There was some grousing that Jordan Ruimy‘s 4.23 summary of a recent “private” screening of Luca Guagnino‘s Artificial (Amazon MGM), generally understood to be “The Social Network geared to the AI era,” may have mischaracterized this or that aspect. But not too much, as I understand things.
I’m certainly jazzed about Artificial being ultra-zietgeisty…one of those timely topic flicks emerging as just the right moment.
It’s pretty much guaranteed to debut at the Venice Film Festival four months hence, and will probably open commercially in october or November.
Ruimy: “Pic’s first half mainly follows Ilya Sutskever (Anora‘s Yura Borisov), portrayed as idealistic, slightly naive brain of the operation — the one who truly believes in the bigger picture, much like Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network.” However, as the film progresses, the spotlight gradually shifts to Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield, who of course played Saverin in David Fincher‘s 2010 classic).
Garfield’s performance apparently starts out grounded, but becomes larger as the film moves on. Jason Schwartzman and Cooper Hoffman “seem to be the quiet MVPs of the ensemble, Hoffman playing a co-developer in the film’s second act with Schwartzman playing a disgruntled tech innovator who delivers a monologue to Borisov’s character about the far greater risks of allowing AI to spiral out of control.
As one might expect, “Artificial “is kind of two things at once…partly a love letter to Silicon Valley (especially San Francisco) focusing on the power players, and partly a warning about where all of this could be heading.”