Her (2013)

The movie’s official poster calls Her “A Spike Jonze Love Story.” The decidedly unofficial “honest” movie poster created by Uproxx calls it “a two-hour closeup of Joaquin Phoenix’s face.” More on that in a bit; for now I’d like to focus on the official tagline. Jonze (of the genre-bending—and genre-shaping—Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) is a filmmaker with an astute sense of the absurd. His films are genuinely provocative, brazenly original and bravely inquisitive, and Her, Jonze’s screenwriting debut, is no exception. But the film also offers one of the loveliest romances ever to have graced the silver screen. The fact that it transpires between a man and his software only increases my admiration for the delicacy and depth of feeling packed into the relationship, a brilliant conceptual gag that proves nonetheless sincere and completely plausible. Wildly inventive, challenging and engaging, this subtly profound film follows its own quirky, amusing course. It’s a melancholy, eerie love story unlike anything else you’ve seen this year—or ever.

In Her’s opening shots, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix in a quietly heroic, beautifully hushed performance), is making an unabashed declaration of love to an unseen beloved. The actor, as well as his character, is unaffected, sincere, disarming. We quickly discover, however, that his lovely words are not addressed to his beloved at all, that this is what Theodore does for a living; the character is a latter-day Cyrano writing heartfelt notes-for-hire at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com (the handwriting all computer-generated, of course). The cuteness is instantly turned to cynicism, in a movie that is both visionary and traditional, tender and cool, passionate and wispy. Like the lingering analog affection for handwriting in a digital age, Her argues for both the past and the future, with a soulfully poetic spirit that’s become extremely rare in American cinema.

Don Jon (2013)

 

Don Jon, Joseph Gordon Levitt’s writing and directing debut, is a skittering and sweet film filled with humor, heat, and heart. At once openly satiric and disarmingly sincere, the movie manages to be both funny and touching, sometimes in the same instant.

Playing against type as a brawn-bound Jersey boy and an inveterate lothario obsessed with himself, porn, and Scarlett Johansson, Levitt might at first seem like an odd choice for the eponymous Jon—dubbed Don because of his way with the ladies. But the immensely talented young actor has tricks up his sleeve we hadn’t seen before, boldly displayed in front of as well as behind the camera.

Ghost World (2001) Analysis

In Ghost World, director Terry Zwigoff brings Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel characters to vivid, vibrant life. The movie captures the same ironic, bittersweet tone of Clowes’ writing, tracking Enid’s dogged search for authenticity in a world populated with Holden Caulfield-spite-worthy stupid, shallow phonies and creating a powerful adaptation which, although straying from its source material, remains serious and sad without ever losing its sense of humor. A loving and level gaze at the tedium and mystery of teenage life in contemporary America, Ghost World also approximates the author’s clean, quiet drawing style through its unhurried editing, unobtrusive, subtle compositions, and general unremarkability of the camerawork. In this universe, the characters and not the cinematics carry the story, and the form reflects the simplicity of their lives, helping to portray a realistic lonely and misunderstood (not least of all by herself) young girl  who has just graduated high school, but, unlike her best friend, hasn’t quite entered the real world yet.

 ***This is an analysis, not a review, and it contains spoilers 

Hitchcock (2012)

Sascha Gervasi’s Hitchcock, written by John J. McLaughlin, is a thoroughly entertaining, but ultimately uneven film about the Master of Suspense’s professional struggles to finance, make, and promote Psycho, and his personal problems with his long suffering wife, Alma Reville. The best thing the film does is treat its title character not as a legend, but as a person. Half behind the scenes look at the inner workings of Hollywood during its last decade of innocence and half family drama, the movie’s different segments, however, vary greatly in quality and tone.

Opening on a quiet prologue taking place in 1940s rural Wisconsin, the casual tone is firmly set when the peaceful tableau turns into a gruesome family murder, and the camera pans to reveal the title character’s portly presence, calmly sipping a cup of tea while directly addressing the audience, as he did in his famous “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” show. Brother has been killing brother since Cain and Abel, Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) croons is his incomparable British drawl; who is he to deprive us of the pleasure of watching it happen on the silver screen?