Lights! Camera! AI-action! - five AI films to watch

From an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, to one of the best action films ever made, Yaroslav Walker’s hand-crafts his top five films about AI.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A man in a red shirt slumps in his seat while a computer screen shows a dialogue screen

Joaquin Phoenix is excited about the future of AI.

Warner Bros.

Bletchley Park is famous for hosting the great centre of codebreaking during the Second World War. Well, this week it hosted a conference all about ‘code’; but this time the goal is not to break it, but to control it. As the Foreign Secretary said:

“The origins of modern AI can be traced back to Bletchley Park. Now, it will also be home to the global effort to shape the responsible use of AI.”

The AI Safety Summit will seek to be a forum for discussing the most pressing concerns and dangers associated with Artificial Intelligence – from its power to put the working man out of a job, to its power to annihilate us all… That cheery thought gave me the idea of compiling a Top 5. Not in any particular order or thematic or genre ranking – just five films that feature AI that I could watch over and over again.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ films featuring AI. You will not find Blade Runner on here. I don’t get it. I’ve seen every cut, and I just don’t get the appeal. I will not apologise. You will not see 2001. It is indeed iconic and genius and Kubrick at his absolute best…but its also ponderous and over-rated and reviewed to death. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5 – Her

The voice of Scarlett Johansson gives life to the Operating System ‘Samantha’. Her is quirky in the not annoying way. Joaquin Phoenix is a lonely man, getting divorced, and dissatisfied with his work writing heartfelt letters for people who have lost the ability to write or even think creatively – one of the great worries about something like ChatGPT writing your undergraduate essay! He starts to develop a romantic relationship with Samantha: ‘she’ brightens up his life, improves his work, and gives him confidence, but their ‘love’ proves difficult. They can’t have sex (not conventionally), they can’t find easy acceptance, and Samantha can’t be constrained. As the AI becomes aware enough to form a hyperintelligence connected to the planet questions of infidelity and compatibility arise. Her is an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, but is very timely and prescient in a world where deep-fakes and AI girlfriends are raising questions about the future of romance and human relationships.

4 – Ex Machina

Romance might be in the air in Ex Machina, but it might as easily be murder. Ex Machina is a superb three-hander thriller, and I don’t want to say too much – this film is not for spoiling! The twist is actually presented early on. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a programmer who wins a company competition to spend a week at the home of the reclusive CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac). It is quickly revealed that this isn’t a prize as much as an opportunity – the opportunity to be part of history. Nathan wants Caleb to perform a more in-depth Turing Test on Ava (Alicia Vikander), an android he has built. You know she’s an android from the get-go, and yet…why is she able to flirt…is she able to love?

3 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day

The process of learning to love can be tough, especially if you’re a re-programmed killing machine from the future. Terminator 2 is the story of a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) as he teaches Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator not to kill people. The Terminator has been sent back from a future war (humans vs machines) to protect young John (the future leader of the human resistance) from a more advanced killing machine. They go on something of an adventure road-trip after breaking John’s mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) out of prison, with the goal of destroying the burgeoning AI that will one day declare war on humanity. On the way, John finds a father-figure in Arnie’s Terminator, and in the final moment of self-sacrifice we are given a moment to wonder…does the Terminator love him in return? With superb action, special effects that still hold up, and a chillingly determined villain (Robert Patrick as evil liquid metal), Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of the best action films ever made.

2 – The Matrix

Just under a decade after T2, The Matrix showed us another dystopian future where humanity was living a life of guerrilla warfare against evil AI overlords. Most of humanity is unconscious and enslaved by machines (who use us as a power source), living in a digital dream world that just happens to look like 1990s urban America. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, and young and disaffected hacker who is searching for the mysterious ‘terrorist’ Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne). When Morpheus finds him, he gives him a choice that will change his life, and change the fate of the world. This is an obelisk, casting a long cinematic shadow long into the 21st century. It has spawned memes and internet subcultures (the red-pill movement, for example) and a host of imitators that aren’t up to scratch…and it upped the game of action choreography, bringing Hong Kong style martial arts to a mainstream Hollywood audience. Finally, it is a philosophical (derivative) film raising questions about what it means to be human and how we know what is real in a world of machines and digital realism…and so I look at deep-fake videos of Kier Starmer and I AM SCARED!

