Him: Why Joaquin Phoenix Is America’s Greatest Contemporary Actor

I fell in love with Spike Jonze's newest movie, Her, not only for its nuanced and empathetic view of how technology has rewritten, maybe even corrupted, human sociability and our capacity to handle anything outside predictable, programmed parameters, but also for the showcase it provides to Joaquin Phoenix, who knocks it out of the park as well as he did with last year's The Master. (I'm still mixed on that film, but not on Phoenix's performance.) The foregrounded relevance of Her got me thinking about how Phoenix has for some time now been the actor who has best conveyed shifting cultural attitudes over the last decade or so, so I wrote a piece about his more culturally immediate performances, and how this Gen Xer so skillfully reflects millennial life.

You can read my full article at Film.com.