, autistic son. But her wacky sister Jen (Violett Beane) insists she step out of her shell and have some fun. Jen’s babysitting Toby tonight to give her all the time she needs. And if there’s no chemistry with the guy she’s meeting, she can always just leave. So here she is in a fancy restaurant with a dramatic view of the city. In comes Henry (Brandon Sklenar) her first date, and there’s instant attraction. Henry is handsome, rugged and friendly, and has a steady job at City Hall. He likes her looks, her smarts and her honesty. They go to their table and start the date.
But the electricity between is interrupted by anonymous memes and texts that keep appearing on her phone, apparently dropped by someone somewhere in the restaurant. The messages become threatening, along with a warning: if you tell anything to Henry (the guy she just met) we’ll kill your son. Followed by live security footage from her home… with a masked man roving her halls with a gun. Whoever it is has control of all her security cameras and all the cels in the restaurant. They can see and hear everything she’s doing. 
They want her to commit a crime in plain view, and there’s no way to stop them. Can Violet save her son and outsmart this invisible villain on this date from hell?
Drop is a classic suspense thriller that plays on our fear of technology and surveillance. Afterwards I realized there are some major plot holes or impossibilities, but they don’t stand out while watching it. It’s a tightly budgeted Blumhouse movie so the actors are likeable but not A-list, and everything takes place in two tight locations – her home and the restaurant. It uses psychological fear instead of pyrotcechnics. And it works. This is a good, traditional suspense thriller, the kind where the tension keeps growing and never lets up.
I like this one.
Warfare
Co-Wri/Co-Dir: Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War), Ray Mendoza
It’s November, 2006, in Ramadi, a city in central Iraq, between Baghdad and Fallujah. Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is leading a squad of Navy Seals on a mission. They commandeer two houses, knocking down walls and pushing the families into their bedrooms. They’re setting up for a long wait, until a marine unit arrives with tanks to evacuate them. But armed enemy soldiers are setting up on nearby roofs, taking pot-shots at them. And when the tank finally arrives, the Seals are ambushed by an IED buried in the road. The Iraqi soldiers they are working with are killed, while some of their own are badly injured. They have to pull their bodies back into the house and try to save who they can. Can they fight off the insurgents until the Marines arrive? And who will survive this tense battle?
Warfare is a hyper-realistic depiction of an actual battle in Iraq as remembered by the US soldiers who were there (including writer/director Ray Mendoza). It’s not like your usual war movie. The film favours accuracy over character- building or back stories. And the characters speak in military jargon, full of Frogmen (navy seals), Bushmen (an aerial unit, overhead) and many more I couldn’t catch. The cast is 
excellent, especially Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter (The Revenant, We’re The MIllers, Midsommar) and Cosmo Jarvis — it really felt like you’re there, witnessing actual soldiers, showing bravery, camaraderie, and brotherhood. What the movie doesn’t deal with is why? Why were they there at all? What did that particular mission accomplish? Where are all those WMDs, the supposed reason for this war? Thousands of US soldiers were killed there, and many times more tragically killed themselves afterwards. And an estimated one million civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East were wiped out, millions more displaced and the whole region made unstable till today… and for what?
I’m glad I saw Warfare — it’s a rare chance to experience a non-jingoistic, up-close and personal look at US soldiers on the frontline. But don’t go to this docudrama expecting to be entertained. Because fun… it ain’t
G20 is now screening on Prime Video, and Warfare and Drop both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Trouble at home. Films reviewed: Civil War, Sting, Housekeeping for Beginners
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking a three interesting movies: from the US, North Macedonia, and Australia. There’s a carful of journalists heading to an apocalyptic Washington, a makeshift family in Skopje, and a carnivorous spider that fell from outer space.
Civil War
Wri/Dir: Alex Garland
It’s the near future in the United States, but these states are not united. The country is in the midst of a violent civil war, with a Texas- and California-based militia battling the federal government in an East vs West conflict. WF (Western Forces) vs the USA. The rebels are slowly advancing southward toward Washington DC.
Lee (Kirsten Dunst) a veteran war photographer is in New York, chasing a terror bombing alongside Joel a journalist (Wagner Moura). Lee has covered many wars at the frontline, but never one like this, on her home turf. Still, she and Joel want to cross the battlefront to get to DC and interview the president (Nick Offerman) ahead of the advancing rebel troops.
Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a grizzled newspaperman from way back, wants to hitch a ride as far as the Charlottesville front line. And greenhorn Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), straight out of school, says she idolizes Lee and her work. She caries a camera around her neck. Couldn’t she come too? Lee doesn’t mind mentoring young photographers, but not while she’s dodging bullets. In the end, all four of them begin their perilous in a 4WD.
It’s an apocalyptic journey, along broken highways filled with abandoned cars. Burnt out towns have snipers standing guard on roofs. Gas stations only take cash, preferably Canadian. Fear, hatred and the stench of rotting bodies floats in the air. Soldiers in camo, their hair dyed fluorescent colours casually brandish assault weapons. Accused collaborators hang from 
rafters. Will their press passes be enough to save them from friendly fire? And who will enter the Whitehouse?
Civil War is a Heart of Darkness plunge into an apocalyptic America where the enemy is ourselves. It’s thrilling, chilling, and quite disturbing. The theme is politics and war (and journalism), but you never quite find out what the two sides are fighting about, what they stand for, who’s right or who’s wrong. Rather, it’s about the hellish nature of war, and how conflict can destroy a country. Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) made 28 Days Later, where an infection that leads to fast-moving zombies destroying the world. This has a similar feel but with a very different type of monster. And it will have you on the edge of your seat all the way through.
Sting
Wri/Dir: Kiah Roache-Turner
It’s a cold winter night in a big, American city, where a record-breaking ice storm has trapped everyone in their homes. Charlotte (Alyla Browne), an intense, blonde Wednesday Addams, lives in a tenement with her mom, her cartoonist stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr), and her infant brother. Ice storms are boring, but luckilly, Charlotte knows the building through and through. She easily crawls through vents to spy on other tenants: her sweet but demented Grandma (Noni Hazlehurst), her cruel great aunt Gunter (Robyn Nevin), the slumlord who owns the building; Maria, a sangria-guzzling alky with a yapping chihuahua, and Erik, a reclusive scientist. To keep herself occupied, Charlotte keeps a tiny spider she found in a glass jar. She names her Sting. But this is no ordinary spider. Sting can communicate with Charlotte, perfectly imitating her whistles. And Charlotte doesn’t know Sting is an intelligent alien that fell to earth inside a meteor.
As Sting voraciously consumes the bugs she feeds her, the spider rapidly grows in size and strength. Charlotte moves her into an aquarium, but even that won’t contain her. Like Charlotte, it can run through the vents, snatching, mummifying or scarfing up small animals on the spot. But when Charlotte notices people are disappearing, she realizes something is not right. She teams up with Ethan and a professional exterminator named Frank (Jermaine Fowler) to get Sting under control… but are they too late?
Sting is a ridiculously silly horror film about a man-eating alien insect who spins slimy webs and cocoons out of slimy mucous. Lots of fake blood and gore. At the same time, it always keeps a humorous tone, even in the scary and gross-out scenes. One interesting fact: Charlotte names her spider Sting after reading The Hobbit, but JRR Tolkien fans will notice Sting was actually the dagger Bilbo Baggins used to kill… a giant, man-eating spider! Another interesting fact: although it’s set in a snowy city like New York, Sting is an Australian movie, with an almost completely Aussie cast (including the delightful Noni Hazlehurst.)
Suffice it to say, Sting is an unabashedly B-movie that’s also a fun night out.
Housekeeping for Beginners
Wri/Dir: Goran Stolevski
It’s present-day Northern Macedonia. Dita is an older woman who works at a social welfare office in Skopje. She’s descended from a prominent family in Tito’s Yugoslavia and shares a big house with a middle-aged man named Toni (Vladimir Tintor). Suada (Alina Serban) — a client from work — lives there too; she fled her abusive husband. Suada brought her two kids with her: tough, teenaged Vanessa (Mia Mustafi) and 6-year-old Mia (Dzada Selim). Today, there’s a new face in the house: 19 year old Ali (Samson Selim). He’s a sweet-talker who dyes his hair blond and is fond of green fingernail polish. He also knows everyone and everything happening in his neighbourhood. This means now there are two moms, one and a half dads, and a bunch of kids. The unusual thing is Dita and Suada are lovers, and Ali is Toni’s latest hookup. But that’s not all. Dita and Toni are ethnic Macedonians, while Ali, Suada and the kids all come from Shutka, a Muslim Romani neighbourhood. Dita’s house serves as an underground Mecca for outcastes, whether LGBT, Romani or both.
