The year of the fembot

Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know which 2015 movies might have female characters who are robots and which may not, you may want to stop reading now. However, to list actual movie titles is kind of the spoiler itself. I'll include the one that's the most spoilery toward the bottom. I've already spoiled Turbo Kid, I suppose ... if you care about that, which I argue you should not.

I suppose 1997 is the actual year of the fembot, as that's the year that Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery hit theaters. However, 2015 is shaping up as a close second.

I just saw my fourth 2015 movie last night in which a female character either becomes, or is revealed to be, a robot. And in three of those, one of the characters is in love with that female robot. (In the fourth and the last one I will reveal, the love is also there, but it's maternal.)

Turbo Kid (dir. Francois Simar, Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl Whissell)

The most recent robot on my viewing schedule appears in the post-apocalyptic 80s throwback/ exploitation movie Turbo Kid, which sounds as awesome as it ended up being not awesome. The character is Apple, a girl the title character finds in "the wasteland" and ends up reluctantly befriending/loving. The fact that she's a robot is not immediately revealed, but once it is, they play it up for about half a dozen false deaths. It grew very tiresome, just like this movie. I did think actress Laurence LeBoeuf (wait, that's a woman's name?) was probably the best part of the movie, though it took me a while to warm up to her character.

Ex Machina (dir. Alex Garland)

The female robot most central to the plot of the movie is, of course, in Ex Machina -- and it's really one of a handful of female robots. But none of them hold a candle to Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, who easily seduces (emotionally, if not physically) the young programmer summoned to the remote technical fortress of an internet billionaire/genius. Even knowing the character is an example of artificial intelligence, Caleb (Domhnall Glesson) still falls for her. I guess maybe I would too. The movie is chilling and excellently explores the host of existential issues related to such a character.

Tomorrowland (dir. Brad Bird)

One of the weirdest aspect of the total misfire Tomorrowland is not that the most compelling character is, again, a robot. It's not that a childhood version of the male character falls in love with her anyway. It's not even that some 50 years later, when that character is now played by George Clooney, he's still in love with her, though that is pretty weird. No, the weirdest thing is that he somehow still feels betrayed by her -- a robot who failed to be a compatible love interest for him -- and that she still has the appearance of a child, making his romantic feelings an example of thankfully unconsummated pedophilia. Yeah, someone didn't think this movie through, though this is hardly the only evidence of that fact. Still, as with Turbo Kid, the actress Raffey Cassidy as Athena is the most compelling reason to watch the movie.

Final spoiler warning.

Chappie (dir. Neill Blomkamp)

This is the one outlier on the list in the following two ways: It's both the one instance of maternal robot love, and the one instance where a character is actually turned into a robot. (Three ways, actually, if you consider that the initial relationship involves a human woman and a male robot.) How do you actually turn a flesh and blood creature into a robot? Chappie has the answer, of course: You download a character's consciousness and install it in a robot body once its human body has failed. That's what happens to Yolandi, a mother figure to the title character, at the very end of the movie after she's gunned down in the climactic battle. And even though Chappie has possibly the most far-fetched usage of fembot technology, it's almost my favorite -- Chappie and Ex Machina are currently very closely situated in my 2015 rankings.

Honorable mentions:

There are actually two 2015 movies that also feature what I would call "enhanced" female characters. Though they are definitely not robots, they each have bionic components that make them all the more lethal. The first is Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in Mad Max: Fury Road, who has a robotic hand replacing the half arm she has lost. Then there's Sophia Boutella as Gazelle in Kingsman: The Secret Service, whose blade legs not only help her run, they also help her slice and dice flesh. I suppose if you want to get technical, Gazelle should be "first" because Kingsman came out before Mad Max.

So is 2016 the year that fembots actually overthrow our society, perhaps led by Ava as implied at the end of Ex Machina?

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Dental Bridge

Or, "Good enough to pay for?"

Yes, I paid for a movie in the theaters yesterday for the first time since July, when I got my Australian Film Critics Association card.

Bad timing, too, since I'd just unexpectedly spent more than $300 at the dentist after reaching my insurance plan's yearly limit on dental coverage. (It's been a bad couple months for my mouth.)

But I thought 11 a.m. was a good time of day to watch a two-hour and twenty minute movie, especially since I wouldn't be of much use at home with a mouth full of novocaine anyway.

The timing between the appointment and the show time was actually just perfect. They released me from a 10 a.m. appointment at about 10:55, and the theater is about a two-minute walk from the dentist's office in the same building. (The dentist's office, not the theater, is the funny thing to find in that building, which is a downtown shopping complex called Melbourne Central -- which may also explain why the dentist has Sunday hours.)

The only problem was that my AFCA card is not valid at the Hoyts chain at any time on the weekend. Hoyts is the most restrictive of the chains that accept this card, as there are only two nights during the week (Monday and Wednesday) when you are even allowed to use the card after 5 p.m. The total restriction on weekends was something I knew about, but I thought it was worth trying anyway. Often times the ticket takers are so befuddled by this card that without being sure how to proceed, they just wave me through. However, this particular guy followed protocol and determined that, indeed, I was not eligible for a complimentary screening. Which I immediately copped to, as though I'd forgotten the restriction rather than knowingly tried to dupe him.

So I had to pay $18 for Bridge of Spies instead of the $0 that my last 20 or so theatrical screenings have cost me. Given how much of a savings I'm getting from this great card, $18 here and there is a small price to pay. Then again, it did also make me feel like Steven Spielberg's latest really needed to rise to the level of something I was willing to pay for.

Did it?

For the most part, yes, though that does translate to "only" a 3.5-star rating for me. I flirted with four stars, but Bridge of Spies is not even a movie that's really designed to have much oomph to it. There are parts that are suspenseful and there are parts that are gripping, but overall it's pretty mild. It's a solid production with good performances and it generally leaves a person satisfied, but it is pretty definitely "minor Spielberg." However, I guess Spielberg's sheer confidence with this type of movie is something interesting to behold, since it continues a sort of late-career interest in realistic historical movies that don't have a lot of the escapism or wish fulfilment that characterized the early phases of his career.

It made a particularly interesting viewing on the heels of watching Tomorrowland, whose debt to Spielberg is conspicuous, the previous night. It was interesting to watch someone else (in this case, Brad Bird) imitate Spielberg, and then to watch Spielberg himself imitate, I don't know, Tomas Alfredsson? I say that only because in its spy milieu and its varying shades of beautiful-looking gray, Spies probably most reminded me of Alfredson's Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, but with a much clearer plot. Then again, it's not like Spielberg hasn't already made his own film that feels similar to this, although perhaps not overtly: 2005's Munich.

The difference between Bird and Spielberg, though, is that in this case Bird very poorly impersonates an obvious source of inspiration -- though one might more fairly blame screenwriter Damon Lindelof for the failure of Tomorrowland -- while Spielberg always seems to make a very capable version of whatever he's trying to impersonate. And even though we have the informal adjective "Spielbergian" in our lexicon and most people have a good sense of what is implied by that, we can't forget that some of Spielberg's best films are not particularly "Spielbergian," including Schindler's List, Lincoln and the aforementioned Munich. Just reminds us what a diverse filmmaker he really is -- diverse and prolific, especially given the size and scope of the projects he's shepherded.

As for Tomorrowland, that disaster really deserves an entire post devoted to all the things that went wrong in it. But to be honest, I don't have the energy for that kind of thing today -- and wouldn't even know where to start if I did.