Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I'm the sort of person who went down to the local library and read books on Babbage's difference engine whilst my schoolmates were playing football etc.. So, if there is any such thing as a target audience for this film, then I guess I'd probably be included in that.Maybe I just need to watch it again. A previous reviewer mentioned not to watch this film whilst being tired. Maybe that was my mistake.I tried my best to enjoy this film, and there are aspects of it that I do like, but overall I found it amateurish and quite plodding.Being somewhat of a self confessed computer nerd, I just can't help but pick up on the exact time frame when the movie was actually made, and how the employed graphics reflect that time (i.e. 1997). Having played games of the era c.f. "Mind Grind" to cite one example, this film cannot escape that 16-bit colour low res multimedia explosion of that time. Now thankfully this has somewhat lessened in more recent years in the gaming world at least, in favour of actual game play.Having to resort to watching this movie via a German FTA satellite channel (as I don't think it's ever been aired on UK FTA TV, well not recently anyway), I was mildly amused to see the end credits note Gottdog (God dog) had 4 people working on it's design. Maybe it's mean spirited of me to be amused by this, given that ten years have elapsed since the movie was made, nevertheless the end result makes movie graphics from the eighties look good by comparison.But, as for the main story, I agree that the format isn't the best idea. Like others I agree that Ada deserves a film without the sci-fi angle, and a more straightforward biographical approach would perhaps be better suited to covering the life story of this remarkable lady.There are fundamental mistakes that undermine my enjoyment of this movie. First of all the underlying idea that somehow lost real-world information from the past can be accurately reconstructed through some sort of extrapolation via software based intelligent agents, seems somehow ludicrous.Also, the theme running through the movie that a computing device can indeed predict the mechanics of all things through the course of time (e.g. the winds) is now known not to be the case.OK, so the Victorians may have held this view, but the 20th century works of Gödel proving that no mathematical system can be complete, Turing's works on the limits of computability, not to mention chaos theory and quantum mechanics, have all completely undermined these ideas, which seem central to how the modern day researcher's software is supposed to work.Finally, the clicking of the mouse in the air to mean "programming" is also just plain wrong, as previously mentioned.This film maybe could have been OK, but at least some technical and scientific consultation would have given the film some much needed credit in the believability stakes.I won't forget the film though, as like "Pi", it is clearly a unique work, but with too many fatal mistakes for me to truly enjoy it, 3/10 from me.

Spoilers herein.One can fault the dreary focus on women's victimization, as if something like that can be imposed on any past. And one can be annoyed at the very low production values, and goofy acting by all but Swinton. Also, everyone involved seems to have had multiple, profound misunderstandings about what constitutes software, concepts, coding and virtuality. Among the howlers are clicking as programming and photography as somehow capturing avatars. And code as resembling greek symbols. This is even worse than `Pi' in its pseudoscience.But if you can see through all those indications of ignorance, there is the kernel of something intelligent here. Some have criticized the modern story as a clumsy framing device. But I see it as a class of folding, something along the lines of `French Lieutenant's Woman,' as transformed by popular versions like `Possession.'At least I want to think so because Tilda is such an intelligent actress and the Ada story is so fascinating. What this petty filmmaker thinks is interesting is that a brilliant, energetic mind was exploited and ruined by the accident of gender – sort of an Alan Turing with breasts.What is more interesting in the story is how Ada conflated adventures in mental exploration in narrative with mathematics and extreme promiscuity. In fact, the story is much like John Nash's but without the bisexuality.Math as orgasmic, code as music, virtual projection as invented history, redheads as having the power to use lust to bend reality. Some clever ideas wrapped in stupid expression. Well, at least there's something.Ted's evaluation: 2 of 3 – Has some interesting elements.

I haven't seen anything this bad since I walked out of the James Bond movie "Moonraker" twenty years ago. I managed to sit through the entirety of this one only because of Tilda Swinton, but there was nothing she could do to save this beast.As a cross between "Pi", "Orlando", and "Tron", this movie failed miserably in every aspect of moviemaking. The characters were cardboard and unable to evoke any kind of sympathy. The plot was wholly unbelievable. The acting was, with the exception of Swinton, amateur. The computer graphics were worse than in "Tron." Timothy Leary was extremely annoying. I could go on, but what's the point.The only good thing I can say about this film is that Tilda Swinton was in it. I have no idea why an actress of her caliber consented to appear in such a dud, but she most likely regrets it now.Don't waste your money or your time on this stinker. There's nothing worth seeing here.

Ok, first off *DO NOT* watch this movie if your idea of an independent film is something starring Johhny Depp or Hugh Grant. That said, *DO* watch this movie if you liked 'Pi,' or other movies that were shot on almost no budget, but still somehow manage to mix cinematic exploration of abstract concepts with elements of science fiction. Don't expect to understand this movie the first time you watch it, but after two weeks of mulling it over as you try to get to sleep at night, it'll come to have more meaning.