iTunes Exclusive Episode Ex Machina

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The following is a sooner orgator production. It's a sooner orgator production. The Grading's Empire, Member, hand or members.

If you are hearing my voice, we hope it means—at least one of the following items. We hope you listen to the Clubhouse Podcast at least once in your life. Your one-stop shop or all-thing sports entertainment.

Live every Sunday, 70's from Fort Pacific. Or maybe it means you subscribe to the Clubhouse podcast on iTunes so you can listen whenever you want. Because it is time for another iTunes Explosive Welcome.

My name is Rob and I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast but I am not alone for this particular iTunes Explosive. Our 92nd iTunes exclusive. Joining me across the desk is he tends to do is my co-host for the show and a man that sometimes feels like he's just a cog in a machine but an important cog he is he is chat welcome to the show.

Thank you sir. Nice to be here. Also joining us for this particular edition across the desk from me is the official fact checker of this show and a man who does a mean robot on the dance floor.

You may know him his fun don go but his mom and even don Ford I'm going to call him Don Ford welcome sir. In eighth grade they call me Break Dance Don. Please tell me that's true.

I'm so using that. Also joining us to his left is a man who has seen the future and if he ever says to you come with me if you want to live things have gotten that bad. He is the ginger ninja.

He is the king of bowling. He is Andrew Beckham. Welcome to the show sir.

Thank you. I'm just here to save all mankind. I'll let you just see your ceiling get fine.

That's true talking. But I was making it sound better. If he's here to save mankind we're all going to hell on a hand basket.

I said tell you I'm driving the bus. Whenever we do one of these episodes it's usually to review something and this is no exception. For this particular edition we are here to review the brand new film directed and written by first timer Alex Garland.

It is called X Machina starring Alicia Vickender who you might remember from 7th son Dommal Gleason and Oscar Isaac both of whom you will soon know from Star Wars the Force Awakens. Here's the basic setup. Gleason plays a guy named Caleb who in the beginning of the film is sitting at his desk at work.

He works for a search engine and he finds out he's won a employee lottery. And the prize is he gets to go spend a week at the secluded home of the CEO of his company Nathan played by Oscar Isaac. What he finds out when he gets there is yes they're going to be hanging out and drinking and doing what guys do but he's also going to help him evaluate an artificial intelligence that Nathan's been working on named Eva played by Ms.

Vickender. So over the next seven days he works with Eva but finds out maybe not everything is exactly what it seems. Running time here is about an hour fifty eight okay.

Don we'll start with you before we start. Got to think our best friends. Feel free sir.

Everybody at Allied Ashley thank you for so much for inviting us to this day. They are better than us than they ever have to. Oh totally 100%.

So Dommal Gleason in the storyline here interesting. I also it did not dry too much for me but it kind of had a I thought a slower pace. Okay but I found the plot the main plot kind of interesting.

Even though it's kind of a mix of like Blade Runner and AI put together with a different style that different player. That's an interesting way to look at it. I'm not sure I would I saw the Blade Runner in it but I get it.

I get where you're going with that Andrew. So Reboil. So Smith's full.

I enjoyed it. The general uneasiness that was like you kind of felt throughout the movie. I felt it was real tangible just like the whole movie.

You could just cut the tension with a knife like I could just grab. I could be right in there. I have said many times when we do these episodes that when an director works with a script that he wrote it kind of gives you a bit of an advantage as a director because you already know the vision of the writer because you're the writer and I think that really translated it over well in this particular film because I I never thought it dragged.

I thought the pacing here was dead on for me again. Yeah, I didn't say it didn't drag or anything. I thought there's a couple slow motions but did not drag in where it's like oh come on.

You could get to cut this out. And I think that's your opinion. Yeah, but for me I thought the story was very well paced.

I liked how you always had that feeling that right around the next corner or something's fixing to happen. And sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it didn't.

I really really enjoyed the story line because you look at how fast technology is moved even in the last 15 years. You know, you look at Terminator 2 which revolutionized everything is almost 25 years old. Yeah, how old's Blade Runner?

35? Yeah, yeah. You can close it.

Yeah. But you look at how much the technology has moved. And so we are now closer to this I think everyday we're closer to it than we've ever been.

