extraordinarily beautiful

Rating: 9/10 (10 April 2018)

A poignant love story w/a dash of humor and an impressive dose of genuinely thought provoking philosophy, 'Her' proves that Spike Jonze is far more than a purely visual filmmaker. Jonze's most successful (w/r/t quality) previous films, w/only very few exceptions, were written by Charlie Kaufman, and Kaufman always seemed to be the main genius at work, whose brilliant vision was admittedly perfectly visualized by Jonze. But, 'Her' proves Jonze can write his own story w/as much wisdom, wit, and perceptive insight as Kaufman can. I mean, this film is practically on board w/the likes of 'Eternal Sunshine' and 'Anomalisa', which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a movie. It's slightly difficult for me to really even articulate my review/thoughts/???/whatever on this film accurately, or, not really accurately but...precisely? No, not even precisely. I mean...lengthily I guess is closest to what I mean. I cannot put my feelings to words right now exactly, all I can really say is this film blew me away. It starts of being mostly pretty hilarious, but soon becomes an emotional powerhouse that is so sweet and sincere and real, yet almost surreal in parts...but not exactly surreal. O, you don't know what I mean. The point is, this film is fantastic. Literally everything about it. The dialogue rings so true, the tackling of the, at first glance, weird and maybe-even-kind-of-silly-almost concept(s) is so natural and grounded and perfect. The script is so tight and a brilliant balance of story and philosophy. The film is shot so beautifully, the music is wonderful, the performances are so unbelievably fantastic (Scarlett Johansson basically plays a smartphone and it's one of her finest performances, Joaquin Phoenix perfectly portrays a character that could have easily been made out to be somehow "creepy" or unlikable in a way that makes him the exact opposite, if still flawed (as we all obviously are)), and I could just go on and on about everything from the set design to the color palette to the various notable, well written side characters, etc., etc., etc., so I'm going to just close this review by saying: GO WATCH THIS!