Her

2013 science fiction movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A professional letter writer named Theodore, following the end of his marriage, falls in love with his new operating system.

Joaquin Phoenix is on a roll since retiring from acting to become a rapper. Playing himself in I'm Still Here showcased a sometimes-brilliant, surprisingly avant-garde sidebar. He was all-the-way brilliant in The Master. And here in Her, he gives a perfect performance. Seriously--perfect. There isn't a missed note in this entire performance. Of course, he's cheating, using a pitiful mustache as a prop. It's unlikely that anybody's going to have a mustache like that in the future, isn't it? But Phoenix and that cookie duster portray a wide array of human emotion in this way that take it outside the frame, beyond just Hollywood movie person emotions. Maybe it's just that some past version of myself--the scrawny acne-spotted 17-year-old one who thought he was funnier than what he actually was--could identify so well with this character, but I really felt what this Theodore character was feeling throughout his story. A lot of the responsibility goes to the way Spike Jonze told the story visually, but you have to give credit to Phoenix and his nuances in a refreshingly easy-going virtuoso performance. I also thought Scarlett Johansson, or more accurately her disembodied voice, was great as the titular operating system. Jen didn't, but for me, Johansson provided a voice that, if it didn't sound like it could actually belong to an inanimate object, was a voice a person could fall in love with. Speaking of voice work, I have to acknowledge Kristin Wiig's work here as "SexyKitten," a voice performance that both turned me on and had me laughing. I'm into references to dead cats, I guess. That's part of the charm of this movie actually. It's not exactly a comedy, but there are moments that are humorous. And it's accessible science fiction, delicate sci-fi really that doesn't leave you cold. There were some odd futuristic touches, but they weren't really in your face. There was a plausibility to the gadgets and obsessions of this near-future society. The urban landscape was beautiful and crystal clear in a way that just made sense. The color palette, likely. The sidewalks crowded with aloof, tech-addicted humanoids is just a tiny evolutionary stumble away. Theodore's job was a satiric little jab at contemporary human emotion while helping develop that character so well. I think I might have trouble believing that men will wear their trousers waistband that high in the future. They all had those things tugged as high as my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Watts. Is there something I'm missing with those waistlines or is it a stylistic non-sequitur? I didn't like scenes where Theodore was playing the video game with the foul-mouthed alien although the foul-mouthed alien was a cute little son of a bitch. I had really looked forward to this one, halfway expecting to be disappointed and fully expecting to see something really quirky, the latter which wouldn't have bothered me since I'm a fan of quirk. Instead, this was a deeply emotional story, poetic and beautiful. This movie's lovely because it's lovely at its core, and it's made lovelier by the good performances (Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, and Matt Letscher, too), the stunning pristine visuals, and the music provided by Arcade Fire. Lovely.

Since I've now seen all the Best Picture nominees from 2013 (most recent list of Best Picture nominees that I have all seen--2005), it's probably a good time to make my personal list of best movies from the year. Here it goes in roughly the order I would put them in:

1) Wolf of Wall Street
2) Gravity
3) Inside Llewyn Davis
4) Her
5) Saving Mr. Banks
6) Nebraska
7) The Lone Ranger
8) Captain Phillips
9) The Act of Killing
10) Rush

Just off the top-ten: Dallas Buyer's Club, 42, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Philomena, Monsters University, Mud, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus, Prince Avalanche, Blue Jasmine, Cutie and the Boxer, Bad Grandpa

Worst movies of 2013:

1) A Talking Cat?!? (can't believe this was released in 2013--seems like I saw it 5 years ago)
2) Parkland
3) Evil Dead
4) Planes
5) The Hangover Part III

Other bad ones: Pacific Rim, Machete Kills, R.I.P.D., World War Z, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Identity Thief