But everything changes when Suada is diagnosed with a fatal illness. She wants to make sure her kids are taken care of after she dies, and to give them a chance at success. The Roma are severely discriminated against, at school, work and even in accessing social services. If Rita and Toni adopt Mia, a bright and creative little girl, perhaps she can escape this endemic racism. But can a group of misfits live like a normal heterosexual family? Or is their experiment doomed for failure?
Housekeeping for Beginners is a sweet and realistic drama about the daily life of an unusual family and the tribulations they face. It’s also a real eye-opener! I never knew there are Muslim Romani communities, nevermind gay subcultures, within Northern Macedonia. It gives a glimpse into the street life of Shutka, and the complex social structures within that 
neighbourhood. The acting is great, the characters they play are bold and fascinating. Apparently Samson Selim who plays Ali is the real-life father of Dzada Selim, the girl who plays Mia. It’s directed by Macedonian-Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski, who spins amazing stories. This is the third movie I’ve seen by him (Reviews: Of an Age, You Won’t Be Alone) and even though his genres vary widely, he has a distinct style of storytelling, a bittersweet intimacy, which I’m liking more and more with each new film.
This is a good movie.
Sting, Civil War and Housekeeping for Beginners all open this weekend in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Big Changes, Big Trouble. Films reviewed: Every Day, The Party, Annihilation
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Everybody knows change is good, but big changes can lead to big trouble. This week I’m looking at three good movies about women facing big changes. There’s a British politician with a once-in-a-lifetime career change; a biologist investigating changes that are scientifically impossible; and a high school student whose boyfriend changes bodies once a day.
Every Day
Dir: Michael Sucsy
Rhiannon (Angourie Rice) is a highschool student in Maryland. Her mom’s a careerist, while her dad, since his breakdown, stays at home painting pictures. Her boyfriend Justin (Justice Smith) is a popular athlete… and a bit of a jerk. So she is surprised when he agrees to play hooky and spend the day just with her. It’s the perfect date: They explore downtown Baltimore, he pays attention to her, stops smoking, they share intimate personal stories, find their special song, and for the first time, they
actually have fun together. Is this true love? But the next day he’s acting like a douche again, with only vague memories of the day before. It’s like he’s a different person. What’s going on?
What’s going on is he was a different person that day, someone named “A”. “A” is a bodyless being who inhabits a different person each day and — like Cinderella — departs that body at exactly midnight. 
“A” has no choice of who they’ll wake up as, except that it will be someone their age who lives nearby. “A” could be a boy that day, or a girl, could be black, white or asian, could be straight, gay or trans. Could be ugly or attractive. Rhiannon and “A” have to find each other each day to carry on their relationship. Hint: “A” knowing Rhiannon’s phone number helps a lot. Can their love overcome “A”’s ever-shifting identity?
Every Day is a cool, young adult fantasy/romance that works. It’s set in Maryland, but was shot in Toronto, and it has a Degrassi feel to it, where the multiracial, multigender nature of the cast is omnipresent but not central to the plot. Instead it deals with questions of identity, look-ism, and mental illness.
I liked this movie.
The Party
Wri/Dir: Sally Potter
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a politician in the UK celebrating her promotion, the pinnacle of her career. Starting tomorrow, she’ll be the Shadow Minister of Health for the opposition Labour Party. So she’s throwing a party for her nearest and dearest. They 
arrive two- by two . There’s Martha (Cherry Jones) – a lesbian feminist university prof with her earnest partner Jinny. Cynical April comes with her flaky boyfriend Gottfried (Patricia Clarkson and Bruno Ganz), a self-professed healer. And Tom — a nervous and brittle financier (Cillian Murphy) — comes without his wife Marianne, Janet’s closest friend and 
workmate. Janet’s husband the grey-bearded Bill (Timothy Spall) sits alone in the parlour spinning vinyl as she bakes her vol-au-vents, to show that a woman can feel at home both in Westminster and in her kitchen. Problem is, her hors d’oeuvres are burning even as her party is collapsing like a house of cards, as each guest reveals a big secret. There’s cocaine, champagne, a 
fire, broken glass, face slaps… even a handgun.
