14. Her
What's it about? in Her, Joaquim Phoenix stars as Theodore Twombly, a man who writes letters for people who lack the imagination and skill to write the letters for themselves. After installing a talking operating system on his computer - which names itself Samantha (and is voiced by Scarlett Johannson) he soon begins to fall in love with it as it grows psychologically and continues to learn. What makes it groundbreaking? Spike Jonze is a director with a strong reputation for directing conceptually imaginative, offbeat movies with a knack for placing the absurdities of culture in the mirror - with Her, his achievement is to take the concept of AI and do something completely different from the tiresome theme of machines becoming emotionless killers. Here the theme is one of love and passion, with Scarlett Johansson providing perhaps the first truly sexy disembodied computer program in cinema history.