Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ex Machina, While We’re Young [Summary Judgment Triple Play]

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Normally a big summer blockbuster earns a full review round these parts. But Avengers: Age of Ultron is just… fine.

Yes, the gang’s back, squabbling and soaring in roughly equal measure. Yes, the effects are slick. But there’s too much going on, and not enough of it matters. James Spader voices Ultron, the ugly, vaguely Satanic-looking A.I. version of Iron Man that Tony Stark builds and that pretty much immediately and for pretty much no reason decides to destroy the world. Two newcomers (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass fame, and the non-twin Olsen) are either bad or good or both, I can’t keep track. And compared with the first Avengers — which make no mistake, was a really good movie — this just feels overstuffed and underdone. Like a bad calzone. The foil-skinned, poorly heated type that lands on your lap on a regional carrier in the Everglades. All stringy cheese and cardstock crust. There are Thor-like weird interstellar overtones here and a gemstone-of-ultimate-power backstory that only double-boiled comic nerds could love. If that’s all a bit vivid, I’ll temper it thus: Age of Ultron is not a bad movie by any means. Marvel has too much invested here to let that happen, and it’s broadly entertaining and nice to look at. But there’s too much sizzle and not enough steak. Eh. Meh. Blah.

Haus Verdict: A blockbuster with a little too much of everything, except what I need. 

Ex Machina

Here’s a moody, spare, atmospheric, and cool-hued meditation on artificial intelligence and captivity and power and basic human weirdness. Expertly shot, nicely paced, and most important, actually smart. The premise: A programmer (Domnhall Gleeson, from About Time) is called to a remote, sleek wilderness bunker/estate where his boss, billionaire search-engine founder and general computer whiz Nathan (played by a thoroughly bearded and creepy Oscar Isaac) lives totally alone. The reason? He’s to be the human component in a Turing test, to evaluate Nathan’s new artificial intelligence, “Ava” — which happens to inhabit a quietly beautiful robotic body with the face of Alicia Vikander. Amidst drinking and glamping and uneasy, awkward interactions — mostly between the human characters — an interesting story unfolds over seven days. Ex Machina was written and directed by Alex Garland, who wrote the fabulous Sunshine, as well as 28 Days Later and Dredd. It shows: It’s a quiet, intelligent meditation on intelligence, consciousness, and humanity. A film you won’t soon forget.

Haus Verdict: Smart, spare, compelling. A.I. and sci-fi done right. See this. 

While We’re Young

God, I hated this movie. Noah Baumbach gets it all wrong, all so very wrong. While We’re Young is billed as a quirky meditation on getting older, life transitions, relationships, and so on — but don’t be fooled, it’s really not. It’s just cloying, obnoxious, self-satisfied hipster-bait, mixed in with probably the most boring mystery I’ve ever seen. (Frances Ha was a lot of those things too, but Greta Gerwig redeemed it.) Here, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a whiny, childless fortysomething NYC couple whose pals all have kids — so they start hanging around an insufferable hipster pair (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Trite observations abound (we’re hipsters so we watch VHS movies!) but there’s no there there, and just when you’re realizing that every funny line was already in the trailer, the film abruptly switches gears to suggest that — golly gee — Adam Driver might not be an honest documentarian. Who cares. Unless you like your coffee made over twenty minutes by a Talibearded lumbersexual with ironic tats and a murse, you’ll get nothing from this and probably should skip it.

Haus Verdict: So hipster it hurts. I’ve rarely hated a movie as much as I did this.