Every Joaquin Phoenix Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
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Few actors are as explosive and unpredictable as Joaquin Phoenix. His public persona is often bristly—a tortured creative who has no interest in playing by the rules of the Hollywood system. Whether his behavior at award shows or in interviews is another performance or genuine, it's fascinating and refreshing to follow the career of a man this confounding and unique. In a town that rewards followers, Phoenix paves his own way. He gives everything he has to each performance. He's an artist's artist. Though this can sometimes come off on-screen as pretentious and unpleasant, more often than not it produces some of the most fascinating and deep performances in modern cinema. With the actor's latest film—the big, bold, and slightly questionable Napoleon —in theaters, we ran down Joaquin Phoenix's best films and performances, ranked from worst to best.
36. Irrational Man (2015)
Just another insufferable Woody Allen movie that with the hindsight only five years is deeply disturbing. What's worse is that Phoenix is truly terrible as another pathetic on-screen Allen avatar. — MM
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35. Russkies (1987)
Back when he was going as Leaf Phoenix, a 12-year-old Joaquin appeared alongside the kid from A Christmas Story (Peter Billingsley) in this Goonies rip-off that time forgot. The film is weirdly intense with Cold War era tensions and an earnest young Phoenix acting as a militant pre-teen. It’s actually kind of a bizarrely fun watch in 2020, but you can see how this chubby little guy would grow into the humorless actor we all know and love. — MM
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34. It's All About Love
You say the planet is getting hotter—It’s All About Love says it’s getting colder. While the earth is on the brink of economic collapse due to a mysterious global cooldown, Joaquin Phoenix is going through a divorce from his wife, a world-famous figure skater portrayed by Claire Danes. Phoenix soon learns that Danes’ family has cloned her in order to continue living off her income after she’s no longer able to skate--however, they’ll need to dispose of the real Danes first. That might sound far-fetched, but it’s hardly the most egregious thing about a movie in which characters with broken hearts are susceptible to death by iced-over heart. Climate change, y’all. It’s All About Love is a garbage movie with a preposterous plot, but Phoenix and Danes make a fun pair. —Adrienne Westenfeld
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33. Mary Magdalene (2018)
Playing Jesus is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, he’s one of the most recognizable names on the planet, and on the other, there’s not been a solid depiction of Jesus since Mel Gibson made that kind of anti-Semitic version back in the early 2000s. Rats. But Phoenix gives it his all, taking his turn as Christ in the flop film, Mary Magdalene. Rooney Mara does a serviceable job as Mary Magdalene, following the story of Mary’s devotion to Jesus. Meanwhile, Phoenix is mostly just tasked with being the Messiah in a surprisingly underwhelming way. Points for casting someone with such a strong bone structure for Jesus. Points deducted for making it so milquetoast. —Justin Kirkland
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32. 8MM (1999)
Nicolas Cage is a private investigator employed by wealthy clients to determine if a snuff film is the real deal in Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, and for his journey into L.A.’s porny underworld, he enlists the assistance of adult video store employee Max California (Phoenix). The name of Phoenix’s supporting character is just about his most interesting feature, which isn’t the actor’s fault; with a cheery demeanor that indicates he’s wound up in his seedy situation not exactly by choice—and with spiky hair and tattoos that make him at least visually fit his milieu—he proves the type of sleazeball whose deviance has its limits (namely, movies depicting genuine murder). Phoenix’s scenes with Cage are the high points of this descent into depravity (penned by Seven’s Andrew Kevin Walker), as the former exudes a wiseass slacker cool that would be even more pleasurable if Schumacher’s thriller wasn’t such a drearily grim affair. — Nick Schager
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31. Inventing The Abbotts (1997)
Whoa boy! You better watch out when Jo Jo is in hair-slicked-up, heartthrob mode. Inventing the Abbotts is a 1950s-set romantic drama, where Phoenix plays the intrepid Doug like a shy James Dean, crushin’ on a young, I-do-what-I-want!-type lead, Liv Tyler. If you really want to piss Phoenix off in an interview, this is probably a top-10 movie of his to bring up. It’s the kind of warring-families movie where the characters are reminded which side of the tracks they live on. Cue the kissing, fake punches, screaming alone in cars, etc. etc. etc. —Brady Langmann
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30. I'm Still Here (2010)
