Step 3: Watch an Oscar Nominated Film

Quick Points

Soundtrack/Score
Different, but sometimes pretty.

Favorite Scene
The video game scene! (Warning, contains major cussing!)

Least Favorite Scene
When Theodore has phone sex with a chick who likes to be strangled by dead cats. Yes. That's a real scene.

Should it Have Been Nominated for an Oscar?
Eh... I guess. It was a neat concept with some nice shots throughout the movie, but it was too long and a bit too weird.


If phone sex with a crazy cat lady doesn't turn you on, maybe this will--sex with your operating system. In Theodore's defense, his OS was voiced by Scarlett Johansson, and despite never actually seeing her on the screen, she does an amazing job of being a fun, caring girlfriend for the recently divorced writer portrayed creepily by the unrecognizable Joaquin Phoenix.

The best part of this Oscar nominee was the acting, but even with all that talent the viewer's still hoping Theodore will throw himself off the roof by the end of it all. It's just too long. You can only care so much about an awkward guy's awkward relationship with his computer. For the last half hour of the movie I was fast-forwarding through multiple scenes of Theodore staring sadly off into the distance with what I'm sure was light piano music playing in the background. These types of scene are all good and well--often times, they add a sense of deep, thought provoking beauty to a movie--just not when there's so many of them that they could create their own stand-alone film.

With a few less of these artistic shots, the plot itself wouldn't be half bad. It was a very interesting idea for the story--a society where people are so attached to their electronic devices that they actually form relationships with them--and it really gets you thinking about our own culture and how connected we are to our laptops and smartphones and tablets, and how this connection could affect our relationships with living human beings. I would say go ahead and give this movie a view, though I wouldn't recommend watching it with your parents or your children since there are some pretty strange sexual scenes.

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What did you think of the movie? Comment below!