Film Review of 'Her'

In Virtual Love, Meghan Daum explores the contrasts between online relationships, and their face-to-face counterparts. Her writing style is blunt and to-the-point, lacking any flowery words or sayings, and containing little of the rhythm or flow that can make essays on the most boring of topics interesting to read. Her essay seems to be written as if to be a story, and yet her “plot” is predictable and uninteresting. Rather than truly explore a thought or concept, it is simply a narration, with a few attempts at wisdom tacked on in the end.

The movie ‘Her’ is the story about Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a man who develops a relationship with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), an intelligent computer operating system personified through a female voice. At the beginning of the film, Theodore is completely inept when it comes to how to make relationship with person, specifically women. However, after he gets to know Samantha, an OS program, a feeling of true love develops inside of Theodore’s mind. Then he realizes how he was fatuous in his past. Throughout the film, the director (Spike Jonze) uses five distinct color schemes to correspond Theodore’s feeling and situation.

On Thursday 29th September 2016, we attended a performance of ‘The Woman in Black’ at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, London. It was set in a traditional proscenium arch theatre which is situated on an enclosed street which applies to the horror genre and the idea of isolation. The size of the theatre was alarmingly small with compact seating, creating a sense of claustrophobia, suffocation and lack of escape from ‘The Woman in Black’. The stage seemed diminutive with the curtain, and the minimalistic set with old-fashioned props instantly set a Victorian impression. The minimalism conveyed how the actors could present a play without ostentatious props and keep the focus on themselves. The monochromatic colours of the programme enhance

In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).

In the film ‘Her’, directed by Spike Jonze, the main protagonist,Theodore Twombly conveys the idea of alienation via technology and its possible effects, due to his depression via his divorce and his easy going relationship with an artificial intelligence operating system named Samantha. The idea of alienation and technology and its possible effects on human relationships is conveyed via the quote, “Sometimes I think I have felt everything I'm ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I'm not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I've already felt.” Theodore recently experienced is his divorce depression, and therefore becomes vulnerable, anti-social from society and isolated himself, by spending time with the artificial intelligence

We live in a society that has increasingly stomped on love, depicting it as cruel, superficial and full of complications. Nowadays it is easy for people to claim that they are in love, even when their actions say otherwise, and it is just as easy to claim that they are not when they really are. Real love is difficult to find and keeping it alive is even harder, especially when one must overcome their own anxieties and uncertainties. This is the main theme present in Russell Banks’ short story “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” as well as in “The Fireman’s Wife,” written by Richard Bausch. These narratives, although similar in some aspects, are completely different types of love stories.

The pursuit of an ideal and perfect love and the way that this endeavor shapes human relationships is a defining connection between the characters of The Notebook and The Time Traveler’s Wife, written respectively by Nicholas Sparks and Audrey Niffenegger. The suggestion of, not only desire for an ideal love but also a deep-seated need for this kind of love is something that becomes very familiar to the reader in The Notebook, as it is witnessed by the fate-like reconnection between Noah and Allie. Although their love has been interrupted and tampered with by outside parties, and in spite of this, their love endures and flourishes.

How people interact with each other can us tell a lot about society. It can tell us about their interests and goals in life. In Sherry Turkle, Selections from “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”, Turkle explores Artificial intelligence and how humans interact with it. Turkles explores how people (specifically children) are able to develop love for AI’s how their relationship develops. Talking more specifically about love, Barbara Fredrickson, in Selections from “Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become” shares her research about her discovery of “love 2.0” and how the old idea of love is outdated and misunderstood. Giving us an insight of how

In our society, falling in love is viewed as an important aspect of one’s life. There are many definitions of love, some being deep affection, an intimate relationship where each person is seen as an equal, or a strong positive emotion towards another person. In Wild Seed, Octavia Butler describes love in terms of selfishness, a need to have someone for personal gain. In doing this, she questions whether love can really be felt in a genuine way. Using the concept of love, and defining it as looking out for one's own self-interest, Butler challenges the current definitions of love.

The French-Belgian film (the director was Belgian) Ma Vie En Rose (My Life in Pink) is a story set in France about a family of six (Mom - Hanna, Dad - Pierre, three sons (Ludovic being the youngest, and Daughter) in which the 7 year old son, Ludovic (Ludo for short), has a gender identity disorder. Ludo thinks he's a girl and God mistakenly made him a boy when his second X chromosome didn't go down the chimney. He attempts to correct this mistake by dressing like and acting like a girl. At first, Ludo's parents find his behavior humorous. However, after repeated incidents of girlish behavior - including dressing up like a girl and pretending to marry his best friend, Jerome - his parents start to think there's a

Esquivel showed love in a whole other aspect from life in the movie and novel “Like Water for Chocolate”. This movie and novel is about monthly installments with recipes, romances, and home remedies. Love was very powerful and changed everybody’s life, it kept some people around, made some people leave and it even made some people die. Love is something that can take over someone’s mind, soul and body. When two people are in love no one and nothing can get in the way of those two individuals from being together. When you’re in love you’ll do just about anything to keep yourself and the one you love happy. For example in “Like Water for Chocolate” Pedro was so in love with Tita that’s when it came time

Today, romance is one of the most popular genres to watch on television. Unlike most, romance is a genre where the plot revolves around the love between two main characters as they experience the highs and lows of love. “Common themes that revolve around romantic movies are kissing, love at first sight, tragic love, destructive love, and sentimental love” (Taylor). These themes appear in many historical films and the pattern still continues in modern films as well. Watching romantic movies has a giant negative influence on the viewer's analysis of what love and relationships should really be like. These films give the wrong impression of reality when it comes to dating, marriage, having children, and even how to manage a relationship in

Her (2013) is based on a futuristic premise that sets the stage for an unusual love story between a lonely, nebbish, professional letter-writer, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) and his artificially intelligent computer operating system, Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). In the movie, Spike Jonze, the writer and director, touches upon the larger questions surrounding the human condition and how our desire to be loved and accepted has led us to seek technological substitutes for our most basic emotional needs. Importantly, the movie also comes with an embedded caveat for the future based on our current socio-cultural obsession with technology--if we were to continue our zeitgeist-y love affair with technology and artificial

The movie I have chosen to do my psychological film disorder assignment on is Girl Interrupted which is a psychological drama directed by James Mangold. The movie takes place in a mental institution for troubled women. All of the characters in this movie suffer from one or more mental illnesses such as depression, borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia. The movie gives us an inside look on how poorly these women are being treated and how they are treated as if they are abnormal because they are in this institution. Similarly the women are faced with their own personal and outer issues within the institution. The director gives us an inside look on how the patients are being treated poorly are

Throughout “Love and Sex with Robots,” author David Levy explores the topic of human intimacy, and how it has developed throughout history. While his book begins with discussing human-to-human relationships and intimacy, he explores modern technological intervention like dating websites and electronic sex toys. However, like the title suggests, Levy uses the the majority of his book to convince the reader that the use of sex robots are an inevitable evolution of robotic intimacy, and will be especially useful for minority sectors of the population like misfits and the sexually inadequate (291).