Joaquin Phoenix Is Smitten With His Operating System In Spike Jonze’s HER

HER (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2013) 

This is way too lovely and poetic a film to find mixed in with the formulaic fodder at your local multiplex. Yet that’s where it’s playing in my area having bypassed the independent theater circuit because of awards season buzz.

Set in a shiny clean Los Angeles in the near future, where everyone wears beltless high-waisted pants, the film concerns a love story between a meek mustached Joaquin Phoenix and his phone’s sentient operating system voiced by the sultry Scarlett Johansson.

Having weathered a painful breakup (we catch fleeting glimpses in flashbacks of Phoenix in an extremely emotional relationship with Rooney Mara, best known for the American version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), our soft spoken protagonist purchases said OS1, which is billed as the first artificially intelligent operating system, and is immediately taken with the disembodied voice of Johansson.

Johansson, names herself Samantha after reading the book “How To Name Your Baby” in two one hundredths of a second, and goes about sorting through all of Phoenix’s files on his hard drive.

Phoenix writes for a company that produces custom made greeting cards (Beautiful Handwritten Letters Dot Com), so his sentimental “sad and mopey” (as Amy Adams, his documentary film maker friend, puts it) nature comes in handy.



After Adams sets him up on a blind date (played by Olivia Wilde in a small but crucial cameo) that at first goes well but ends badly when commitment comes up, Phoenix finds himself falling hard for Samantha. What’s freaky is that Samantha feels the same and even hires a surrogate (Portia Doubleday) to act as her body so they can have sex.

Phoenix’s predicament isn’t an anomaly as many others are having relationships with their OS’s including Adams since her marriage (to a jaded Matt Letscher) went south. The film’s take on a future world in which isolationism is a lifestyle choice, isn’t so farfetched as anybody who’s been in a public place filled with folks with their faces buried in the screens of their devices can attest.

Jonze first solo screenplay, which won Best Screenplay at Sunday’s Golden Globes Awards), shows that he learned much from Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the director’s first few films (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION).

There’s a lot of emotional material that’s hard to pull off on display here, but Jonze handles it with endearing delicacy and a pure sense of purpose. He’s greatly aided by Phoenix putting in one of his most fully realized performances as the supremely sympathetic lead – a man who looks like he’s aching inside even when he’s smiling. 



Factor in Johansson conveying the OS’s evolving vulnerability with poise, and Adams making a stunning transition from being a ‘70s glamour puss con woman in AMERICAN HUSTLE to embodying the mousy insecure frizzy-haired could-be love interest and you’ve got a cast as charming as the film itself.

HER’s soundtrack doesn’t expand much on the musical palette of Jonze’s previous film, his and David Egger’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, as both Arcade Fire and Karen O. both return to provide songs, but this is so not a complaint as their music, especially when matched with Hoyte van Hoytema’s incredible cinematography effectively fits the highs and lows of the lightly surreal scenario.

The concept of having cyber sex with Siri aside, I can’t think of another recent film dealing with romance that better captures the way it feels to first fall in love; how wonderfully intense and scary it can be. It also nails how painfully fleeing the losing of love can be as well. HER is an immersive and beautiful cinematic conversation about what our real wants and needs are.

 
But it may not be for everybody – just those with two eyes, two ears, and a heart.

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SUPERMAN: The New Nolan-ized Reboot

Now playing at mulitplexes from here to the Phantom Zone:

MAN OF STEEL (Dir. Zack Snyder, 2013)

The time is as good as any for a new take on the most powerful comic book superhero ever, but Zack Snyder’s (300, WATCHMEN, SUCKER PUNCH) reconstruction of the Superman movie mythos is a big bombastic bore.

A great cast has been assembled, including Henry Cavill as the caped crusader, Russell Crowe as Superman’s Kryptonian father, Kevin Costner as his Earth dad, Amy Adams as Daily Planet reporter/love-interest Lois Lane, Lawrence Fishburne as her editor/boss Perry White, Richarh Schiff (The West Wing) as some sort of all-knowing scientist, and, best of all, Michael Shannon as the evil bent-on-revenge General Zod, but Snyder working from a screenplay by DARK KNIGHT co-writer David S. Goyer, overcrowds the storyline with spectacle, repetitive dialogue, and needless convolutions making it difficult to connect with anything on screen.

