• About

Cinezine Kane

Cinezine Kane

Tag Archives: Alicia Vikander

Stylish, shiny, and pointless: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. reboot

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alicia Vikander, Armie Hammer, Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Hugh Grant, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

UNCLE

Guy Ritchie should pay his production designer, cinematographer, and art and costume departments boatloads of money. They make his films look so great. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a case in point. Look at it too closely and it’s possible to convince yourself that when Shakespeare wrote those immortal words in Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he was anticipating Ritchie. There’s a lot of action, but not much point to the director’s reboot of the 50-year-old TV series, but it looks dazzling. It’s the movie equivalent of presents sitting under a Christmas tree, the gorgeous wrapping promising so much and delivering…socks.

In this origin tale, CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer, wrestling mightily and not always successfully with a thick Russian accent) meet cute when Kuryakin trails Solo to a meeting with East German mechanic Gaby (It Girl of the moment Alicia Vikander), who Solo plans to get over the Berlin Wall. Solo is a spy, but only because he’s been blackmailed into service after being caught out as a black marketeer after World War II. (Does this mean that Solo is really The Third Man’s Harry Lime?) Kuryakin is a whiz at planting bugs, but he’s a hitter who is most comfortable in hand-to-hand combat. The two men hate each other—clearly the start of a beautiful friendship as their respective handlers insist they partner up and work with Gaby to bring down a conspiracy involving Nazis, rich Italians, a nuclear bomb, a computer disc, and Gaby’s atomic scientist dad.

Vikander is the best thing going in the movie. Given the chance to demonstrate her comic chops, she steals every scene she’s in, particularly one where she tries to drunkenly seduce Kuryakin. Cavill does what he can with a character that is all style and no substance, but at least he’s not stuck like poor Hammer playing someone who substitutes feats of strength for a personality. Hugh Grant makes a welcome appearance as Waverly, a man who is a complete mystery to Solo and Kuryakin, but not to anyone who has seen the original TV series. Expect to see much more of him if sequels ensue.

If The Man from U.N.C.L.E. should beget a franchise, maybe Ritchie should invest in hiring better screenwriters. The script he collaborated on with producer Lionel Wigram is a collection of spy movie clichés. There is a lot of action, a lot of chases, a touch of romance, plenty of double-dealing, and the obligatory torture scene and not a frame of it is original. It is pretty and pretty empty. The cast—and movie audiences—deserve better than this empty exercise in style.—Pam Grady

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Review: Alex Garland’s Turing test EX MACHINA

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alex Garland, Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a coder at BlueBook (think Google) is enjoying quite the heady week. Invited to BlueBoook founder Nathan’s (Oscar Isaac) remote mountain home, he has been tasked with performing a Turing test on the boss’s pride and joy, Ava (Alicia Vikander), the latest iteration in ongoing experiments in artificial intelligence. But having now interacted several times with the comely robot with a woman’s beautiful face, voice and shapely, metallic body, he wants to know why Nathan made Ava humanoid at all. Artificial intelligence doesn’t need a body to exist, after all. With that question, Caleb gets to the one of the flaws in writer Alex Garland’s (The Beach, 28 Days Later) tense, creepy directorial debut Ex Machina. It’s the wrong question, though. The correct question is why would a man clearly interested in building himself a high-tech blow-up doll bother with granting it intelligence at all?

Isaac suppresses his considerable charm to play the poster child of a tech overlord divorced from humanity. Nathan’s chilly, impersonal home, filled with surveillance equipment that lets him watch everything that goes on inside his house, reflects the personality of a man who knows how to say the right things (social cues no doubt gleaned from his endless spying on BlueBook’s users) to appear that he’s just a regular guy who just happens to be a billionaire genius—“appear” being the operative word. As Caleb’s week with him wears on, it’s is increasingly clear that Nathan has little use for the world the rest of humanity inhabits and for all his assertions that it is great to converse with an actual human being for a change, his contempt for Caleb is never far from the service. It is no wonder that Caleb becomes confused as he tests Ava: In a wig and with clothes to mask her robotic parts, she seems far more human than his host.

Stephen Hawking is among those that have expressed reservations about where the development of AI might lead. That question simmers beneath Ex Machina’s sleek surface as Caleb and Ava interact during the “tests.” But despite stunning visual effects that transform Vikander into a mechanical being, the vibe is less sci-fi than neo-noir. Gleeson is brilliant as a man seemingly in way over his head. But is he really the classic chump he appears to be, and if so, who is playing him: Nathan, Ava or both? And why?

The whys are what is problematic about Ex Machina. Nathan’s explanation for why he wanted Caleb to visit and perform the Turing test rings hollow. And his experiments in artificial intelligence don’t compute not only in the form they take with his female models but also in the fact that a guy with this man’s ego is not going to risk not being the smartest being in the room.

Looking past that, the film is a nifty thriller. The remote location, the sterile house where the rooms can only be accessed by key cards (and not all cards work for all rooms), the wild card that is Ava, and the growing distrust between Nathan and Caleb keep the tension humming even in the quietest scenes. Garland delivers the goods with this stylish and suspenseful first feature. –Pam Grady

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Categories

  • Interviews
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Short Takes
  • Uncategorized

Recent Posts

  • THE FABELMANS: Spielberg relates the birth of a filmmaker
  • A bloody good time: Partying with BODIES BODIES BODIES
  • TRIANGLE OF SADNESS trailers drops, plus a word about THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN
  • IN BRUGES stars Gleeson and Farrell reunite in new McDonagh dark comedy
  • Diving into a rescue operation with THIRTEEN LIVES

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Cinezine Kane
    • Join 46 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Cinezine Kane
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: