The virtual rain in virtual Spain

Her

Crit

I had of late, though wherefore I know not, lost much of my movie mirth. As much, and as many months, as I had been anticipating this film, I was not wildly eager coming to the theater today. Now, postmovie, I'm in a very odd place, and I don't mean the café seating area at the Criterion. On the one hand, this film has restored my sense of the potential wonder of cinema. On the other hand, I'm half-tempted to quit while I'm ahead rather than stay for the planned second feature. 

But about this. It is several films, all of them wonderful. Most obviously, I suppose, it's the second brilliant riff in recent years on the Pygmalion myth. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) doesn't create his operating system Samantha (Scarlett Johansson, invisible in one of her best performances), as Pygmalion creates Galatea and Calvin creates Ruby Sparks--but then Henry Higgins doesn't create Eliza Doolittle either. What Theodore does is shape Samantha into his ideal woman, even as she shapes him. 

Which is of course a toxic truth about human relationships, and this story of boy- meets-OS is as human a tale as any ever told. So many ways this could have gone horribly wrong, but writer-director Spike Jonze keeps it smart, keeps it funny, keeps it unsentimental, and keeps it painfully true. If I felt like changing my own rules, I'd name this my new favorite film of 2013.

Mr. Nobody

Crit

Two or three roads, each with various byways, diverged (triverged?) in a yellow wood, and the titular Nemo (Jared Leto) gets to take all of them, and that makes all the difference, or maybe no difference at all, in this extremely smart, if overlong, riff on choice and time and that good old butterfly flapping its wings a half-planet away.

This film has an usual history, as indicated by its release dates. It has apparently never opened in New York, or at least doesn't have a review on the Times website, and yet here it is in the 50-seat DVD-projection screening room in downtown New Haven. Anyway, glad I hung around for it.