You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

Holy mazoley, what a wonderful movie. One of the most fascinating, unique, judgement-free love stories I've ever seen. This feels like one of Spike Jonze's collaborations with Charlie Kaufman, but Jonze wrote this himself and it's easy to see why he and Kaufman made such a great team with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. They're both people who don't want to write experiences and feelings that they learned from other movies.

Without getting too much into details (because a lot of the joy in this movie is in the discovery), the movie takes place in a near future. Not one with flying cars, but one where our devices and services are advanced in a believable way, and it kind of makes you wish some of this stuff existed now. (I really wish there was a service that provides what Theodore does for a living, for example.) One of these advancements is an operating system that uses artificial intelligence. It's not just a monotone voice - it has its own personality and thoughts and can learn and feel and evolve. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix, in a role that couldn't be more different from his last role in The Master) acquires one of these OS's and takes it home to install it. The flat installer voice asks him a few questions - not as many as you might expect, considering how personalized this is supposed to be - and voila, meet Samantha (a name she chooses for herself), voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

I really want to say more about it, but again, the fewer details the better, I think. It's just such a fascinating love story and one that I think a lot of people can relate to - especially those of us who've formed relationships through our computers with people who we may or may not ever meet in the flesh. This movie got me thinking about those relationships that I've formed myself and how I interact with those people - usually with much more confidence than I would have in a face-to-face meeting, because I don't have to be self-conscious about how long it takes me to form a thought or what my voice sounds like or how my breath smells or what my body looks like. And it angers me to no end to hear those relationships dismissed as "not real" by people who don't understand

Love, LOVE this movie. So full of ideas and so light on judgement. And very much of the philosophy that if it makes you happy you should do it and to heck with anyone who thinks it's weird.