Beautiful vision of the near future

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2014)

What if artificial intelligence has become a reality and instead of the Skynet scenario where we end up waging a war against our new robot overlords, we end up simply co-existing with them, in peace. Sound boring? I can assure you, it's not. Her is an astonishingly captivating tale of a man who finds himself lonely and decides to buy a new operating system for his computer. An operating system that just happens to be an artificial intelligence.
This movie rides heavily on the acting chops of Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. Fortunately both of them are phenomenal and even though most of the scenes show Theodore (Phoenix) simply talking into empty air and Samantha (Johansson) is nothing more than a voice in a machine, they're still great scenes because the two simply have great chemistry together. Johansson especially is a phenomenon. She's everything a flesh and blood actor would be, only using her voice. She skips from playful to profound to thoughtful to sad with such skill that it's hard to imagine anyone else pulling it off as well.
I also have to praise the ending. It's not what you'd expect, but it feels right. Movie such as this one, where the conflict is one of deep philosophy and human existence, was always going to be hard to end in a way that feels satisfying, but Her pulls it off seemingly effortlessly.
Her jumped straight into one of my favourite movies of all time. It's a nigh perfect mix of humour, drama, emotions and science fiction. Recommended to every single one of you out there.