DVD Review: Superb ‘Ex Machina’ features share of extras

Screenwriter Alex Garland (“28 Days Later,” “Never Let Me Go”) makes his directorial debut with “Ex Machina,” an entry in the science fiction subgenre that might be summarized “Man makes machine; man loses machine; man loses to machine.” Well into summer, it easily remains one of the 10 best of the year.

Garland is clever enough to get the most possible bang for his buck: the script is constructed to have only four characters and one location. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a programmer for the world’s biggest search engine company, who wins a week alone with the company’s visionary founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), at the latter’s ultra-high-tech retreat/lab in the middle of nowhere. He quickly learns that Nathan intends to use him to evaluate Ava (Alicia Vikander), the robot Nathan has designed and endowed with the next step in artificial intelligence.

Is Nathan tricking Caleb? Could the Nathan we meet actually be an artificial intelligence machine himself? Most importantly, does Ava have human feelings or even a sense of self?

The ending of “Ex Machina” may not satisfy everybody, but the film is intelligent (not artificially) and provoking throughout.

The Blu-ray and DVD are crisp, with better than average sound. The release has two hours of extras. “Through the Looking Glass: Making Ex Machina” is a 40-minute overview of the productions. “Behind the Scenes Vignettes” covers much of the same material in nine shorts of roughly three minutes each.

The best supplement is “SxSW Q&A with cast and crew,” an hourlong panel with Garland, Isaac, the cinematographer, and the composers (who not surprisingly have a lot less to say about the film’s ideas). Much of this is in greater depth than the less spontaneous extras, despite the awful panel moderator, who repeatedly puts words in Garland’s mouth; this would be bad enough, even if those words were right. But they’re not, and Garland has to continually correct her.

Ex Machina (Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Blu-ray, $24.99; DVD, $19.98)

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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).