Her

Dir: Spike Jonze

Year: 2014

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlet Johansson, Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara

Genre: Drama/Romance/Sci-Fi/Comedy

Cert: 15

Rating: ★★★★★

IMDb

Her takes place in a not too distant future, where despite technology being more advanced than ever, it takes the form of fairly normal and minimalist styles. Everybody essentially has an iPhone but it looks like a cigarette case and they're all powered by Siri style voice programs. Joaquin Phoenix played Theodore Twombly, a writer for a company that sends messages and letters to your friends and family from you, but written by the workers there. He often comes out with some of the best work. He is a very lonely and socially awkward man after the separation of himself and his wife, Catherine, played by Rooney Mara. His best friend, Amy, played by Amy Adams is trying to set him up with a girl while trying to battle her own relationship problems. As this is all happening, he decides to update his operating system to the newest one, OS1.

It is exactly like Siri only it has a genuine personality, designed to adapt to human emotions and to give comfort to the lonely as well as a general organizer and personal assistant. The system is a female, named Samantha, played by Scarlet Johansson. Over time, Theodore begins to fall in love with his new perfectly matched girlfriend, and she too begins to have feelings for him, but is it possible for him to maintain a stable relationship with a computer?

Spike Jonze fucking MILLS it out of the park yet again in this soul-destroyingly brilliant Sci-Fi-Rom-Com. He did the smart thing of introducing us to a world where simplicity has taken format again. "Retro" styles which seem like only about 3 years old to us. Considering "retro" has become a new buzzword in the last while, with people getting phone covers to look like old gameboys and clothes and t-shirts made popular 20 years ago coming back to fashion (Basically hipsters being cunts as usual) Spike decides to take a stab at it in a more genuine way. In what I can guess is about 10 years from now, video-games have advanced to being completely interactive to the point of having conversations with the characters in the game. The one in this is a small and cute little character, but is a foul-mouthed little bollocks, much like a South Park character or something similar.

The game is played like a Kinect game but it looks very simple graphically. Almost like how indie games and iPhone games have gone back to platform styles. The way the phones work in this is old fashioned enough too, but with a futuristic essence. To hear you must have a portable earpiece put in your ear, like an old Blutooth headset. The phones are small and kind of blocky, almost look like a first edition iPod. But they're capabilities are much more powerful. His world isn't really in your face like most sci-fi films are.They all have to play it safe now after all the internet fuss about Back To The Future II, so they set them REEEALLY far into the future, so that there might be SOME chance of the world ending up that way. This was such a simple future that it was frighteningly accurate to how the world will probably end up in a few years time.

It was like a nicer version of a Black Mirror outlook on life. The whole movie actually played out like an extended double episode of Black Mirror only you didn't feel like absolute shit at the end of every episode (In a good way though, because it's an INCREDIBLE show). This does have "The Feels" throughout though, to see things not working out for such a likable character in any way is always hard to watch. So when things are every bad for Theodore you can't help but feel for him. Amy too also see's her bad times and despite being fairly hipstery, she comes across as really likable (And weirdly very hot). 

It was interesting to see a huge role like Scarlet Johansson not have any real screen time, much like Kevin Spacey in Moon. Their voices are all that are needed to have a class impact! There's also a few good voice cameos, one or two I picked up on immediately but there was one in particular I never would have guessed, which is odd because when you hear a woman say "Fuck me and strangle me with that dead cat", the actress who says it should really jump to mind immediately... I wont reveal any of the cameos though, you can spoil them yourself on IMDb or just watch and see if you get'em! The world, story and characters are all extremely immersive in this and they're fantastically accompanied by brilliant acting all round, especially from Joaquin, who has been nothing but great lately.

The cinematography was absolutely amazing too, fucking hypnotic at times. One scene of him looking at his bed and there's a close up of all the dust fibres blowing around could be going on for about 2 hours and you wouldn't even realise. It was also incredible how they managed to do a sex scene, in the dark with a machine (followed by an awkward conversation). It was literally like being there (Not in a weird way... kinda). I absolutely adored everything about this movie. It was probably Jonze's most serious. Being John Malkovich had a weirdly quirky comedy style to it, this did have some laughable moments but not like that, this felt more of a straight up romance drama throughout. It's extremely original and thoroughly enjoyable and will hopefully win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay! It certainly deserves it!

Also, Arcade Fire lend their amazing musical talents to this to create the score. This is bound to leave a smile on your face and a tear in your (brown) eye.