Thoughtful and touching and gentle, though maybe not probing enough

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2014)

Her (2013)
Great concept, and not taken far enough. But great acting. And great simple filming style and structure—it simply progresses, and the "future" as imagined in contemporary China is not so different than right now. Which makes it all believable and slightly creepy.
We can picture coming to like (or appreciate) the simple personality that even Siri offers on a phone. Make it more complex and you have the danger of really liking it. What the movie does next is not so easy, yet—it allows the computer operating system to evolve, to have feelings, and to be more complex that it lets on (essentially tricking the user).
So the computer takes on a personality bordering on consciousness. Or maybe not bordering. That's the deeper existential issue here. You can go back to 1968 and HAL in "2001" to get a similar version of this. But that was grandiose and futuristic. "Her" is nearly now and the situation is extremely intimate.
So the user is the rather deadpan, inward looking character Theodore, played with utter transparency by Joaquin Phoenix. The personality in the computer is voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who has a distinctive enough style we know it's her (and can almost picture her, which might help with some scenes).
The arc of the movie is what it is, and takes me back to my first point: it doesn't go far enough. Maybe this won't seem true for many viewers—and it's no reason not to see this—but for people used to thinking about these things, or who are into science fiction, there will be a tame restraint here that is a little flat by the end. Not that there aren't some great twists—more that there aren't enough of them.
Still, this is so compactly made and thoughtfully rendered, it's hard to imagine a better stepping off point for the ideas that drive the movie home. Watch it, and listen to it. And think.