While some may throw out the foolish claim that there hasn’t been a handful of must-see films thus far this year, this week brings at least one feature to refute that. Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac may be leading a certain highly-anticipated sci-fi feature later this year, but it’ll have a lot to live up to when it comes to their first of 2015, Ex Machina. The directorial debut of Alex Garland (Sunshine, 28 Days Later) is a gripping, slickly directed look at artificial intelligence with top-notch performances.
We said in our review, “Ex Machina doesn’t want to simply be another movie in the large pantheon of science-fiction cinema, but instead builds on what has come before and distills it into a narrative that is rich and layered. With outstanding performances from Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Alicia Vikander, a world of science is created that manages to blur the line without ever getting bogged down in exposition.”
One of the film’s strongest elements is its score by Portishead‘s Geoff Barrow and composer Ben Salisbury, which is a mix of electronic and more traditional compositions that help heighten the tension. “People could listen to Ex Machina and go, ‘Yeah that sounds like a standard electronic score.’ But, to us it doesn’t feel like that,’ Barrow tells Rolling Stone, who debuted the score. “When people have a cup of tea, they might say, ‘Oh, it tastes like tea.’ But for us, I know we individually packed every little tea leaf into that bag.” Having worked on the music for nine months, check out the full score below, along with the Q&A after the film’s SXSW premiere.
Ex Machina opens on Friday, April 10th.