And because of that, it kind of takes on a different meaning for us as people now because this is more tangible to us than it was 20 years ago. That makes any sense. Yeah, like 35 years ago, no one thought of a cell phone and look what we have now.

Right. Well, and all of us has seen that creepy video of that. It looks like a super model from the distance but the close you get to you see it's a full on cybernetic, you know, it's a machine.

Yeah. And you have all seen it's frighteningly. And you know how far in the future that this film takes place?

The near future. 10 minutes. Really.

It says here that Director Alex Cohen has described the future president in the film as 10 minutes from now. Me, that quote, if somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised but we wouldn't be that surprised. Yeah.

But again, because we're so close to it and the technology's come so far, and visual effects have come so far. It's, it's, I mean, watching Ava move. Oh, yeah, just visually.

And it didn't seem like that CGI did. It looks so natural. The look of film, the film was incredible.

I love the nature shots and that thing and where he lived. It'd be like, I'd like to stay there Well, the brilliance for me was it wasn't style over substance, visually gorgeous. Oh, totally.

Absolutely brilliant effects, great cinematography, but it didn't take a, like, it didn't try to cover up any blemishes in the story. If anything, it complimented the story for me. Oh, yeah, totally.

I agree. 100%. That look was great.

But I think that's how he tended to be. Well, every, every director wants that. Right.

But it'd be, let's face it. There weren't a whole lot of, like, visual effects, like, explosions or anything. But he didn't need it.

Right. The household itself. And another thing I dug about the look of the film, too, was it had just a hint of old school 70 sci-fi to it, but it works.

Unlike certain other films that we might have seen under the skin that it didn't work as well for. You okay with there? Yeah.

I know something. Um, um, uh, little scarlet fever, maybe. You're welcome in our net.

Really? Game set and match. I just think that Garland works well with this.

And for especially for a guy, this is his first directorial job. Yeah, because he has an upcoming project, but this was not for him. This is it.

Yeah. I mean, he did a good job. I mean, I think everything, I didn't say it, it followed well.

I thought it is just kind of followed the little slow, but nothing, that's not a bad thing. But again, for you, but not a bad thing. I'm not saying that in a bad way.

Um, I think it totally made up with the look in the place and everything. And then I'm going to segue into this, the acting. I mean, this guy, um, Lisa's, Nathan, you know, I'm sorry.

He first off 90% of the time, he had alcohol on him or in him. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, number two, you know, he played the part of a guy who's three can short of a six pack perfectly, which I put in my, um, review, which is on the clubhouse. podcast.com. That's our website.

So I mean, I think he, he hit the acting very, very well. Well, in my, in my written review, I said, first of all, Oscar Isaacs, geek cred is growing exponentially. He's got this coming up.

He's got episode seven coming up. He's playing apocalypse and X men apocalypse. X men that Star Wars, what else?

You know, and this is after the, as especially as I put it in my written review, the utterly forgettable, a most violent year, which he was decent in, but it was, it wasn't a good film for me. This to me, especially with the beard, because when I heard that he was going to play apocalypse, I was like, and I don't know, with the beard, I saw apocalypse. And Chad, you can look this up on IMDB, look at some of the production skills of him in this film.

Okay. And you'll see what I'm talking about. He's, he crushed it.

Oh, yeah. But for me, as good as he was, Alicia Vicander or Vicander, I don't know how to say her last name. She was that much better as Eva.

She, I mean, granted the, the rumor is that he was looking for someone who is into ballet, and she is her movements were just enough that you could tell that she was supposed to be a robot, but just enough that you for, you could actually suspend your book, did this belief and say, no, she's real. They are extremely fluid. Very funny.

Yeah. Yeah. My little shining star from the unknown is a girl who played, uh, Kyoko.

So no, I'm a zoono. Yeah, she didn't say work. Basically, but still, it, she was spot on.

Yeah. She's just, she is brand new. Yeah.

She was in something in 2012 called Venus in Eros. Yeah, but I thought I've never heard of. She's that this.

She's got another movie coming out later this year. It's the same with her high-strong and other one called Alleycats. But she was incredible in this job.

I say, I think the following of all these characters together, I mean, they always say, you, there's a thin line between insanity and genius. I think that, you know, Oscar and this role, he is basically on the type rope with both feet on both sides of that line. The same with her and Isaac at the bedroom was just amazing.

