Directed by Spike Jonze.
★★★½
Jonze is a unique voice in cinema. He's only directed four movies, but each one (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, Her) goes places we don't expect.
This explores a near-future that shows the natural progression of the over-saturation of social media, where people are more and more socially awkward yet yearn for genuine human interaction. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a man who works at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, a company that writes heart-felt hand-written letters from one person to another. I love the irony of that, and yet it's something that seems like it would eventually be a successful site.
Theodore is one of the first customers of the new Artificial Intelligence Operating System, about ten generations past Siri. Theodore's personalized OS is Samantha (voices by Scarlett Johansson), and she is programmed to fit Theodore's needs and personality, but as an AI, she learns and progresses in her own right.
It's funny, it's touching, and it's a movie Ron Swanson would hate. "Just date a real woman, son." I've seen a lot of good movies lately. If only Hollywood would release them all year round.
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