The movie Her revolves around a man named Theodore Twombly who had recently been left heartbroken after this marriage ended. He’s a very sensitive man that makes a living by writing letters for other people. Theo gets a new operating system which names herself Samantha and ends up falling in love with his operating system(or as they say in the movie “os”). She develops into a life-like person herself and starts to feel emotions as if she is a human. This movie is quite interesting in the fact that it plays with this futuristic reality feel and makes you wonder if it could happen to us.

The starting scene of this movie is actually unusual. It starts with this weird sound playing under a black screen, almost sounding like it’s technology. We then find our character that is introduced by a monologue of his job. The camera then starts panning right and moves to see down the aisle of the desk. A quick transition then brings us to the evening which can be told by the lighting in the office. This scene started off strong giving us a sense of where we are as the audience and the time of day. I enjoyed that the music playing reflected Theo’s feelings. Music had a big role and I feel influenced the direction that the movie was going in. The music was just so important, for example in a spot that I will not spoil it almost sounds like the once happy chords that were played turns into sad chords which reflects Theo’s emotions in this moment.

The lighting in this movie was so fascinating. I liked the subtle lighting given off by the globes in Theo’s date scene to even the lighting off his computer screen when he first meets Samantha. I find the ambient light in most of the scenes very relaxing and it complements the actor greatly too. The lighting that peeks through his windows in his home is an amazing choice and lights up the scenes that take place during day. The scenes at night reflect his emotion because he feels alone and it’s all dark. This seemed like a pattern throughout the movie many times and helped me depict how Theo felt.

The shots were also pretty great. The focus and sequence of each shot was perfect. The movie had a pattern of showing flashbacks of what Theo thought during the dialogue. These were more of montage type shots and they all had a quick pace to them. Most shots had movement to make the boring dialogue seem more interesting and created a little bit of action throughout the scene. I also enjoyed the various city shots that filled the time of transportation or Theo going from one place to another.

Now to the things I disliked, which was a lot of the movie. This movie had a lot of unnecessary scenes I feel and had a lot of unnecessary b-roll that filled some spaces in between dialogue. Like why are we looking at a manhole cover when he is talking about love, I think that is quite the opposite. Also when Theo is on the beach there are these awkward lense flares that are like strobe lights? These totally threw me off from what was an already uncomfortable plot. I also didn’t really feel connected with Samantha at all throughout the movie which kind of ruined the regular formula of romance movies but it was okay I guess. I just found the plot really boring and didn’t really care about a guy wanting to have relations with his operating system.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who is willing to waste two hours of their life. This movie just felt so slow and boring and too repetitive for me. It’s like a bad chick flick but it’s just a dude and his computer. I would recommend this movie if you are in love with lighting and would like to find great ways to light a scene, but only that. The movie just made me feel uncomfortable especially in certain scenes when he was in bed. I’m not going to completely trash the movies because the shots were pretty amazing, especially the ones from in the elevators and him looking out on the city. Overall, this movie just lacked elements that could of made it successful.