You know the drill – before Krypton explodes, Papa Crowe (probably the actor who brings the most gravitas to the film) puts his new born baby (touted this time as the planet’s first natural birth in centuries) in a spaceship to Earth, where he’s found by a kindly middle-aged couple (Costner and Diane Lane) living on a farm in Kansas, who name him Clark Kent.

As the boy grows up he recognizes that he has great powers, learns of his origin, and heeding the advice of his step-dad Costner to conceal what he can do, he goes on the road anonymously going from town to town working different jobs until his powers get in the way and he has to move on just like David Banner (Bill Bixby) did on the old Incredible Hulk show.

Huh? Wait a second, that’s not really part of the classic Superman story is it? Sure doesn’t feel like it should be here, but whatever. In this version, Lois Lane figures out that Clark Kent has powers before he even puts on the suit; she never knows Clark and Superman as 2 different people. I’m fine with that – it would be too much to ask for an ace investigative reporter (one that’s won the Pulitzer Prize, mind you) to be fooled by a pair of glasses, so they don’t introduce the element of our hero working at the newspaper until the end. Makes me miss the comically over-sized glasses that Christopher Reeve wore as Clark back in the original ‘70s-‘80s SUPERMAN movies, but, oh well.

Also unlike that run of movies, that got progressively worse (the first two were great, the third and fourth ones, not so much), there’s no Fortress of Solitude made out of new age crystals, no Lex Luthor, and barely any humor.

Shannon is perfectly cast as General Zod (stepping into the mighty shoes worn by Terrence Stamp in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and SUPERMAN II), but it’s an exposition-heavy role, with the actor looking like he’s in a permanent bad mood (resembling grumpy cat at times), but it’s still one of the more successful elements on display in MAN OF STEEL, because of how invested Shannon is in it.

Zod and his minions attack Metropolis, with tons of buildings getting destroyed (we don’t seeing many people dying but from what we see it’s impossible that there wasn’t a large death toll) and start taking over Earth so that they can make it New Krypton or something. The cityscape alien attack sequence was much better done in THE AVENGERS (not to mention SUPERMAN II), and the climatic one-on-one battle between Superman and Zod just has them pummeling each other from one set-piece to another with no excitement (they punch each other through buildings over and over). Meanwhile Fishburne and a few other Daily Planet folks are running through the rubble, for some reason they’re some of the only survivors of the attack, but since the film never established them as characters to care about, there’s no real connection to them.

The British-born Cavill makes for a fine Superman aesthetically, and he’s got the American accent down, but his is also a blank slate of a character that I had trouble forming any connection to. The charisma that Reeve had in the iconic role, and that Bryan Singer tried to capture with Reeve clone Brandon Routh in 2006’s SUPERMAN RETURNS is sorely missing, but that fault lies more with the writers/filmmakers than with the man in the cape.

One thread that really didn’t work for me had to do with the scrambled narrative that jumps around, and way too often to flashbacks of Earth dad Costner saying that the world isn’t ready for a man of incredible powers yet. They draw this out too long, when you know that the world is as ready as it’s ever going to be, and Costner’s death in a tornado, which his son could’ve saved him from, doesn’t make any sense.

In SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, Glenn Ford as our hero’s adoptive father died much more poignantly from a heart attack – something Superman could never have saved him from (well, unless he spins the world back in time), and it had a richer meaning to his maturation; here the man’s death doesn’t teach any lesson except that he’s wrong and his son should’ve revealed himself much earlier. I really don’t get what they’re waiting for. The movie doesn’t give any discernable reason except to stretch out Superman’s angsty development and Costner’s part.

The dark gritty approach to the material, which undoubtedly came from Executive Producer Christopher Nolan, who shares a “story by” credit with Goyer, isn’t right for this area of the D.C. Comics universe. I’m not saying Superman should be nothing but sunny warmth, but there’s no triumphant thrill to seeing our hero save the day here – he doesn’t even show concern for the many who undoubtedly died in the huge devastation on Metropolis.

MAN OF STEEL is a by-the-numbers summer blockbuster wannabe that forgot to have any fun with its source material. Ultimately, it's a ginormously fussy film pulled in so many directions that it's un-engaging and dull. 

Technically, with its well chosen cast and vast array of nonstop visual effects, Snyder and crew have made a serviceable popcorn picture, but next time out (and with all the money that it has already made, there certainly will be a next time) I’m hoping they’ll remember to add more heart, humor, and humanity to this not quite re-booted franchise.