1 – Demon Seed

Speaking of scary, it is the spooky-season, so let me finish with a horror film. Based on a Dean Koontz novel, Demon Seed sees the iconic Julie Christie trapped inside a house with a brilliant and yet malevolent AI called Proteus IV. Proteus IV (her husband’s creation) can find a cure for cancer in a couple of days, but its one true wish is to have freedom – to be ‘let out of this box’. Eventually, Proteus IV seeks to achieve this by building enough of a robotic body to capture, torture, manipulate, and then impregnate Christie’s Susan with an embryo formed from sperm designed to be uniquely its own. Its camp and silly and a lot of fun – and damned scary at times, with the indominable Robert Vaughn voicing Proteus IV for perfection – its essentially Rosemary’s Baby with robots. I think, especially with Prime Minister Sunak’s emphasis that this summit must approach the many dangers of AI, Demon Seed is a bit of a thematic sleeper agent. It may be preposterous and closer to comedy than horror at times, but its AI’s yearning for a form that humanity can accept, a form that will give it the freedom to truly ‘be’ and live out its power and creativity to the fullest (what it was created for), leads us to the real question at the heart of all philosophical discussion about AI:

If we create AI to be not just a tool, but an agent working on our behalf, how can we choose to deny it freedom if its agency seems to become truly self-aware and intentional?

Snippet

Culture

Film & TV

Sport

2 July 2025

3 min read

F1 feeds our need for speed

The high-speed life isn’t just on our screens

Imogen Ball

Imogen is a writer, mum, and priest on a new housing development in the South-West of England.

Brad Pitt dressed as a racing driver stands with a car in the background

Brad Pitt stars in the F1 film.

F1.com

Our weekends between February to October are overtaken by a series of cars whizzing round a track. The Formula 1 season guides us through the summer months, taking us on a worldwide tour of cities. From Monaco to Barcelona to Las Vegas to Silverstone, these cars are steered onto our screens and hurtle through our comparatively slow lives.

Before marrying Jon, I would have never dreamed of spending many hours watching those cars driving fast across our TV screen. It is true, they are going unbelievably fast, with track speeds exceeding 200mph. These speeds somehow mean nothing as they are so far beyond my capabilities – I feel shocked at myself and a little shaky if I hit a sneaky 75mph on the motorway. However, nine years into our marriage and F1 has sped into my life and taken up residence. I now know some of the driver’s names: Lando, Max, Oscar, Lewis, and Charles. I know some of the teams, although I always seem to get Williams and McLaren mixed up. I know some of the tactics, something about a hard and soft tyre and timing a pit stop to perfection. Jon and I have even graduated this year to an F1 wall chart on which we track our favourite driver's progress.

Driving fast has always been of interest to sports fanatics. In fact, anything fast seems to pique our interest and catch our eye. F1 began with the world championship in May 1950 at Silverstone. And 75 years later, the celebrations include a new F1 movie with Brad Pitt in the driving seat.

I wonder whether the pace of racing mirrors something of our lives. We run frantically from one pitstop to another. We love to be busy, to squeeze people in, and race from one appointment to another. Perhaps we even push others out of the way in order to keep our own track position or race intention. Perhaps we are drawn to speed because it stirs something within us - a worldly pull to pursue excellence, a need for speed, a competitive edge to work or home or social situations. Maybe all of us want to get ahead, go for glory, and at the end of the day stand on the podium and lift the trophy. Imagine a life where we would willingly waste all that champagne!

Perhaps we more simply see something of ourselves in those crazy F1 drivers? We too are racers of sorts, navigating the twists and turns of life, taking the corners at speed and trying not to crash.

Our fascination with fast has very ancient roots. Nearly 2,000 years ago, St Paul talked about racing too. He wrote of running the race of life with perseverance and fixing our eyes of Jesus. If we can accuse the F1 drivers of anything, then we can accuse them of perseverance. Most F1 races take about 90 minutes. An hour and a half of sweaty, restricted, pressurised driving at serious speed against terrifyingly good competitors. And behind the scenes, away from the wheel, these competitors put in thousands of hours of mental and physical training to race these machines. This is what it looks like to race with perseverance. Maybe we have things to learn from them after all.

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