Author: Rosalynn Try-Hane

A man currently going through a bitter divorce falls in love with his operating system and the film follows their love story unfold. Does that sound exciting? Not really if you are really honest, however, put aside all preconceptions and go and watch this gem of a futuristic love story.

Her is set in a futuristic Los Angeles opening with Theodore Twombly, played masterfully by Joaquin Phoenix, composing love letters for people he has never met to be sent to their loved ones. He works creating love every day but he goes home to an empty house after his wife left him. The joy he gives other in his working life is mirrored by the loneliness that he lives each day when he turns the key in his door. However all that changes when he hears an advert for a operating system that can serve its owner’s every need. He buys it and is greeted by the very seductive voice of Scarlett Johansson as his operating system. His operating system is called Samantha and through her help in organising his emails, the complicity that they share and the moments of laughter he slowly starts to fall in love with her.

Spike Jonze with his 2014 Oscar winning original screenplay poses a series of questions the most profound being: what is love, are there any limits and if so can they be overcome? This film works not solely because Joaquin Phoenix commands your attention every time he is on screen but because the ideas explored in Her are universal: what is important to us is it what someone looks like or rather that they know the real us?

I didn’t expect to feel the rollercoaster of emotions that I had watching this film but I did. It catches you by surprise and the supporting roles of Amy Adams and Mara Rooney are equally as important. The film is not without it’s failings and in my opinion a little too long and the ending abrupt. However, the use of colour, music and chemistry between Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix more than make up for them.

Spike Jonze manages to transport us to a world which is slightly different to our own but not so futuristic that it feels alien. In a way as much as it is futuristic it also harks back to a time when people fell in love through handwritten letters and then the telephone so really want is so different about falling in love with an operating system? This film takes a look at love in the future in a funny, intelligent and non melodramatic way.

Gloria, a 58 year old divorcee is desperately trying to maintain importance in the life of her adult children and alleviate the boredom she feels between her work, home life and  a suicidal neighbour by hitting the night clubs in Santiago, Chili. Dancing to the hits of her youth she chances upon Rodolfo, is he the one to add a bit of spice to her life?

Sebastian Lelio film could have been a melodramatic mess but, thankfully, the star turn and 2013 Berlin film festival prize winning performance by Paulina Garcia means that Gloria is a treat. It is refreshing to see an older actress given a role that explores love, recklessness, joy and sadness in a way that doesn’t make it about her age but focuses squarely on her personality. Is she just a hopeless romantic? What is she searching for really and truly and can it ever be ok to try and have a second youth?

There are some amazing scenes in the films and beware that the sex scenes are graphic. Sebastian Lelio loves women and is not here giving us a poor excuse about a film for a younger actress. Life doesn’t stop at the age of 35 indeed it gets better and better.

This is a dramatic comedy that doesn’t shy away from touching upon what life is like for the post Pinochet generation that lived through the purges. Is the way they live now and their moral code a direct result of that time. Is the young their only hope or does that generation need to find their moral code again and stand tall.  The relationship of Rodolfo and Gloria almost mirrors what people felt during those Pinochet years – the high, the low, the terror and then the freedom of saying no more will they be abused. The pastiche scene of Gloria brandishing a paint gun cannot help but transport film fans to another seminal film: Scarface.

The closing scene made me think of that of Little Miss Sunshine, it is quite unexpected but quite justifiably the perfect ending that made me want to join in.

This horror movie starts off at the end, with a chirpy reporter telling us that Halloween 40 years ago all but one of the customers watching a movie at a drive-thru cinema were all killed and nobody knows why. Fast forward to the modern day and the same thing happens and the film follows the previous 24 hours in the life of Lola and Carrie.  Carrie persuades Lola to leave her sick father to come with her on a road trip to uncover the truth behind the Halloween massacre at the drive thru theatre that her grandfather built. We watch them interview the sole survivor from that massacre 40 years ago as well as seeing other events as the film builds up to it’s climatic ending.