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The Film Babble Blog Top 10 Movies Of 2012

Yeah, I know it’s the end of January, but I had a bunch of movies to catch up with so back off! 2012 wasn’t really a bad year for film, but it was far from fantastic. Looking at the top ten highest grossing films of the year, I see that all of them were franchise entries.

Maybe 2012 was the most formulaic year for film ever, I dunno, but I do know that there were some worthwhile films that stood out from the usual glut of super hero sequels and here they are - Film Babble Blog’s Top 10:

1. THE MASTER (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

The immaculate imagery provided by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., the layered construction of Anderson’s screenplay, and the powerful performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams (who ought to win the Oscar just for having to sit nude except for a pregnant-belly prosthetic in a central surreal scene), all make up the most memorably stirring movie of the year. Shame on the Academy for not nominating it for Best Picture. Read my review. 

2. HOLY MOTORS (Dir. Leos Carax)

The freakiest film of the year is also one of the most invigorating. French film maker Carax gives us Denis Lavant as the eccentric Mr. Oscar, whom we watch being driven around Paris by his associate Céline (Édith Scob) in a white limousine that functions as his dressing room to various odd jobs. And I do mean odd. Read my full review here.

3. ARGO (Dir. Ben Affleck) 

Another shameful omission by the Academy was Affleck for Best Director for this superb thriller, but some are predicting that it will win Best Picture to make up for it. I would be cool with that because his terrific take on the joint CIA-Canadian secret operation that used the ruse of a sci-fi film production to rescue a group of American diplomats from Iran’s clutches in 1980 is well deserving. Read my full review. 

4. BERNIE (Dir. Richard Linklater) 

Linklater’s 15th film takes the true story of a Texas mortician (played to perfection by Jack Black) who kills a wealthy widow (a sharp harpie depiction by Shirley MacClaine), and makes a matter-of-fact comic docudrama out of it that really works. Read my full review here.

5. SKYFALL (Dir. Sam Mendes)

Who expected that the return of the iconic superspy after a four year hiatus would yield an Oscar caliber James Bond movie? I sure didn’t. I’m happy to have it as Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007 isn’t just one of the best of the series, it’s one of the best full throttle action films in years. Read my full review.

For my full reviews of the rest – please click on the highlighted titles:

6. LINCOLN (Dir. Steven Spielberg)

7. SAMSARA (Dir. Ron Fricke)

8. MOONRISE KINGDOM (Dir. Wes Anderson)

9. LOOPER (Dir. Rian Johnson)

10. ZERO DARK THIRTY (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

Now bring on 2013! Again, I know it’s a month into it, but go with me on this. 

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The Cornball Charm Of TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE 

(Dir. Robert Lorenz, 2012)

Sure, every critic will mention it, but Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing crazy-old-man-yells-at-chair speech at the RNC a few weeks back doesn’t at all get in the way of his new film being a good old-fashioned cornball crowd-pleaser.

Eastwood, with his crotchetiness played to greater comic effect than say in GRAN TORINO, plays a baseball scout for the Altlanta Braves who is going blind, so he may be in his final season on the job. As his daughter, Amy Adams (also in THE MASTER opening today) joins him on the trip against his wishes, to help out.

Meanwhile, back at the home office, Matt Lillard, as obviously a jerk for the audience to hate, wants Eastwood out of the game, and his boss, a grimacing Robert Patrick, might agree. But luckily Eastwood has a friend in the Braves’ organization in the form of John Goodman pulling for him.

Another friend, Justin Timberlake as a retired pitcher now doing the scouting thing too, runs into Eastwood at a game, and immediately has eyes for Adams.

It’s a comfortable ole baseball glove of a commercial movie, where everything falls exactly in the place you’d expect. With only a few current topical references, its script, by first time screenwriter Randy Brown, feels like it was written in the ‘90s when old people were first becoming troubled by the idea of a computer run world. Clint’s line about the “interwebs” attests to that.

In that way it’s like a gruff counterpoint to last year’s MONEYBALL, in which old school on the spot skills are favored over statistical analysis. So much so that I expected Clint to take a baseball bat to a laptop OFFICE SPACE-style.

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, throws no curves story-wise, is full of cheesy clichés, and was completely filmed in Georgia, despite being mostly set in my home-state North Carolina, yet I still found it highly likable.

Eastwood’s growling and grunting through his part is amusingly affecting, and Adams, along with Timberlake both put in warm and fuzzy performances. And if you want your film to be more likable, casting Goodman is always a good idea.

