The Couchpotatoes
I'm reading a lot of reviews on here on how great this movie was. Well I guess we don't have the same definition of "great" because I just thought it was an average movie. The idea of the story was not bad, even though we've all seen it before, but in general it was poorly executed. It didn't look very professional to me. The acting was just above average with no characters that will blow you away with their acting performances. What bothered me the most in this movie was the soundtrack. It didn't bring any suspense or punch, instead it was very monotone and made me want to fall asleep. A good movie needs a good soundtrack and in this case it was clearly one of the weakest points. For a sci-fi movie you would expect a bit of special effects to give it something special but even there you will be left disappointed. So in conclusion, the idea was not bad but we all seen better in the same genre.
Fishelakh-In-Vaser
The Machine is a rather successful attempt at implementing hard science fiction tendencies with a cyberpunk aesthetic. It may not be particularly adroit in terms of human and AI relationships, but I appreciate the rigor of the scientific explanation for the artificial intelligence. The film really excels at this in the beginning when Vincent conducts his own Turing tests as part of a secret headhunting operation. Then as he meets Ava things start taking a problematic turn. The military-industrial complex is invoked, but its purpose is sort of shadowy and never is contextualized in a way that would make the narrative more coherent.The questioning of human identity is the strongest point of the film, but I suppose that, at the very core, this film was more interested in being a thriller, rather than an exploration of the philosophical concepts.
Shirley Wu
I was looking for a movie on artificial intelligence and I found this movie on Netflix. The poster looked great, though I thought I could ignore the summary on the cold war against China part, I still clicked on "play" because I was really looking forward to a wonderful movie on Artificial intelligence. But I had to stop watching at about 20 minutes or so, I just can't believe it's 2013 and people are still imagining a cold war against China. I'm Chinese Canadian grew up in the French part of Canada living in USA, I feel like the more I watch the movie the more I'm eager to have a war with my distant relatives in China. Seriously, please stop making cheap movies on imaginary enemies like China. I wanna watch a movie on artificial intelligence, not telling me to have a war with myself wow? Is this movie trying to tell us British people feel closer to machines instead to Chinese? Then there's a serious problem for humanity, it's serious!
Fluke_Skywalker
Covers rather well worn territory about A.I. and really doesn't bring anything new to the table philosophically, but it's solidly made with good production values that belie its extremely low budget. The mood is set by the Vangelisesque score by Tom Raybould, clearly doing an homage to 'Blade Runner' (not the only tip of the cap to the latter in The Machine). Good turns from Toby Stephens and particularly Caity Lotz as the titular Machine. Also features Denis "Wedge" Lawson doing his best Jonathan Price impression.It's not a great film, but I think it's absolutely worth a watch for genre fans. For all others, your mileage may vary.
AD