The film by David Paul Baker and his use of shaky camera movements and sometimes a home camera reminded me of the Blair Witch Project minus the frightening factor.  The premise of the film is a good one and I enjoyed the fact that we started at the end and then went back to the beginning and then worked through significant events of the previous 24 hours.  Having said all of hat the film didn’t manage to build up enough tension or empathy for the viewer to care what happened to either Carrie or Lola. Also the script jumped around quite a lot, it touched upon Carrie’s infatuation with Lola and then moved on to Carrie trying to set Lola up with someone.

The film is only 1 hour 6 mins long but it failed to hook me and without the slash and gore element, the movie really needed to have characters that the viewer could identify with and invest in.  These were missing in this film as was any background music, music might of added something to this film.

The end of this film came as welcome relief, that it was over, which was a shame as it started out with such promise but the dialogue was weak and there wasn’t enough tension to hold sufficient interest to care about how the victims of the Halloween massacre died.

Victor works in the municipal market in Paraguay as a wheelbarrow boy. When we first meet Victor he is dreaming of a life far removed from his day to day existence. He dreams of being in the movies, being on screen and being famous. However, in his actual life he’s a market porter who makes money transporting goods, boxes etc around the market for customers for a fee. He catches up with his sister who has a mobile phone with an inbuilt camera that she wants to sell on behalf of a friend. Victor wants this phone and all his dreams come true when he is asked to transport 7 boxes in return for $100, more money than Victor has ever dreamt of, or more precisely the other half of the $100. The man who promised him the money tears the bill in two before sending Victor on his way with the merchandise, telling him not to lose any of the boxes, and that he will receive payment once he brings the boxes to the appointed place. So starts Victor’s adventures in the market  carrying 7 boxes of which he’s ignorant of the contents and being drawn into a crime that he knows nothing of.

If you think that introduction was complicated then strap yourself in as there are so many back stories and laugh out comic moments in this inventive thriller from the Paraguayan film maker, Juan Carlos Maneglia. Occassionally whilst watching 7 Boxes I couldn’t help but think of Pulp Fiction and the perverse, comic episodes that intersected those violent scenes. 7 Boxes is nowhere near as violent as Pulp Fiction but the comedy in it is very close to it.

I was completed absorbed in this film and totally forgot about the subtitles. The film, whilst managing to pull off comic moments doesn’t shy away from showing the bleak side of life in Paraguay and what people will do to make enough money to pay for their sick child’s medical bills or to eat. Poverty and scarce resources give rise to people making harsh choices and the director manages to get us to feel a little sympathy for the antagonist, Nelson, who ultimately decides to do what he does because of parental love.

Forget the subtitles, this is a must watch thriller with friends, on a date or just home alone. It is a welcome balance of thriller and comedy.

It’s the awards season and here’s the type of film that is award material. The life of Mr Liberace –  I am just old enough to remember watching his specials on tv and stare in amazement at the rings and furs etc that he wore as he sat and deftly played the piano before him.

Steven Soderbergh’s film takes us behind the candelabra that stood graciously on the grand piano as he played and shows us another side to the fame and fortune and how Liberace really lived or so we are told through the eyes of Scott Thorson – his lover of 4 years. Yes, lover as Liberace was gay although that doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Is this a film about how fame destroys, what people will do to have just a small slither of the fame and glory shine on them or just of a lonely man looking for love?  In essence it is all of these and so much more.

The film starts with Liberace at the height of his fame already with another lover and we see how he treats his first lover, throws him out like a piece of trash to make way for Scott. Later, we’re shown how Scott will do anything to hold onto Liberace so much so as enduring plastic surgery and its’ consequences to his own identity. There is a wonderful cameo appearance by Rob Lowe as the plastic surgeon and he steals the scene every time he is on screen.

Michael Douglas takes on the role of Liberace showing him as multi-faceted as the diamond rings he wore. Matt Damon plays Scott and the author of Behind the Candelabra showing his early naivety, hubris and descent all whilst wearing tighter shorts and flasher eye shadow.

Certainly an interesting film well played and a cautionary tale for those seeking fame and fortune or it’s off cuts. Rent it now on dvd to see Michael Douglas’s 2014 Golden Globe award winning performance.