The future in which the Spike Jonze directed movie is set is suggested rather than primary visual architecture. It’s familiar but slightly dislocating, men wear High-Waisted pants, such as you might see in the Civil War, the technology is just a little smaller and swifter, and the city in which the film takes place drifts back and forth between a smoggy LA and a smoggy Shanghai.

Saturated in lyrical oranges and ambers, a dreamy, narcotic ambience presides, as if one of remembrance rather than projection, if that makes any sense. Even in the heavy, coarse fabrics of the clothes people wear, or in the forest imagery existing as backdrop in an elevator, you can feel a yearning for something authentic amidst the increasingly spacious and abstract world of technology.

Joaquin Phoenix, sporting the melancholy moustache of another, somehow European era, falls in love with an operating system played by the voice of Scarlett Johansson. He’s probably in every scene in the movie and he’s simply terrific. Gentle, nuanced and empathetic, his performance is the very opposite of the kind of grand scale acting we’ve come to expect from the likes of Christian Bale, and this dose of humble realism is immensely appealing.

The entire movie was appealing, actually, and it felt like relaxing into the lives of friends who were easy to be around. It was intimate but not needy, and it evoked our shared feelings of falling in love, of tumbling into one another and living in those times when everything is golden and funny and precious and even the colour of your partner’s sweater spoke to a greater truth. This was accomplished deftly, in small, perfect ways, and in spite of it being an abstracted, artificial relationship, it was still the most familiar and convincing depiction of love that I’d seen in years, including, of course, the awkward, tender and melancholic drift apart.

Sweet, charming and a little bit sad, it was a fun film to be a part of and it stayed with us, remaining a companionable presence, like an absent friend, as we shared drinks across the street—each one of our minds drifting off to a different point in time, and then happily returning to our present company.

The home-viewing options, although imperfect, are vast, and nothing could be easier than staying at home and watching Netflix at 8:00 or whatever other time might make my life simpler. Of course, Netflix is actually pretty lame, but in my life convenience now trumps quality, so instead of watching a movie I actually want to see like 12 Years a Slave, I end up binge-watching a TV show like New Girl. Such is the world that we, or at least, I, live in.

At any rate, Rachelle and I reached deep and mustered together enough will to go and see American Hustle at the theatre. This movie, directed by the successful but widely-despised-by-actors, David O. Russell, has been receiving all sorts of praise and is already a favourite to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

I liked the movie fine but was far from swept away. It’s a professionally crafted Hollywood film that features some big actors doing big acting in appealing wardrobe. Everybody is good, especially Amy Adams’ cleavage and Christian Bale’s hairpiece, but it’s one of those movies that actually looks better than it is.

The truth, I think, is that the movie was kind of incoherent, like a series of improvisations by talented actors that had later been stitched together by a director. It was as if Russell wasn’t thinking about how character and story fit together, but how each, individual scene would come across on it’s own. All the primary components of a film were showcased, without a film actually being composed from them, if that makes any sense.

Still, it was a pleasing enough experience, and in that regard it reminded me of Argo. Watching it, you felt like you were getting your money’s worth, that middlebrow Hollywood was functioning exactly as middlebrow Hollywood was supposed to function. The idea in Hollywood is to give the audience what they’re looking for, not to startle or elevate them, and movies like Argo and American Hustle are perfect examples of this—well made products where performance, the visible effort of performance, will always trump content. Regardless, the movie didn’t ask too much of us, and it didn’t give us too much either, but it was attractive and distracting, and on a cold, winter’s evening, well, that’s exactly what we want.