Who can forget Joaquin Phoenix’s infamous 2008 David Letterman interview where he walked out in a full beard and sunglasses? He refused to answer questions. Letterman was visibly frustrated as Phoenix claimed to be launching a rap career. This was, of course, a stunt for his 2012 mockumentary I’m Still Here. The film itself is ineffectual, and though you have give credit to Phoenix for sticking to the bit, this is a classic example of the actor taking things too far. Is all of this worth it for a statement about the nature of celebrity? And, in 2020, it’s impossible for anyone to talk about this movie without connecting it to the disturbing allegations against director Casey Affleck during its filming. — MM
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29. Brother Bear (2003)
Who really knows how Joaquin Phoenix got wrapped up in the slight mess that was Brother Bear. Sometimes you got to get that Disney money. Kenai (Phoenix), a young Native American boy who does not like bears, is given a totem: a necklace with an animal representing what he must emulate to “be a man.” Kenai’s is, unsurprisingly, a bear. Resentful and angry, things only get worse when a bear is responsible for his brother’s death. Yikes! To top it all off, Kenai then becomes a bear, learning what the other side of the situation looks like. While it’s a fine story, it also requires Joaquin Phoenix—prestige actor and all around artsy guy—to voice a cartoon bear for 85 minutes. That is the greatest gift of all. —Justin Kirkland
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28. Reservation Road (2007)
Here’s a fucking bummer of a movie in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a father obsessed with his son's unsolved death by a hit and run driver. His performance is fine, but the film itself is tough to watch not just because it’s so goddamn bleak but because the writing is constantly stumbling over itself. Phoenix does the best he can with what he has, but in the end, it’s not enough. — MM
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27. Ladder 49 (2005)
With Joaquin Phoenix going all-prestige everything the past few years, it’s hard to imagine him in a film like Ladder 49. Phoenix plays the young, new hotshot in a group of rough-and-rowdy ensemble of firemen, including John Travolta (believable!). Ladder 49 probably delighted a bunch of moviegoers, being the kind of all-American flick where you watch some bros drink whiskey, fight fires, and save a few people. That said, Ladder 49 isn’t going in Phoenix’s future awards-show career retrospective montage. Belt it out with me, else I lose you forever: "I’m not leavin’ till you leave!" —BL
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26. U-Turn (1997)
U-Turn isn’t even close to Oliver Stone’s best work. In fact, it’s overall a pretty unpleasant film. But, you have to give credit, once again, to Phoenix for really going all in with his character choices. From his weird vocal inflection to shaving his character’s initials into the back of his head, there are hints of the performer that Phoenix will someday become even a few years before his defining early 2000s roles. Plus, his look has Johnny Cash written all over it (hell even his most defining scene in this movie has "Ring of Fire" playing in the background). — MM
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25. Clay Pigeons (1998)
The most memorable thing about 1998’s Clay Pigeons is Vince Vaughn’s turn as a serial killer. In this wacky thriller, Phoenix stars as Clay Bidwell, a small-town nobody mistaken for a serial killer through a comedy of errors. Jeaneane Garofalo appears as Agent Dale, an FBI agent intent on booking Clay for a string of murders. Wrongly imprisoned, Clay busts out of jail to go in search of Lester Long, the real serial killer played by Vaughn. Director David Dobkin has since gone onto greater things, like producing 2015’s The Man From UNCLE, but Clay Pigeons lives in infamy as a bonkers, slightly incoherent cult classic. —AW
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24. Napoleon (2023)
In Ridley Scott's Napoleon, Joaquin Phoenix is terrifying in one scene and a shell of a man in the next. It makes sense: Napoleon Bonaparte one of our most popular conquerors in history, but he's also a man known for being on the short end of a few height jokes. Hell, in Napoleon, Scott adds that maybe the French emperor even oinked when he got horny. Phoenix makes a few choices with this mixed bag of historical (and fictional) factoids, resulting in a pretty uneven performance. It's impossible to tell when you should be in awe of the man or when you should laugh at him. Inevitably, you're left doing a little bit of both.—Josh Rosenberg
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23. The Village (2004)
The Village is terrible, which is also why The Village is so good. M. Night Shyamalan's twisty psychological period thriller wouldn’t exist without Joaquin Phoenix’s character Lucius Hunt, partly because the film follows a colonial woman named Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) who has to venture through the woods to a nearby town, hoping to get medicine for an ailing Lucius. Why? Because he’s been stabbed by an unstable colonial man in town. Very casual. Phoenix plays a bed-ridden, whimsy 19th century lover like a pro, but the big twist at the end takes his performance from charming to fully creepy. Yeah, the film is coming up on 20 years old, but if you haven’t seen it, we’re not ruining the twist ending. —JK
