Her

I hope you all agree that Her should have won more than just one Academy Award. I can suggest the one for Best song, which went to the very annoying Frozen song. Honestly, I really can't see what you all are concerned about. An average Disney movie, not even the best one so far, beautiful location as I love Nordic countries, but that's all. The song is quite good, is very Disney, but an Oscar for that? No way. Karen O deserved that, if you guys from the Academy didn't want to be politically correct and gave it to the Mandela song by U2 which was actually pretty good.

Was The Moon Song the only thing I enjoyed of Her? Hell no. The story is beautiful and romantic without being cheesy or banal and I guess in the end the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay was the most appropriate for such a kind of movie.

I even faced my hatred for Scarlett Johansson (which has nothing to do with the fact she's undoubtfully gorgeous and she's got a breast I can never ever grow, no matter how many pregnancies I'll have) and really liked her voice performance. The movie is set in a future but not scary Los Angeles where computers, apps and softwares are a huge part of daily life for everybody. A green-eyed and moustached Joaquin Phoenix is Theodore, a sensitive guy whose job is making up letters for every occasion at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com. That sounds a bit like Tom and his greeting cards from (500) Days of Summer, and the tendency to melancholia and unhappy love is quite the same. Theodore is getting divorced and hasn't had a date in ages. He seems so unwilling to start a relationship he (spoiler!) even rejects Olivia Wilde and we all know that nobody could do that and be in his right mind. Theodore feels alone and buys this new operative system with a consciousness, programmed to be like a real person. He's charmed by Samantha's non-metallic, hoarse voice and they start a relationship which eventually turns into love. Now don't imagine any kind of relationship between a sort of robot and a human being, because it's not. Samantha talks, makes jokes, laughs, gets angry and feels like a person and maybe that's the point. The film isn't a love story between a man and an operative system, it's a love story - fullstop. That's why I don't think Theodore chooses Samantha because it's easier and less complicated than dating a person with a body. He chooses to be with her after having experienced all the other possibilities reality can offer to a quite handsome, even if moany, man. And that's the core of pure and mature love. I guess instead she loves him back because she knows little else and starts getting away when she comes to experience how wide the world can be, especially if it's an infinite, borderless virtual one.

The movie really broadens your mind about the way people act in relationships and deal with love. I left the theatre and felt like huge, thinking of all the connections we make in our lives and how we really need to experience the sense of possession to feel we're in love with someone. This kind of awareness leaves you speechless, while images of a beautiful LA roll on the screen, made even more beautiful through a great colour grading which guessed right the perfect tint. I've never been a LA person as I picture myself more like an East Coast girl, but Spike Jonze made me enjoy the sunny skyline like no director before. Plus, am I the only one thinking he's hot? Because, let me tell you that, he is and I wouldn't mind at all if he played any song on the uke for me. No offense, Joaquin.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Let's picture a table reading with Wes Anderson. I can see a bunch of old friends getting back together for the first day of school. They sit quietly. Then two of them glance up (usually Jason Schwartzman and Edward Norton), grinning at each other and they start throwing paper balls. Someone draws stylised genitalia (or even realistic genitalia, don't ask me why but Owen Wilson seems a pretty talented artist to me) on a colleague's script (I'd say Tilda Swinton's) and they laugh and giggle until long-haired Wes calls them all to order.

Okay, maybe this vision is way beyond every professional actor's imagination, but let's pretend it happened. And I bet it was just like that during the making of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The events are introduced by The Author (inspired by the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig), recalling a visit to the Budapest Hotel in the late 1960s, a decade in which its glory days are over. We follow the Young Author Jude Law meeting Zero Moustafa, the owner of the Budapest who's willing to tell him about his life and the reason why he doesn't want to close down the hotel. And that's when the real story begins.

Ralph Fiennes (he has the nose in this one) is Monsieur Gustave H., more than a concierge of a super luxurious hotel in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka in 1932. He makes sure everything's perfect and guests are happy, especially if they're needy and blonde. He also mentors Zero, the new shy lobby boy apprentice, starting sort of a friendship with him. But tragedy awaits. War is getting closer and it's not easy for anyone to pass the border. But this is little trouble for Gustave, more concerned about the mysterious death of one of his special guests, Madame D. She is found dead in her mansion and the concierge is convicted for murder, but ready to prove his innocence with the support of Zero and his girlfriend Agatha, who also happens to be a very crafty baker at Mendl's and will provide help in an unexpected way.

The film is extremely funny in that peculiar Anderson style we all know and love. Dialogues between Zero and Gustave are so witty and cynical it was hard for my armchair neighbours to watch themselves. There's also some average bloody scenes, cut off fingers and A LOT of dead bodies. And after all that, you're all craving for your happy ending, right? Well, you shouldn't. Moonrise Kingdom taught us it can't rain all the time and sun will always come up in the end and stuff like that. We all exited the theatre in a positive mood in some sense. Uh-uh. The Grand Budapest Hotel leaves you with some gracious sadness, if such a kind of sadness has ever existed. You find yourself thinking about the passing of time and how things change, sometimes not in a good way. You understand why the art of telling a story is important to keep people alive even if they're not and how you can be attached to places reminding you of what you loved the most. The best thing (which is my favourite thing in every Anderson movie) is that you don't even realize you're getting sad while watching. There could be blood, and death, and breaking up but all of these things together are presented in such a visual perfection and harmony you can't help yourself enjoying them and know they are right where they're supposed to be. Plus, you don't have time to get really desperate because you're too involved laughing at those wonderful lines and appreciate the perfect ensemble of characters written for the first time by Anderson alone.

It worths every penny of the 12.50 I spent to watch it. Anyway, if going to the cinema was a little less expensive in England I'd be a lot happier.