A welcome surprise, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is not only the best science fiction film to come down the pike in a long, long time, it’s the best film released so far this year in any genre.

Garland, whose novel The Beach was made into a film by Danny Boyle in 2000, later wrote the screenplays for Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Sunshine, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go and Pete Travis’ Dredd. Ex Machina marks his directorial debut, and what a debut it is!

Dohmnall Gleeson (Unbroken), Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair) and Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) are the film’s stars and why they aren’t the superstars they deserve to be may soon be rectified thanks to this film and the extremely hot projects they have in the works.

Gleeson plays a super-smart computer programmer who wins a contest to spend a week at his company’s CEO’s mountain retreat. Isaac is the cunning CEO who has quite the surprise in store for his young employee. Vikander is the robot with the human face and characteristics Isaac has built for Gleeson to evaluate. The highly provocative cat-and-mouse game that ensues is generously sprinkled with bristling, thought-provoking dialogue and shifting emotions as the modern Frankenstein story builds to its surprising, if inevitable, conclusion.

Stylistically the film proves a winner as well with eye-popping sets and effects gorgeously filmed at the spectacular Norwegian Juvet Landscape Hotel that stands in for Isaac’s retreat.

Gleeson will soon be seen in Oscar hopefuls Brooklyn and The Revenant; Vikander in Oscar hopefuls Tulip Fever and The Danish Girl; and Issac in Oscar hopeful Mojave. Isaac and Gleeson will both be seen in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, after which Isaac will be seen in X-Men: Apocalypse.

Ex Machina is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is a psychological horror film that is heavy on atmosphere and light on gore, reminiscent to many of 1978’s Halloween fans, and to those with longer memories, 1944’s The Uninvited.

The story concerns the pursuit of its teenage victims by a supernatural force that is transmitted through sex. What makes it compelling is Mitchell’s atmospheric direction of his screenplay and the performances of a largely unknown cast of whom Maika Monroe (Labor Day), Keir Gilchrist (The Stanford Prison Experiment), and Jake Weary (TV’s Pretty Little Liars) are the probably best known.

It Follows is a vailable on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Kristen Stewart made history when she became the first American actress to win a César (the French equivalent of the Oscar) for her performance in Clouds of Sils Maria. The Twilight star is quite a revelation as Juliette Binoche’s personal assistant and sounding board in Olivier Assayas’ film.

Binoche plays an aging actress who has accepted a supporting role in a play in which she was the original star. Current Hollywood star Chloe Grace Moretz is the new star of the play. Although this might seem like a set-up for an All About Eve type story about the two actresses, it never comes to that. It’s mostly about Stewart’s struggle to keep Binoche on the straight and narrow path to her return to the stage. As an acting tour-de-force for Binoche and Stewart, it’s fine, but if you’re expecting an ending that ties up all the loose ends, you had better look elsewhere. Like all of Assayas’ films, including Summer Hours and Clean, the journey’s the thing.

Clouds of Sils Maria is available on standard DVD only in the U.S.

Britt Robertson (Dan in Real Life) and Scott Eastwood (son of you-know-who) star in George Tillman, Jr.’s The Longest Ride, the screen adaptation of yet another Nicholas Sparks novel.

The Robertson-Eastwood story is about as sappy as they come, but the film is saved from total ridiculousness by the secondary story involving Alan Alda as a dying man whose backstory is played out by Jack Huston (son of Tony Huston, grandson of John Huston and great-grandson of Walter Huston) and Oona Chaplin (daughter of Geraldine Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin and great-granddaughter of Eugene O’Neill). Chaplin’s scenes with the orphan she is not allowed to adopt are genuinely moving. If only the rest of the movie were half as good as those scenes they might have had something.

The Longest Ride is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

I’m sorry to say that John Madden’s follow-up to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, cheekily called The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is a disappointment.

Whereas the original focused on the elderly residents of a hotel in Jaipur, India and their interaction with the hotel’s young manager (Dev Patel), the sequel concentrates on fourth-billed Patel’s upcoming wedding and his frantic efforts to secure financing for a second hotel. Only Maggie Smith among the elderly residents plays a character resembling a genuine human being. Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Celia Imbrie, Ronald Pickup and Penelope Wilton are but mere shadows of the people they played in the original. Richard Gere has a supporting role of little consequence and David Strathairn, though good in his two scenes, has a role that should be classified as a cameo.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include What We Do in the Shadows and Wild Horses.