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22. Return to Paradise (1998)
In Return to Paradise, Joaquin Phoenix plays Lewis, an American man imprisoned in Malaysia on drug charges—he and his friends tossed out some hash at the end of a vacation, and he ended up arrested alone since his friends flew back to New York first. Miraculously, Lewis’s friends do not find out about this until his sister, Beth, who is pretending for some reason to not be his sister, convinces them to travel back to Malaysia in order to share responsibility for the crime and prevent Lewis from getting the death penalty. She also has an affair with Vince Vaughn, who plays one of the friends, in order to successfully manipulate him into returning to Malaysia. In the end, the judge is angered by American media coverage of the situation, and (spoiler alert) Joaquin Phoenix ends up executed anyway. Vince Vaughn lands in Malaysian jail, too. Dramatic, dark, and culturally myopic. —Lauren Kranc
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21. Buffalo Soldiers (2003)
In this send-up of military culture, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Specialist Ray Elwood, a soldier based near the soon-to-fall Berlin Wall. Elwood is a rogue who’s up to no good, selling black market weapons and cooking heroin in the commissary kitchen. When a take-no-prisoners sergeant arrives to clean up the seedy base, Elwood prepares for a face-off to defend his way of life. The movie isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, but Phoenix turns in a characteristically charismatic performance. —AW
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20. Quills (2000)
Back in 2000, Phoenix landed one of his first meaty roles in the Marquis de Sade biopic Quills. He starred as real-life figure Abbé du Coulmier, a Catholic priest who also served in French legislature during the French Revolution. Although he takes a backseat to Geoffrey Rush’s Golden Globe-nominated, manic turn as de Sade, Phoenix turns in a solid performance (even if the accent is a little off) as Coulmier, a progressive who reformed how France treated those locked in its insane asylums. —BL
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19. Parenthood (1989)
Joaquin is barely in this Ron Howard classic, and he’s not even him yet; he’s credited by his birth name “Leaf.” But in a sense, he is already very much the Joaquin we have come to know: a little haunted, a little spooky, the kind of kid who quietly worries the hell out of his mother. Garry is the adolescent son of a single mom played by Dianne Wiest, a boy we’d keep a special eye on in this day and age. He’s got a secret, and it’s only his sister’s dim-witted boyfriend—played by the pre-action-hero version of Keanu Reeves—who can solve the mystery: the culprit is puberty. Phoenix captures the alienation and terror of a changing body, and also the relief as his character—if I follow the ending correctly—becomes a healthier person and better family member through masturbation and kicky berets. In short, the perfect Phoenix role. – Dave Holmes
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18. C'mon C'mon
Bookended between two signature batshit performances from Phoenix in The Joker and Beau Is Afraid, 2021's C'mon C'mon might stand as the lost gem of the actor's career. Telling the story of an uncle and nephew improbably growing together, C'mon C'mon is a reminder that Phoenix can deliver an achingly warm performance. Do yourself a favor and add this one to your queue. — BL
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17. We Own the Night (2007)
Reteaming Phoenix and Wahlberg, James Gray’s 2007 crime drama We Own the Night features the latter as a dogged cop – alongside Robert Duvall, as his dad – and Phoenix as the wayward but inherently good brother intent on living the carefree life while working as a Brighton Beach nightclub owner. Familial strains and obligations to self, loved ones (here, Eva Mendes’ sultry girlfriend Amada) and doing what’s right turn everything on their head, especially once Phoenix’s entrepreneur winds up unwittingly mired in a battle between the NYPD and a Russian mobster. A rain-soaked car chase is the film’s centerpiece, but it’s Phoenix’s conflicted performance that keeps this tangled tale from spiraling out of control. Torn between personal desires and a sense of duty to the institutions he’s fled, Phoenix’s Bobby is not only caught between two opposing forces, but at war with himself – a notion Phoenix brings to life with invigorating intensity. — NS
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16. The Yards (2000)
