Wick's Review

Summary - Perfect 5.0

Her is set in Los Angeles by way of Shanghai – palm trees, beaches and lots and lots of super tall towers. People barely engage with other people. They engage with cybots: robotic cyber-beings purringly delivered.

Scarlett Johansen turns in the sexiest performance of her career as Samantha, a cybot who just thought of her name a nanosecond ago. Sweet, saucy and seductive, ScoJo’s mouth turns out to be her sexiest organ.

Siri inspired, Spike Jonze created, Her hits several cinematic erogenous zones: important • SciFi • romance.

• Important: Jonze uses Siri as a jumping-off point to envision profound cyber services and effects.
• SciFi: Joaquin Phoenix plays a human cyber-companion, a guy well paid to craft handwritten personal letters for distant clients. His PDA and earphone connect him to a superior being.
• Romance: The love affair Theodore Twombly has with his cybot starts and flows naturally, helped along by some newfangled phone sex. It’s mostly sweet, occasionally stormy and ultimately sad.

Acting - Perfect 5.0

Joaquin Phoenix & Scarlett Johansson score big in Her.

Joaquin Phoenix now has yet another famous name associated with his. Theodore Twombly is a man from the near future, a man like any of us. Well, any of us who live in a luxe Century City high-rise apartment. A man whose job is the apotheosis of English Major career success, a well paid Lit dude. Phoenix is a natural.

Three women surround him.

• Rooney Mara as his wife. His soon to be ex-wife.
• Scarlett Johansson as his dreamboat assistent Samantha. Smartest girlfriend he’s ever had. ScoJo deserves an Oscar. Seriously. Her voice does it all.
• Amy Adams as his college friend Amy. You gotta like that Amy Adams plays an Amy. Matt Letscher plays her prissy husband.

Another woman appears as an image in front of Theodore Twombly: May Lindstrom as the Sexy Pregnant TV Star. That’s a fetish I never understood.

Plus, a major score…

Olivia Wilde as the Blind Date. That’s quite a Blind Date, more like Sexiest Blind Date Ever. Theodore Twombly rejects her, of course. The guy’s mental. La Wilde One is a total hottie – gorgeous, smart, eager.

Voices

• Bill Hader as Chat Room Friend #2. Money.
• Kristen Wiig as SexyKitten. Ka-Ching.
• Artt Butler as Text Voice
• Brian Johnson as something called OS1 Commercial Lead
• Spike Jonze himself – aka Adam Spiegel – as the livingroom videogame Alien Child

Letter Writers

• Lynn Adrianna
• Lisa Renee Pitts
• Gabe Gomez

Film - Perfect 5.0

Alone Together gets taken to new levels in Her. Passersby stream through public spaces conversing elsewhere: talking with people and cyber companions who are elsewhere or nowhere at all, save the cloud.

This all takes place in a placid and crime-free L.A. Odd for a futuristic Hollywood fantasy that it’s not apocalyptic and seething with class resentments. You know, like an Obama economics speech.

Edge - Risqué 2.2

More spicy than Salty • One tick over Titillating into Erotic • Violence of the emotional kind = Risqué

Reality - Glib 1.8

Deconstructing “the first artificially intelligent operating system”, we see that Artificial Intelligence still has humanistic weight, even after all these years, technological generations and failed expectations. We also see that Operating System is a base level positioning of what the cyber companion is. When positioning, go with something base level and differentiate from there.

Theodore Twombly’s two devices never go missing, are always readily at hand: a phone-like object that’s hinged like an old-fashioned dual photo frame and an earpiece that’s a full headphone. Yet they have no home, other than the nearest horizontal surface to him or precariously hanging out of his breast pocket. Only in the movies.

Finally, here’s a fun exercise: Google “Her movie” and click Images. A bumper crop of gorgeous actresses appear, including a never hotter Amy Adams. Plus shots related to the movie. But it’s the adders that make it especially pleasant, albeit diverting.

5 Comments

• Wick Jul 27, 2014 12:39PM

  Regarding BrianSez’s Review
  Scarlett’s “the “Siri” that I really want!” Here, here!

• TerryEinstein May 23, 2014 8:44AM

  It’s so interesting how smart people of like minds can have such disparate opinions. The cinematography, design – all the visual elements of Gravity were game-changers. I felt the conclusion was so flat. It struck me as a classic case of how much a bad conclusion can color an entire story.

• Wick May 21, 2014 8:32PM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Fair enough Terry, though my Best Pic of 2013 remains 12 Years a Slave, followed by Gravity. That said, I rated all three 5 out of 5 in terms of quality.

  As to La Wilde One, you are so right.

• TerryEinstein May 21, 2014 1:35PM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Oh, and Olivia Wilde has the most compelling eyes of any actress in Hollywood. She’s so gorgeous, it’s criminal.

• TerryEinstein May 21, 2014 1:33PM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  “Her” got my vote for Best Film of 2013.

  I felt that two of the central themes of the film – the nature of consciousness, the limitations of being stuck in a meat-sack (a body) – are extremely profound.

  Great script, great acting, great direction. This film is FAR superior to the ‘winner’ of the Oscar, “12 Years a Slave”. While 12YAS is an IMPORTANT FILM, it’s not inspired. My wife, Robin, put it best. Even in the most dire circumstances, humans find humor. 12YAS was overly-somber (therefore an IMPORTANT FILM) but not a brilliant one.

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