Yeah, there's just, like I said, it's that, and that scene you're talking about had that little 70s feel because it didn't rely on visual effects as much as it relied on the lighting. Yeah. It was red lighting.

Yes. What brought it in? Which, which just, you know, I was watching Logan's run all over again.

With, you know, of course, different storyline. But it just this worked for me on every level. You're welcome, Jack.

This just, my expectations were, I would say fair to Midland going in. But walking out, I was completely satisfied. There was nothing about this film that I went, like I walked out going, I really dug this movie.

Now, am I willing to put it, you know, much farther up the ladder than I did on my rankings of movies I've seen this year? Probably not. I mean, it was better than under the skin.

The bar was pretty low there. But they're both in kind of the same vein. That whole protagonist is what the, what the, what the, what the directors were trying to go for.

We also saw this with the friend of the show, James Briggs, and he kind of went a little deeper down the rabbit hole with the ending of the film, which I don't want to give away than I would have. But I just, I really, really enjoyed this film on multiple levels. I thought that performances were spot on the storyline was great because it's that old that, that age-old question of, what do we do if computers become self-aware?

English and played that kind of, I'm coming into this, here's the CEO, not knowing to expect in a total nervousness. I think he hit that spot on too. I agree with you.

You see him walking, he's like, hi, you're, uh, you know, and then you just, he does not know what to expect from one thing to the next to the next to the next. If I could have played the role of showing no empathy, is Eva? She played that.

She had a lot of empathy. She was, well, I was thinking, apathy. Apathy versus, yeah, right?

She just, like, she had no emotion. It was just, well, it was like you could see Eva trying to have emotion, but not quite still understanding what emotion is, which I really, really thought I thought I said her performance was dead on. She was great in this.

And again, I enjoyed seven sun, but I think you've got to see her, her talent more in this than you did in that person one. Anything else we want to talk about before we get to the final analysis? Got to think your best friends?

We do. All I did great in marketing. We take care of us so much more than they ever have to.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the sound design of this film. I think that really drove you all the way. Beautifully, the sound editing was gorgeous.

Yeah. As Eva was walking, just did you hear the sound? Yeah, she was walking.

It was so subtle. Yes. Of hearing her gear's move.

Right. It was subtle enough that it didn't, it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't gears, it was just kind of like mesh going against each other.

Well, some of it was the wires that were in there. But yeah, but it was there enough that you remembered that that's what's going on here, but it didn't overpower, which I totally agree with you on that. Don't anything else?

No, I'm good. Then let's get to the final analysis. When we do the final analysis on this show, it's a two-prong question.

We don't give you thumbs-up thumbs down. We don't give you stars, letter grades, numbers. Our audience, the empire, better than that.

It's a two-prong question. Question number one is, would you see this film again? If the answer is no, then we're done here.

But if the answer is yes, the second question is, how would you pay for this again? Would you pull it pay for price? Would you go twilight, matinee, early weekend show?

Would you wait for it in second run? Would you wait for it and red box, netflix, or cable? Andrew, let's start with you.

Would you see this film again? Yes, I would for one reason only. I would go see it with my cousin because he's into these type of movies and I would really like to talk this over with him.

And I would go see it for the cheapest price possible. So would you, would you go to a theater or would you want to wait and watch at the house? Oh, go into a theater.

So maybe, I just don't know if I'd go second run because of the soundfield. Would you do a 99 cents for matinee? Probably not matinee, because if at the dollar theater you're not because you're talking about the sound editing, you're not going to get that same experience.

Don, would you see this film again? Yeah, I would, and I would probably do the same as a matinee because there's probably one or two things that may have missed or just be able to watch it there and I can see if there's something that you have, you know, you never know. All right, I would see this film again.

I would agree with a both of you as a matinee, maybe on a Saturday afternoon, catch it in the middle of the day and then go spend your evening. It's a really good movie. I just don't know that you need to pay full price for it.

It goes into limited release this Friday, April the 17th and then it goes into a wider release next week because you want to get your movies in before I'll try. It's pretty much again, thanks to our friends at Allied in a great embarking who are much better to us than they ever have to be, for giving us the opportunity to see this film early and give you a review on it. Shall we do the plugs gentlemen?

Totally. All right, let me get to that. That's what I don't want to group to this for a minute.

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