New York City’s transit system is the backdrop for James Gray’s sophomore feature The Yards, about a young man named Leo (Mark Wahlberg) who, following a stint behind bars, returns to his New York home. There, he begins working for a relative’s (James Caan) railway car repair company, and leaps into hot water by getting entangled in the criminal side of things with his cousin’s (Charlize) boyfriend Willie (Phoenix). It’s a deliberately off-putting part for Phoenix, whose Willie is a cocky smooth-operator whose confidence is the sort that should inspire unease in others, and it’s no surprise that he gets Leo into a world of trouble when a bribery deal goes horribly wrong, culminating in murder. Phoenix is compellingly repugnant throughout, exuding an oily charisma that’s destined to lead to catastrophe, and his final scene with Theron—an altercation spurred by fear, jealousy, anger and desperation—solidifies it as an expertly nuanced heel turn. — NS
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15. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Hotel Rwanda isn't exactly subtle—there’s plenty of dialogue feels pretty heavy handed. But the heart is in the right place. The film tells the true story of how hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, abandoned by the international community during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, managed to save more then 1000 lives by sheltering people inside the Hotel des Miller Collines. Outside the confines of the foreign-owned luxury hotel, 500,000 to a million Rwandans were killed over just 100 days. Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, who played Rusesabagina and his wife, Tatiana, deservingly got all the attention for the film. But Phoenix left an impression with his supporting role as a cynical American journalist who, like all the other white guests at the hotel, was evacuated by his home nation, leaving his African companions to be slaughtered. —Gabrielle Bruney
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14. To Die For (1995)
A 19-year-old Phoenix more than holds his own opposite Nicole Kidman (in one of her career-best performances) in To Die For, Gus Van Sant’s 1995 portrait of a small-town TV weather reporter with big dreams and lethal plans to achieve them. With a ratty mullet, a dingy heavy-metal jeans jacket, and a dim-bulb infatuated glint in his eye that speaks volumes about his hunger for Kidman’s Suzanne – and his willingness to go to extreme lengths to please her – Phoenix transforms a bad-boy teen cliché into a three-dimensional study of an adolescent seduced by a light far brighter than his own. It’s an impressively restrained and soulful turn by the young actor, conveying the sincerity of his character Jimmy’s love for Suzanne even as he comes to understand the manipulations to which he’s been subjected. While Kidman rightfully earned the lion’s share of the acclaim, Phoenix’s shy and heartfelt supporting work grounds the film in empathetic emotional terrain. — NS
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13. Signs (2002)
The thing about this movie is that Jaoquin Phoenix didn’t really need to be in it. He plays the older brother(?)/male cousin(?)/employee of Mel Gibson’s farm(?) where crop circles start showing up shortly before an alien invasion. Killer movie. Although he didn’t need to be in the film, it is absolutely his movie. He spends around 80 percent of his time on camera holding Mel Gibson’s youngest kids in his big beefy farmboy guns, and the remaining 20 percent wondering what the aliens are getting ready to do (invade, you dingus!), yet somehow steals the show. —Kelly Stout
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12. Gladiator (2000)
Like the rest of Gladiator, Phoenix simply appears to be a 21st century man plopped into a vaguely late 100s AD Rome. There’s nothing that really seems at all authentic about Commodus, but you have to give Phoenix credit for being so incredibly hatable. In fact, in the context of 2020 there’s something so genuinely precinct about a manchild with daddy problems and no actual knack for leadership taking control of a global superpower through nefarious means and becoming a tyrannical enemy of the people. Really makes you think. — MM
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11. Beau Is Afraid
Joaquin Phoenix's latest role? The titular character in Beau is Afraid, Ari Aster’s three-hour-long meandering epic about identity, Freudian psychological conflicts, and how childhood trauma can linger into adulthood. Phoenix embodies versions of Beau as a young man, a middle-aged man, and an elderly man (with an eerily similar-looking Armen Nahapetian playing Beau in boyhood). Phoenix takes on the emotionally stunted and cripplingly anxious Beau with a level of passion and sincerity that makes him the beating heart of the film. Phoenix takes on the craziness Aster throws at him without restraint—like teenage girls forcing laced drugs down his throat, and traveling theater performances that hide in the woods. The actor does it with the kind of genuine earnestness that makes the surreal feel relatable. Without Phoenix's vulnerable performance to anchor all the chaos, the film would sink under the weight of its runtime. — Sirena He
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10. Joker (2019)
