Joaquin Phoenix Archives

Her, the new film starring Joaquin Phoenix and written and directed by Spike Jonze, is garnering very good reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the film a 93% critics rating (and 87% audience rating). The movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It does address an interesting concept and I enjoyed much of the story, but I was not as overwhelmed as the critics.

Her takes place in the not-to-distant future where we know it is the future because people do not wear belts but they do wear mustaches. Phoenix stars as a writer named Theodore Twombly going through a divorce who falls in love with the advanced operating system on his cell phone, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

I have admired movies by Jonze since Being John Malkovich (1999), and he does an excellent job here of capturing a world that is recognizable but slightly different from ours. The film also raises interesting questions about artificial intelligence and human relationships, addressing more immediate problems raised by computers than what we see in other science fiction films like Terminator. I enjoyed the characterization by Phoenix and the voice work by Johansson. And Amy Adams does a great job here too. But my one complaint about the film was that there was not enough there to keep me entertained for two hours. I never became invested in Phoenix’s character enough to stay entertained. For me, the movie could have told the same story in ninety minutes or less.

Conclusion? Most people are enjoying this film, so maybe you will too. For me, I enjoyed a lot of the movie but it could not keep me from looking at my watch several times. Still, Her raises some interesting issues that might lead you to further discussions with your friends.

Bonus Parody Video: This weekend on Saturday Night Live, host Jonah Hill (with a little help from Micheal Cera) did a funny parody with the preview for the movie Me. Check it out.

Did you like Her? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Trailer for Coen Brothers’ Film: “Hail, Caesar!”

Jonah Hill “Doesn’t” Let Oscar Nom Go to His Head (SNL video)

Paul McCartney Joins Springsteen for “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”

Teaser Trailer for New “The Jungle Book” from Disney

“I Am Chris Farley” Trailer

“Serial” Parodies from Funny or Die and SNL

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Writer and Director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s latest film, The Master (2012), stars Joaquin Phoenix as a troubled man who finds a home for awhile with the leader of a movement played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The navy veteran played by Phoenix bounces around aimlessly, apparently haunted by some mental illness, until he attaches himself to Hoffman’s character, an author who developed “The Cause” as a method he claims will help people live their lives. Although the film is fictional, many have pointed out a number of similarities between Hoffman’s character and Scientology founder and author L. Ron Hubbard, which adds an interesting layer to the film.

It is a challenging film in a number of ways, highlighted by vignettes more than a narrative story — although the movie is not without plot. Yet, as in Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) that starred Daniel Day-Lewis, what one may remember most from the movie is the fine acting combined with haunting images throughout. As happens after I watch a Stanley Kubrick film, after watching The Master I keep reconstructing and re-imagining certain scenes and the way the director laid them out. Scenes like one of Phoenix stretched out on a ship above his shipmates or of Hoffman riding a motorcycle in a desert convey a certain haunting feeling that cannot be described in mere words.

Because of those images and others like them, perhaps the movie will hold up well on repeated viewings. But on my first viewing, I did find the movie watching experience a pleasant one even as I admired the film. The weakness in the movie is that pretty much all of the characters, including the Master’s wife played by Amy Adams, are not very likeable. A movie can be enjoyable and about unlikeable characters, but I might have liked the movie more with a little more information about why the characters were like they were, although there were hints that Phoenix’s character’s troubles resulted from the war. Yet, as it was, I spent 2 hours and 18 minutes with unlikeable characters, whose oddities were emphasized with a musical score of dissonant chords. I found a similar weakness in There Will Be Blood, and missed a heart that appeared in some of Anderson’s great earlier works like Boogie Nights (1997). Of course, in The Master, Anderson is trying to say something about 1950s America that would have been lost had he included likeable characters. So, I get it.

Conclusion? The Master is a very good and challenging film but not for everyone. If you are looking for a conventional story with sympathetic characters, you might want to skip this one. But if it is worth it for you to ponder scenes of chilling beauty, make sure to see this one on the big screen.

Other Reviews Because Why Should You Listen to Me?: Andrew O’Hehir at Salon has an excellent discussion of the film, praising its genius as a tale about L. Ron Hubbard’s America while thoughtfully considering its weaknesses too. Lisa Kennedy at The Denver Post says the film is both “confounding” and “magnificent.” By contrast, Cole Smiley claims “the audience is left to decide if the movie is some kind of bad joke, or an artistic project gone horribly astray.” Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 84% critic rating and a 62% audience rating, and that disparity is not surprising considering how the challenging aspects of the film may endear critics more than most general filmgoers.