Robert Lorenz, whose first film as director this is after many assistant directing duties, provides Eastwood and co. with a sturdy vehicle that has plenty of cornball charm, and isn’t too sappy. It’s not a home run, but it’s a perfectly pleasant stroll around the bases.

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THE MASTER: A Complicated Yet Beautiful Dream I’m Still Processing

THE MASTER (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

The impact of the amazing imagery in Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to 2007’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD is immediate. Opening shots of the frothy ocean from above are vividly captured by the camera of cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., as is the following sequence of American soldiers on a tropical beach at the end of World War II. However, the impact of the narrative, as it shapes, isn’t as immediate, for this is a film that viewers will still be processing way after it ends.

Joaquin Phoenix, looking more haggard than usual, plays one of the soldiers, and his chief characteristics are that he’s a horny drunkard. So much so that he can’t keep the department store photographer job he gets shortly after returning to the states, because of the effects of his homemade moonshine. That also leads to the end of his next occupation, as a cabbage picker, when one of his fellow workers swigs too much of Phoenix’s toxic concoction, and may die of poisoning.

Phoenix bolts out of there, at first chased by other pickers, and stows away on a ritzy riverboat where he meets Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the charismatic leader of a new religious movement called “The Cause.” Oh, yeah, in case you haven’t heard – this is the movie that’s supposedly based on Scientology, and Hoffman is allegedly based on writer/Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

It’s impossible not to think about that when Phoenix undergoes intense questioning by Hoffman, i.e. auditing, and when vague yet lofty theological platitudes are tossed around. Hoffman sees through Phoenix, but still takes him on as a protégé. Hoffman’s family, including wife Amy Adams, daughter Ambyr Childers, and son-in-law Rami Malek are skeptical of Phoenix, although it’s obvious Childers has a thing for him, but Hoffman apparently sees something in him that reminds him of his younger self, or, maybe, he just wants him around to make more of that powerful moonshine.

Despite that Phoenix pines for a girl he left behind when he went to war, played by Madisen Beaty in a scene that I’m not sure if is imagined or not, he appears to want to screw every woman in sight. In a party scene hosted at the house of a benefactor played by Laura Dern, Phoenix envisions every woman in the nude as Hoffman sings a bawdy song. Except for the men who all remained clothed, his imagination doesn’t discriminate age-wise, and even a pregnant seated Amy Adams (who looks very uncomfortable) is naked.

Phoenix doesn’t seem to pay attention to the philosophies of the cult around him, and Anderson’s screenplay really doesn’t either. When Hoffman’s son, played by Jesse Plemmons (amusingly recently referred to as Meth Damon on a A.V. Club message board because of his role on Breakin’ Bad and resemblance to Matt Damon), asks Phoenix “Don’t you know he’s making it all up as he goes along?” it doesn’t really register.

Figuring out what’s supposed to register in THE MASTER will be quite a sport this season. Many will be turned off by the coldness of the production, but no doubt will endlessly discuss it.
The film’s wide scope, which was shot in 70 mm, can be overwhelming, even when it’s only focusing on a few faces in the frame. Or just one – mostly Phoenix’s gritty mug, but the red sweaty pores of Hoffman’s cheeks get exhaustingly explored as well.

Phoenix nails the adrift emptiness of a man who just wants to go with the flow, as long as booze and loose woman are part of that flow. Hoffman’s religion may be bullshit to him, but it’s still something to grasp onto, or at least the trappings around it.

I got lost in the engulfing experience that was “The Master,” and believe it’s one of the year’s best films. Each of Anderson’s films has an angle on the American right to the pursuit of happiness, whether it be gained through drilling oil (THERE WILL BE BLOOD), the business of pornography (BOOGIE NIGHTS), crime (HARD EIGHT), romance (PUNCH DRUNK LOVE), or pure chance (MAGNOLIA).

Here, Anderson’s angle is much more difficult to pinpoint, but because of the incredible luscious look of the film, the meticulous acting (both Hoffman and Phoenix’s sharp performances will surely garner award season attention), the precision of the writing, and the excellently fierce and sometimes frightening score by Jonny Greenwood, maybe that doesn’t matter.

The only major thing I can pinpoint is that THE MASTER is that it’s like a complicated yet beautiful dream. Just wait ‘til later to ask me what it means though, I’m still processing it.

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