The prospect of a movie about a man falling in love with his computer doesn't sound particularly cinematic on paper, but director Spike Jonez (Being John Malkovich) somehow manages to pull a timely, engrossing and heartfelt picture out of that very subject matter - an affect helped majorly by the casting of his two lead actors, Joaquin Phoenix (brilliant, as always), and Scarlett Johansson, who is heard but never seen throughout. Set in the near future, this could have easily come across as an awkward or even embarrassing experiment gone wrong. Not so. As a down on his luck writer trying to cope with crippling loneliness, Theodore (Phoenix) soon finds himself entangled in a fully-fledged relationship with his new operating system, Samantha, for whom Johansson provides the voice. Johansson easily has the most difficult role here, and without her, the whole thing might have fallen flat. But the actress successfully manages to bring life and emotional weight to this artificial character - to the extent that we really believe Phoenix could fall in love with her. With his fourth movie, Jonez has crafted a modern masterpiece.