The Party is a drawing room comedy that pokes fun at the social conceits of a generation of middle-class, leftist baby boomers. It’s the work of Sally Potter, director of Orlando and Ginger and Rosa. Shot in black and white with a wicked musical soundtrack that shifts the mood from scene to scene, it clocks in at just over 70 minutes, as a short-but-sweet English comedy.
Annihilation
Dir: Alex Garland
Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biology prof at Johns Hopkins who specializes in mutating cancer cells. Her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) – a soldier she met when she was in the army – is missing and presumed dead. But when he shows up at her bedroom door, seemingly with no memory of what happened and how he got there, she decides to investigate. She’s valuable to the military, a woman as comfortable with a petri dish as she is with a submachine gun. She joins a crack team of scientists, all women, headed by the laconic psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Their goal is to explore unknown territory within a swampy National Park.
It’s encased in something called “the Shimmer”, a phenomenon eminating from a lighthouse on the coastline. No one who goes into the Shimmer comes out alive (except for her husband 
Kane) and it’s getting bigger and bigger each day. From the outside it looks like a giant rainbow-coloured, plastic shower curtain that’s melting upwards. On the inside it’s even stranger, a world where distinctions like “animal/vegetable/mineral” cease to exist. It’s both beautiful and grotesque, filled with Chihuly crystals, human topiary and brightly-coloured tree fungi. Unrelated species are combining and mutating at a rapid rate, into a cancerous growth — just like the cells Lena studies, only prettier. And they’re affecting the five women too, both their minds and their bodies. Video messages they 
find (left by previous soldiers) only make things worse. Can Lena survive the hideous creatures and her deranged and suspicious teammates before she faces the scariest entity of all?
Annihilation is a terrifying exercise in horror sci-fi psychedelia. It references everything from Arrival, to The Wizard of Oz to Apocalypse Now, as the team paddles their way though a Heart of Darkness in their search for emerald city. Natalie Portman is great as the elegant soldier-scientist, and director Alex Garland brings us a different take on post-apocalyptic images. Annihilation is the kind of psychedelic fantasy that keeps you guessing.
This movie is scary-pretty… and pretty scary.
The Party comes to Toronto next week (check your local listings); Every Day and Annihilation open today. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Terror! Films reviewed: Warriors from the North, Help us Find Sunil Tripathi, (T)error, A War of Lies, PLUS Ex Machina
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Some people are terrified of terrorists — and for good reason. In Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan or Iraq, lots of people are dying. Other people are terrified of being mistaken for a terrorist by the very people – police or intelligence officers – that should be protecting them. So this week I’m looking at documentaries about the War on Terror and how it affects us. These films are all playing at Hot Docs – Toronto’s international documentary film festival – starting today. And on a lighter note, I’m reviewing a science fiction movie… about sexy robots.
Warriors from the North
Dir: Søren Steen Jespersen, Nasib Farah
Al-Shabab is a Somalia-based fundamentalist militant group, that sprung up in reaction to Ethiopia’s invasion of that country. Now its members claim responsibility for notorious events like the 148 people gunned down at Garissa University College a few weeks ago, and the massacre at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, both in Kenya. This movie is about the young ethnic Somalis from Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway – who join the group to act as suicide bombers. Why do they do it? In a series of interviews, a young
Somali-Danish man explains. He says members come to recruit despondent young men who feel they have no future and don’t fit in. The local mosques are strongly opposed to Al-Shabab — killing is condemned, but the recruiters deride them as weak. The movie opens with a shocking scene: Somalis at their graduation in Djibouti – young doctors all – blown up by a Danish suicide bomber. The movie follows an older man, who works at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, whose son has disappeared with Al-Shabab and gone to Somalia. The father is desperate to find his son, talk to him by phone, and convince him to give it all and just come home again. But as becomes clear in recordings of Al-Shabab members, you couldn’t leave even if you want to. Very touching story.
Help us Find Sunil Tripathi
Dir: Neal Broffman
Sunil is a straight A student, a saxophone player and an all around nice guy. But after a few years at Brown University, things start going bad. He’s depressed. And one day, he just walks away from it all and disappears. His family is devastated, so, along with sympathetic volunteers, they start a huge search for him on foot in Providence Rhode Island, and online using facebook. They post his face, and a plea to him – come home, Sunil, we love you. Soon after, a horrific attack stuns the world – the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The city is locked down for a massive manhunt. And somehow, on Reddit and Twitter, someone mistakenly decides that the blurry images of a man in a white hat… is Sunil. Sunil is a terrorist! It goes viral, and the family and friends searching for their wonderful lost brother are subject to what can only be described as an on-line lynching of the missing boy. The film chronicles this harrowing period when they’re flooded by venomous online attacks and, as always, a voracious mass news media desperately trying to catch up with social networks.
