Ex Machina: The Post-Watch Randall Nichols Twitter Aggregate

In the middle of the night, usually after engaging with some creative sort of thing, I take to Twitter and just begin to ramble in a disjointed way about some nagging topic that is then on my mind. This is one of those rants. 20.May, 2015. -The Management. 

Finally saw Ex Machina tonight. My big take away is that it gave me what so many movies just don't. In a much different way and in a much different sense than what Mad Max did. But it is the same kind of thing.

I'm kind of in a mindplace where movies of a certain type either don't give me what I want, or give it to me in a very expected way. I got from Ex Machina and Mad Max this past week what I wanted to get from say, Inception or Prometheus, but just didn't. There are a handful of movies like that in the past couple years. It is a weird mix. Certainly it never seems to be on this level when I do.

Hard to explain what I mean when I say "on this level." I guess I always regard things like Moon and Children of Men as movies I wanted but didn't know I wanted. There's a spirit, a tone. Usually, it is not as publicized. Not as "out there" - advertised, available, etc. When it is, it is not popular.

Attempting to think of what sort of movies have done that. Dredd. Mentioned Moon, and Children of Men already. Ex Machina and Fury Road now. Silver Linings Playbook. Weirdly, The Winter Soldier. Under the Skin, maybe. Mentioning as far back as Children of Men, I'd have to add the double Eastwood threat of El Torino and Million Dollar Baby.

All of these movies reflect to me a style or a philosophy that calls back to my film school mindset. Not exactly auteur style. But close. And there have been other movies I've liked, or I've even loved in that timeline, but don't get this same, vague reaction out of me.

And see, even that doesn't work as an explanation, because I can't stick Winter Soldier in with a lot of those others. But there's a kind of storyline, a kind of storytelling, that is both simple in approach, but complex in execution. Lends to trust as a fan.

And like I said, the best I kind do is to name things I didn't get that from, that I guess I either expected to, or thought might be there? What I expected from the Prometheuses, the Avatars, and the Inceptions, I got from Ex Machina and Mad Max: Fury Road. What is that x factor? That maybe I didn't want to see this, or didn't think I did, but then I did?

Something that invoked that same feeling from, like, the first time when I watched The Conversation, or A Clockwork Orange, or Taxi Driver. But I want to say it has something to do with being pulled into someone else's indulgences.

Anyway. Ex Machina. Would recommend. Will definitely re-watch. It is 3:30 and I am wired after seeing it. Well done.