Let’s, just for a second, divorce the dead-eyed, feckless message of Joker from the performance of its lead actor Joaquin Phoenix. His weird emaciated body, his lanky dancing, his laugh—it all makes for a compelling performance to watch on screen. Phoenix brings this character to some of its darkest places since Heath Ledger. Yet, at times it’s easy to get distracted by Phoenix simply trying to out-Phoenix himself. What’s weird is this is a comic book movie shooting for realism, yet at times Phoenix is one, then the other, and then neither. He seems to want to be playing an original character, getting into the psyche of a disturbed man that society cast out. But either his director or the source material keeps dragging him back into the DC comic universe that this inevitably inhabits. The weird thing about this movie is that, written as some sort of dark character-driven drama, no one would have seen it. But since it was released under the guise of a comic book movie, just the name Joker alone made it one of the most successful films of this genre of all time. But, without the Joker name, what is it? — MM
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9. Don't Worry He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018)
As a kid, I loved John Callahan’s cartoons. They were bawdier and way more edgy than any of the strips in the Sunday paper, and were often drawn in an appealingly spare, rough style. But I didn’t know this style, and the inspiration for much of his work, came in part from the fact that he sustained a spinal injury in a car accident and became a quadriplegic at just 21-years-old. In this Gus Van Sant-directed adaptation of Callahan’s memoir, Phoenix plays the late cartoonist, who struggled with both alcoholism and his disability. It also stars Jonah Hill, Jack Black, and Phoenix’s future finance Rooney Mara. — GB
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8. Inherent Vice (2014)
There are few directors better suited to capturing 1970s Los Angeles than Paul Thomas Anderson. A native of the California sprawl, he’s a master of lighting a mood, not to mention the certain je ne sais quoi lackadaisical pace of West Coast living. And yet it’s not his remarkable script—a condensed iteration of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel of the same name—nor the soft lighting or the perfectly sourced wardrobes that I remember most vividly when I think of this film. No, instead its Phoenix’s performance as Doc Sportello, a shaggy, Jesus sandal-wearing P.I. and, perhaps, the final hippie holdout after the Manson murders. There are many moments across the actor’s catalog that have stunned with their vulnerability, as is certainly made clear on this list, but I can’t think of any that have stuck with me as long as cinematographer Robert Elswit’s close ups here. You’ll laugh, certainly, but you just might cry as well. —Madison Vain
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7. The Immigrant (2014)
Phoenix’s most recent collaboration with director James Gray is one of his best—an early twentieth-century tale about a young Polish immigrant, Ewa (Marion Cotillard), who arrives in America and is promptly saved from deportation, and then lured into prostitution, by shady theater owner Bruno (Phoenix). Phoenix’s character is the material’s obvious villain, a pimp concerned, first and foremost, with his own well-being, no matter the terrible cost others must pay for his survival, and his horrific decisions are most to blame for Ewa’s ensuing ordeal. Still, Phoenix’s performance is far more than just an exercise in dastardly mustache-twirling, as Bruno’s genuine affection for Ewa creates a messy emotional stew that, invariably, leads to tragedy. While Phoenix’s Bruno is a man to be despised, the actor’s masterful trick is making us also understand – if not identify with, much less forgive – his motivations, therefore deepening the calamitous drama that eventually unfolds. — NS
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6. The Sisters Brothers (2018)
Phoenix and John C. Reilly are gunfighter brothers hired to track down a man (Riz Ahmed) in mid-19th-century America in The Sisters Brothers, director Jacques Audiard’s off-kilter portrait of the Wild West and the complicated bonds shared by siblings. Phoenix’s Charlie is the drunken loose cannon to Reilly’s more responsible and compassionate Eli, and the role provides the star with an opportunity to straddle a fine line between comic buffoonery, ugly nastiness, and agonized inner turmoil – a not-inconsiderable feat Phoenix ably pulls off. A merciless man prone to wild mood swings and half-cocked behavior, much of it the byproduct of his years-earlier murder of their father, Phoenix’s Charlie is akin to a semi-rabid dog. In a turn as harrowing as it is slyly funny, he’s the off-putting (if sympathetic) counterpoint to Reilly’s Eli, who’s caught between loyalty to his brother and his dream of escaping their godforsaken mercenary life. — NS
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5. Two Lovers (2011)
In what may be his finest performance (and thus the pinnacle of his four collaborations with director James Gray), Phoenix plays a young, damaged Jewish New Yorker named Leonard who, post-suicide attempt and mental hospital stint, finds himself torn between two romantic options: safe, nurturing Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) and issue-laden beauty Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow). Leonard’s mother/lover choice is Two Lovers’ central narrative dilemma, although Phoenix refuses to simplify his protagonist, infusing him with a neediness, recklessness, subtle playfulness and immaturity, and idiosyncrasy (epitomized by his habit of counting train cars as they approach a station) that makes Leonard’s plight feel anything but schematic. Like the film itself, his turn exists on the precipice between intoxicating passion and bracing sobriety, and Phoenix’s final decision – guided by his heart far more than his head – results in a finale that suggests both the cruelty of love, and the small-scale tragedy of being forced to settle for less. — NS
