One of the Few Movies In Years to Embrace the Human Condition

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2014)

This movie is truly a gem. It's one of few movies in the past several years to make me think, make me laugh, make me angry, and make me cry. I felt invested in the movies characters, and struggled to think about nearly every line of dialogue. The movie does a lot of things simply for shock value, but even with those moments in the movie, the writing and acting are spot-on and brilliant. Joaquin Phoenix plays an awkward, but brilliant, middle-aged man struggling with divorce and facing a world alone for the first time in ages and ends up finding everything he was after, and more, in the form of a computer operating system. There's a ton of symbolism, and even tales of warning here for what our own future brings us. We're largely a society that feels more comfortable talking about and sharing our lives in a virtual environment than an interpersonal one these days. I will also say that during this movie I wasn't aware of who was voicing Samantha until I looked it up, and that until the credit roll I didn't know this was a Spike Jonze movie. It's worth watching, but don't watch if you're already depressed.