One-Liners: Trust Issues

EX MACHINA (B-minus) -- It's rare that I fail to immerse myself in the world created by a filmmaker. But throughout this sci-fi snoozer, I was nagged by the creepy misogyny of Alex Garland's tale of a sexy young thing powered by artificial intelligence.

Ava (sculpted Scandinavian Alicia Vikander) is the latest prototype from the mind of reclusive computer genius Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Ava has about a size 16 waist, pouty lips and imploring eyes. Nathan also has a fetching assistant, Kyoko (the model Sonoya Mizuno), who is valued for her inability to understand a lick of English. And here we have the ultimate male fantasy: Which anorexic beauty do you prefer -- the one whose brain you have created and programmed, or the mute Asian? It's all rather fetishistic and somewhat revolting. And I couldn't rid myself of the thought that I was watching Garland manipulate real women to service his Hollywood megalomania.

The story is minimal. Nathan (for reasons that don't much rise above plot convenience) recruits young Caleb (Domhnall Gleason, asea) to participate in an experiment in which Nathan will chart how Ava and Caleb interact so that Caleb can assess how human she seems. Or something like that.

What transpires is a series of suspense-less conversations between Ava and Caleb. It plays like "My Dinner with A.I." Part of the problem is the flat writing. (Garland penned the impressive "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine," and this is his directorial debut.) The other problem is the lack of charisma and chemistry coming from Gleason and Vikander. Gleason was sharp and comical in "Frank," but here he flails and simply cannot carry a scene, overdoing the air of naivete. Vikander, frequently clad in a granny dress and dark wig for the tete-a-tetes, is about as vivacious as a robot. Together they drag the movie down before it can get off the ground.

Isaac, a compelling screen presence, struggles to get a grip on this one-note character. His talents are wasted. Mizuno is blatantly exploited as eye candy; in one scene, when a character sneaks into a room, Kyoko -- inexplicably -- is splayed on the bed, naked, in a phony Marilyn Monroe pose.

Several of the twists are entirely predictable, including the biggest one of them all. How will Caleb figure out a way to outwit a man who gets drunk every night? When power outages occur during the Ava-Caleb confabs -- cutting the remote video feed -- can Nathan actually still hear what they're whispering about? What's Kyoko's secret? Who, exactly, is tricking whom here?

None of it is particularly puzzling, intriguing or even interesting. It's little more than Alex Garland's big wank.

FAR FROM MEN (C+) - Westerns are making a bit of a comeback in the indie art-film world. But, with the exception of Tarantino, they tend to be fairly sluggish affairs. (See "Slow West.") Sort of Bramblecore.

Here we have rugged, aging Viggo Mortensen, moping his way through the wilds of Algeria in this 1950s morality tale based on an Albert Camus short story. He plays Daru, a man of French ancestry who was raised in the French colony and, despite obvious dangers, remains planted there, teaching schoolchildren and helping distribute sustenance to their peasant families. He lives alone on a plateau, where he is a sitting duck for rebels, who recently killed a teacher in a nearby village.

Dumped on his doorstep, in manacles, is Mohamed (Reda Kateb), who killed his own cousin and is now needing an escort to meet justice in a town that's a long day's walk away. Off on foot they go, with the Frenchman and the Algerian treading the no-man's-land between the frontier rebels and their colonist hunters -- trouble from both sides. Daru and Mohamed awkwardly bond along the way.

Visually stunning at times, "Far From Men" just never gels narratively. Bursts of violence are jarring and a poor fit. Mortensen broods intensely, and Kateb shambles along as a broken man, but by the one-third mark it's clear that these two just won't click. It was tempting to pull the plug.

A late scene in a brothel provides some genuine tenderness and bonding. And a final scene at a crossroads is finely executed. But highlights like those are just too few and far between for this to be a successful film.