1. It's a completely crazy premise: man falls in love with artifically-intelligent operating system that's just a voice in his earpiece.
2. But this movie sells it. What happens - and a lot of odd stuff happens - always seems completely plausible.
3. In fact, we wound up rooting for the romance of Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson's voice in a way that we don't often root for movie couples.
4. The look and feel of this movie (set in the future, but not that far into the future) made us want to learn more about the minimalist future style created by K.K. Barnett. Genius. Fun fact: the filmmakers avoiding showing any cars in the movie to give it a strange, future feel.
5. At this point, you really do have to sit up and pay attention when a new Spike Jonze movie arrives. His work is always singular in ambition and technique. See also: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are.
6. We all have this image of Phoenix as this exaggerated, look-at-me weirdo, but here he's completely normal and ordinary and sweet. We suppose that's a tribute to his talent.
7. There's a lot going on here. Questions about our interactions with technology and how that shapes our interactions with others, about what it means to be human, about the fragile nature of love and marriage, about conforming to social norms.
8. We feel like we need to see it again to really appreciate the layers. It's that good.
9. Love the little video game avatar guy. What a quirky detail.
10. The nuanced, powerfully evocative way the film captures both the giddy excitement of falling in love and the scary panic of realizing your relationship is crumbling reminded us of how rarely these things happen in most movies. It's a hard thing to pull off. And most movies don't even try to go beyond superficial romance cliches.
11. For a story about a guy in love with his computer, it's surprisingly sexy and romantic. And maybe a little unsettlingly so.
12. Oh yeah, and the third act works in the theory of singularity. Wow.
13. It's just a brilliant movie.
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