Don Jon’s Meaningless Meanings

One of Don Jon‘s (2013) early pornographic montages ends with a tame—yet significant—money shot. A lip-glossed blonde bends over in a thong and bra, then looks directly into the camera and asks, “You want a meaningful relationship?” The question is not so much about what kind of relationship the viewer wants as what kind of […]

No(body) Does it Better: Spike Jonze’s Her

“Walk us through this idea of falling in love with your software,” BBC host Emily Maitlist asked Spike Jonze during his award season push for Her (2013). Jonze, rarely the prickly sort, carried himself with the same nice-guy passive aggression as Joaquin Phoenix’s sweet-but-distant Theodore Twombly, a wordsmith for a future Los Angeles startup that […]