Her (2013)

5/5

Spike Jonze's Her is an expertly-crafted and beautifully-told love story. Although it is set in the future, it is a love story through and through. After a painful breakup with his girlfriend (Mara), Theodore Twombly (Phoenix) finds himself unexpectedly falling for his personal assistant, Samantha (Johansson). Their mutual attraction blossoms into a tender romance that some view with prejudice and others with acceptance. Despite the occasional false steps and fights, their relationship feels promising. But that is when the specter of doubt begins to rear its ugly head.

The movie's conceit is that Samantha is a piece of software, an operating system with an artificial intelligence that rivals and perhaps surpasses human intelligence. In fact, the film is advertised that way, banking on its strangeness to be the talk of the town. But it is so much more than a simple gimmick.

As far as storytelling goes, Her is a masterpiece. It is Annie Hall for the tech generation, and I do not say that lightly. It embodies the ups and downs of love, the sidesteps and detours of life, the frailty and imperfections of people. Her is somehow all those things delivered in a crisply-shot and sharply-written film. It is ferociously funny and manipulatively tender. It matches an unparalleled ebullience with a debilitating dread. It pulls at just the right heartstrings at just the right times.

From the subtle use of grain and POV to the story's fundamental architecture, Jonze directs masterfully. He elicits nuance out of the actors, whether it's the flicker of their facial muscles or the timbre of their voice, that elevates their performance well past our expectations. He uses flashbacks to tell the backstory so simply, so effortlessly, so precisely, that I cannot believe they are fictional at all. I cannot imagine that someone has not had those exact emotions before. They are silent reveries, uncontrollable daydreams, pure nostalgia.

The movie is not unassailable. For the life of me, I cannot fathom the thought process behind the movie's absurd fashion choices. I sincerely hope we don't dress like that at any point in the near or distant future. But even if this movie is eerily accurate about what we wear in the future, what's the point? It only serves to distract. It is the elephant in the room instead of the painting in the background. Is the movie supposed to be about love or is it supposed to be about navel-hugging belt-less tweed pants pulled up as high as possible around multiple layers of collared shirts?

Perhaps Her bites off a bit more than it can chew, but it is easily one of the best movies of the year. It has already taken hold of our culture, as evidenced by the innumerable parodies floating around online, and tickled something inside all of us. It is a magnificent film and a magical film. It is unique but universal. Watching Her is an experience everyone should get to enjoy.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/

We Own the Night (2007)

4/5

We Own the Night is a gritty, realist crime drama. Joaquin Phoenix plays a night club owner who occasionally dabbles in drugs, while brother Mark Wahlberg and father Robert Duvall serve in the police force. The cops are planning a big drug bust, but the Russian mafia they're trying to take down frequents Phoenix's night club. And things don't go as planned. What follows is an odyssey of constant tension and changing rules. I'll leave the rest of the details for you to discover in the theater.

The movie has a very realistic depiction of characters and events, with no superheroes and where unforeseen consequences can drastically alter the path of one's life. Indeed, Phoenix's transformation throughout the movie is unbelievably real; it is simply beyond good acting. The other actors give subtle, nuanced performances that are fleshed and full. The directing was nearly flawless. Much of the movie reminded me of the Godfather: the scope of events, the life-changing twists and turns, and the importance placed on familial ties. The entire movie seems to be an essay arguing that family is stronger than friendship. The Grusinsky family never betrayed each other, but are betrayed by best friends, father figures, and girlfriends. In fact, I found the end of the film to be the most explicit exposition, with the final words being "I love you" uttered to a family member.

Technically, this movie is rock-solid. The cinematography is beautiful--I loved the sequence with the car in the rain. There is terror and tension in so many scenes that reaches the same level as Michael Mann's best work. The car scene in the rain glued me to my seat; the scene where Phoenix enters the drug labs was heart-pounding; the end scene in the wheat field was on par with the ending to the Silence of the Lambs, where Jodie Foster is being stalked in the dark. The music was fairly perfect throughout, except a bit overbearing in the first scene.

I felt that the movie sometimes felt a bit underdeveloped. It could have benefited from more preproduction work as some plot points don't make much sense. I would have liked it to be a bit longer (15 minutes maybe), as it felt a bit rushed towards the end and as if we were missing some stuff throughout. Some characters were not unique and relied on archetypes, specifically the character of Jumbo. Other than that though this movie was quite an experience. Along with The Band's Visit and No Country for Old Men, it's my favorite of the entire Cannes Film Festival this year. I hope to see it again in theaters soon.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0498399/