Her

AroView: Joaquin Phoenix plays a lonely divorcee who finds himself falling in love with ‘Samantha’, the artificial intelligence behind a new computer operating system, in this thoughtful technological romance from dir. Spike Jonze.

The director of such high-concept comedies as ADAPTATION and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is this time relying on his own writing chops, and in spite of it winning an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, doesn’t sufficiently expand on its singular premise and is prone to self-conscious sentiment. Joaquin Phoenix is quietly convincing as a “sensitive everyman” but Scarlet Johansson’s disembodied voice for a two-hour running time is in itself a gambit that will divide audiences.

“[A] tender, wry, deceptively modest package – and the closer you look, the more it reveals itself to be the proverbial Movie For Our Times.” ~FILM COMMENT