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Her (2013)
Director: Spike Jonze
Writer: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson
Genre: Adult Drama, Sci Fi, Romance
About: A lonely man who falls in love with his sentient computer operating system and has a relationship with it.
Writer: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson
Genre: Adult Drama, Sci Fi, Romance
About: A lonely man who falls in love with his sentient computer operating system and has a relationship with it.
Review: Interesting movie to say the least. Its strengths are the visuals, both in the color palette used by the art direction and the stunning on-location sets, they filmed at. I especially liked the curved, elevated city walkway, as shown in the photo above.
I thought Joaquin Phoenix did a fantastic job of being an indecisive, emotionally exuberant man who had a hard time commenting to anyone. He was really good and so was Amy Adams, who's my favorite, modern day actress.
However, I didn't like a lot of the directorial decisions that Spike Jonez made. I didn't connect to the story, as the disembodied voice of Samantha (done by Scarlett Johansson) just wasn't believable to me as an artificial intelligence operating system. Part of the reason why is in the sound mixing. Samantha's voice was dubbed post production and is mixed at a different tonal quality than the spoken words of Joaquin. To me it didn't sound like they were in the same room.
I would have liked to hear the computer voice have a slightly mechanical sound to it, like it was coming out of a speaker. I also think Spike should have went with a visual reference for Samantha so that we had something to look at on the mobile screen when she talked.
I also wasn't a fan of the explicit sex scenes and the overused potty mouth, those two directorial decisions took me out of the film's story.
Ultimately I just didn't buy someone falling in love with his computer. And I certainly didn't buy that people in the future thought dating a computer was normal! But I did LMAO at the picnic scene. I don't think Spike intended it to be ironic? But it was.
I thought Joaquin Phoenix did a fantastic job of being an indecisive, emotionally exuberant man who had a hard time commenting to anyone. He was really good and so was Amy Adams, who's my favorite, modern day actress.
However, I didn't like a lot of the directorial decisions that Spike Jonez made. I didn't connect to the story, as the disembodied voice of Samantha (done by Scarlett Johansson) just wasn't believable to me as an artificial intelligence operating system. Part of the reason why is in the sound mixing. Samantha's voice was dubbed post production and is mixed at a different tonal quality than the spoken words of Joaquin. To me it didn't sound like they were in the same room.
I would have liked to hear the computer voice have a slightly mechanical sound to it, like it was coming out of a speaker. I also think Spike should have went with a visual reference for Samantha so that we had something to look at on the mobile screen when she talked.
I also wasn't a fan of the explicit sex scenes and the overused potty mouth, those two directorial decisions took me out of the film's story.
Ultimately I just didn't buy someone falling in love with his computer. And I certainly didn't buy that people in the future thought dating a computer was normal! But I did LMAO at the picnic scene. I don't think Spike intended it to be ironic? But it was.