Sunday Movie - 1pm at Cafe La Villa (BCP Center) - "Ex Machina"

[NewsLady]

From last week's Euro comedy to this week's examination of what makes us human. 

Movie starts at 1pm, and food, drinks and popcorn will be available from Cafe La Villa.  (If you like, you can bring cushions for the hard restaurant chairs, or folding/camp chairs for more comfort.)  There is no admission charge, but we ask for voluntary donations at the end of the movie to support the program and help pay for the video system. 

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Ex Machina (2015 - 1 hr, 50 min) is a science fiction psychological thriller film written and directed by Alex Garland in his directorial debut.  The movie Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Academy Award winning actress Alicia Vikander, and revolves around a programmer invited by his CEO to administer the Turing test to an intelligent humanoid. 

Link to trailer.

Made on a budget of $15 million, the film grossed $36.9 million worldwide and received critical acclaim. The National Board of Review recognized it as one of the ten best independent films of the year, and it won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects over big-budget movies The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Revenant. It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, while Vikander's acclaimed performance earned her BAFTA Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Empire Awards, and Saturn Awards nominations. It was nominated for the Hugo Award in the category Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form

Plot:  Computer programmer Caleb Smith wins a one-week visit to the luxurious, isolated home of Nathan Bateman, the CEO of his software company, Blue Book. The only other person there is Nathan's servant Kyoko, who Nathan says does not speak English. Nathan has built a humanoid robot named Ava with artificial intelligence (AI). Ava has already surpassed a simple Turing test; Nathan wants Caleb to judge whether Ava is genuinely capable of thought and consciousness, and whether he can relate to Ava despite knowing she is artificial.