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4. You Were Never Really Here (2018)
Joaquin Phoenix lets his haunted eyes and alternately brutal and compassionate behavior do the talking in You Were Never Really Here, Lynn Ramsay’s Taxi Driver-esque tale of a loner charged with rescuing a senator’s young daughter from sexual slavery. Saying little but expressing much, Phoenix is like a bomb ready to detonate at a moment’s notice. Yet despite the volatile ferocity of his conduct (and his erotic asphyxiation proclivities), it’s his character Joe’s tender moments that linger the longest, be it him caressing his mother’s feet or – in a scene that’s at once unexpected and unforgettable – lying down beside a wounded adversary, clasping his hand, and singing a duet of Charlene’s “I’ve Never Been to Me.” Though there’s rage, misery and all manner of PTSD-related trauma lurking beneath Phoenix’s surface, it’s the distressed heart buried deep within Joe that elevates his performance to the realm of greatness. — NS
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3. Walk the Line (2005)
Portraying the Man in Black, one of the most iconic musicians in the world and one of postwar America’s most beloved and enduring symbols of rebellion, is a tall order. It is outweighed, really, only by having to sing those songs authentically, with his knowing—and well-known—rasp. (Ahem, Rami Malek, take notes.) Phoenix did both astoundingly well in 2005 across from a white hot Reese Witherspoon, playing Cash’s Great Love, June Carter. He brought Cash’s signature guitar-swinging bravado, not to mention the ocean of hurt which fueled the singer, to life, but where he really excelled was in the tension he brought to The Line; the border between honest and excess, between the stand-up John and the ne’er do well Cash Inc. Good luck looking away. —MV
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2. The Master (2012)
There’s a harrowing scene from The Master that I think about often. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd is alone in a room with Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie Quell. While Paul Thomas Anderson has never fully confirmed that this is a Scientology movie, much of the inspiration for it comes from L Ron Hubbard’s life. And this scene in particular mirror’s the Church’s actual Oxford Capacity Analysis. Dodd is auditing Quell, asking Phoenix’s character deeply personal questions about his life. Quell must tell the truth. Quell must not blink. Phoenix’s control is incredible—his eyes twitching wildly in a tight close up where he’s not allowed to blink. While maintaining this unbroken eye contact, Phoenix digs into his character’s deepest secrets, talking about killing a man and having sex with his own aunt. It’s deeply disturbing, unforgettable stuff—one of the most stunning and difficult pieces of acting I’ve ever scene. The performance earned Phoenix an Oscar nomination in 2012, which he lost to, of course, Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. And I will happily argue that Phoenix’s performance should have beat out Day-Lewis’s. It remains some of Phoenix’s finest work. — MM
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1. Her (2013)
Joaquin Phoenix is not an actor always known for his subtlety. He makes bold choices, he fully commits to every character, he puts all of himself and his creative energy into each role he takes. But, Her is Phoenix at his most nuanced. The genius and underrated Spike Jonze film follows Phoenix’s character as he falls in love with a Siri-type operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The film speaks to our loneliness in an era of computer mediated interconnectivity. It analyzes our increasing romanticism of technology and the intimate way in which we interact with our devices. But, despite the clear focus on technology itself, Her is a deeply human movie, thanks in large part to Phoenix’s powerful, subtle performance. He’s often acting alone on screen, only interacting with the disembodied voice of the operating system. Yet, he doesn’t need another physical body on screen to interact with and watching a man sitting alone in a room talking to no-one isn’t at all boring thanks to the compelling way in which Phoenix exudes emotion. He, often alone, captures an astonishing range of the human experience—the pain, laughter, love, loss, absurdity, and loneliness that we all feel. That he didn’t get nominated in an Oscar acting category is one of the biggest oversights in the history of the Academy. This remains one of the most prescient performances of the 2010s, and it only gets more meaningful with time. — MM
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