(T)error
Dir: David Felix Sutcliffe
About 50% of the arrests the FBI makes in its War on Terror are actually targeted sting operations using paid informants. And some are more dubious than others. This doc looks at both sides of such an operation, the asset and the target.
Saeed, aka Shariff, is a bit of a character. He’s an older African American Muslim man, a former black panther, who is an informant for the FBI. And – without telling the Feds – he allows a filmmaker, Cabral Lyric, to follow him around. His job? To attract and entrap 
potential POIs – persons of interest – within urban, Muslim communities who might be ripe for terrorism in the eyes of the FBI. The target? Khalifa, a white convert to Islam in Pittsburgh 
who sports a long beard and a turban. The FBI says Khalifa sympathizes with Al-Shabab. How do they know? He writes his outspoken views publicly, on facebook. Cameras follow both Shariff and Khalifa, who tells the filmmakers he suspects an FBI informant is trying to entrap him! He doxes the informants and plans a press conference. This real-life dramatic thriller is part absurd comedy, part tragedy, as it goes behind the scenes to show the FBI excesses in their War on Terror.
The previous cases are all small scale stories. The next one is as big as they come.
A War of Lies
Dir: Matthias Bittner
Rafid al-Janabi was a prospective refugee in the late 1990s. He fled Iraq to escape Saddam Hussein’s ruthless government, but in Germany he was singled out as a Person Of Interest by their secret service. Despite the fact he had nothing much to tell them, he decided to play along – maybe it would speed up his refugee status. He told them he’s a chemical engineer who worked 
at the MIC – the military industrial complex. And that he had access to a secret unit in the desert at Al Hakam that makes biological weapons. The problem is the UN had already closed that unit down. But Rafid concocted an explanation that couldn’t be disproven. Saddam, he said, 
drove his weapons around in three trucks. (He remembered there was a truck depot not too far from Al Hakam, so satellites would see trucks driving around the area.) And, after brushing up on chemical engineering, he drew pictures to support his story. Who can it hurt? And if it overthrows a dictator like Saddam, all the better.
Known by the codename Curveball, Rafid didn’t realize that his little WMD story would reach Washington and — after 9/11 — would be used to justify the entire US invasion of Iraq, and the war, death, destruction and terror that followed. The film shows Farid himself, the trickster and storyteller, in a dark, echoey room recounting/confessing his side of the story, illustrated by spooky reenactments and period footage. This is a great, chilling doc.
Ex Machina
Dir: Alex Garland
Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is a skinny, wimpish blond guy who works as a programmer. He wins a lottery to spend a week with Nathan, the secretive CEO of his company, a google-like search engine. Nathan (Aaron Isaac) is a burly guy with a buzzed scalp and a bushy black beard. He’s obnoxious, aggressive and lives in an isolated villa somewhere in a lush rainforest valley. He’s also a genius. He brought Caleb there to conduct a Turing Test. A Turing Test determines whether an Artificial Intelligence program – AI – can pass as a human.
Here’s the twist. This AI is Ava a beautiful, female robot (Alicia Vikander) who Caleb
speaks to through a glass wall. They form a sort of relationship – is it love? – as she begins to feel more and more real to him. Aaron tells Caleb she’s anatomically correct. Each day, the electric generator in the place shuts down and the cameras turn off. And that’s when she confides in him – Aaron is evil and not to be trusted. Who 
will Caleb side with: Aaron or Ava? Is she really alive… or just a robot? And what about Aaron? And Caleb…? Is anything real?
This is a cool, interesting science fiction movie. You have to admit though, it’s a total guy fantasy, where the woman are all machines created by men for their pleasure. And that’s basically what the movie is… but the acting is great, and there are enough twists, turns and tension to keep it very interesting. I like this movie a lot.
Ex Machina opens today in Toronto, and this week you can find (T)error, Warriors from the North, a War of Lies, and Help us find Sunil Tripathi all playing, starting right now, at hot docs. Go to hotdocs.ca for showtimes.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
culturalmining.com 
leave a comment