You won't be disappointed!

Really Surprised!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

There is nothing about this film that is worth watching. It starts out somewhat promising, but simply doesn't deliver any sort of satisfying result. The acting feels forced, and the story bogs down in the middle and frustratingly so. Just when things do pick up and there is a promising ending to the film, it brings in several aspects of the story that simply do not tie together. I would not have bothered with rating this film, but I decided to watch it based on the high review number, and I can't let it go.

Overall pretty enjoyable, even if a little slow paced and repetitive at times. Most of my problems with the film are, I imagine, related to the budget available to the filmmakers so I let a lot of stuff slide (and to be fair it does still look good in places).My biggest issue is the way humanity is portrayed as an almost entirely irrational, desperate, dying race that can't see the virtue of living side by side with incredibly advanced, living machines. I mean, 99% of the worlds population is gone. Even something so simple as a car is considered rare. The extent to which humans are dependent on robots is never really revealed, so their fear of losing them as servants feels more like pride or ego than survival. And you wonder, with the radioactive desert expanding and human numbers dwindling, if this would really be a priority? I dunno. It just didn't quite sit right with me. But maybe that's how it'd be. Humans can be pretty silly sometimes.Plus there's a huge discrepancy in the fact that human technology has regressed so far as people using fax machines yet the robots are built and maintained somewhere. The humans are using old crt screens and the robots have holographic displays. Hmm.Anyway that said it was still kinda cool. I would've liked to know what Cleo and the newborn were heading towards in the radioactive zone. Other robots? Would she be able to build more once she got there? Who knows!

Just viewed this film which probably did not have a wide scale cinema release and it is much better than a recent film with similar themes which I viewed at the cinema, Ghost In The Shell starring Scarlett Johansson. Spanish Director, Gabe Ibanez has a talent for showing us a desolate future like scenario and I would like to explore more of this work from this point on. Banderas plays his role well, head shaven, letting his years show. His performance reeks of an actor who is good at his profession, the years have padded his abilities with an actors' wisdom and role is acted quite nicely, understated and we can sympathize with the actions of his character. All in all, a film worth seeking out and filing alongside (perhaps a row beneath) other classics such as Blade Runner in your film collection.

What happens when machines out evolve us? It is a theme explored since the nineteenth century, and across genres. Automata does a good job of anthropomorphising its robots. Ironically, the main problem is the humans are less well developed. The film wears its Blade Runner influences lightly, and the production design is creditable, but at least in BR the other humans beyond Deckard were also complex and plausible. The bad guys in Automata lack motivations and carry out actions that make no sense. Language is one causal factor: the script has clearly been written by someone whose first language is not English, and so the dialogue is stilted and unnatural. This is fine when it comes from Banderas, as that is natural English for non-native speakers, but placed in the mouths of his boss and antagonists, it draws unwanted attention to itself. The plot falls apart in the end - there is no need to violently confront the robots, other than tick the box for 'shoot out.' Most bizarre of all is the wife presenting the baby to her husband who has been shot, beat up, starved and looks half-dead. Of all the reactions a wife might have to finding her husband in this state, this one was the least likely. It is symptomatic of a tonally inconsistent movie that fails to mine rich thematic potential and is unsure of what it wants to say.