50/50 (2011)
Film #27: 50/50 (2011)
50/50 is a movie about cancer. Well, a movie about cancer and coping with cancer. Written by Will Reiser, who based the script loosely around his own experiences with the big C, and directed by Jonathan Levine, 50/50 takes a comedic-dramatic approach to the story of Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a 27-year-old journalist who finds out he has a rare form of spinal cancer. It’s a total shock, of course. Not only does Adam not smoke or anything, he’s so safety-oriented that he waits for crosswalks to turn white before jogging across the street. This huge disruption shakes him, as well as everyone around him: His almost live-in girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), his best friend and co-worker Kyle (Seth Rogen), and his worrisome mother Diane (Anjelica Huston), already burdened with taking care of his father who has Alzheimer’s (Serge Houde). Adam begins to undergo treatment for his affliction, but his survival is pretty much a coin toss: The survival rate is 50%.
Brick (2005)
With a budget of less than half a million dollars, writer-director Rian Johnson’s debut film Brick is a thickly plotted high school detective story. Hard-boiled and fast-talking, Brick enthusiastically embraces the style of its noir influences. Johnson and his cast – especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead – are wholly committed to the material, resulting in an original and fully realized crime film.
Taking the detective film template and applying it to high school social life, Brick gives us an unlikely hero in the form of Brendan (Gordon-Levitt), a wiry teen who begins the film discovering the dead body of his ex-girlfriend, Emily (played by Lost‘s Emile de Ravin). The rest of the movie gives us the back story and then follows Brendan as he takes it upon himself to navigate the social circles of his school to find out who had Emily killed. Brendan is the perfect teenage transcription of the hardened private dick. Intelligent, quick-witted, and tough as all hell, Brendan is an ideal character to follow through the dark underworld that he infiltrates. Gordon-Levitt handles every aspect of the character expertly, including the many fighting scenes that leaves Brendan with serious injuries for the entire second half of the film.
Another trait that Gordon-Levitt seems comfortable with is the fast-talking jibe that makes everyone in the film sound straight out of a 40s crime film. It’s very dry, very jargony and very fast. Nobody slows down to translate the lingo, and even if it’s a conversation that relays an important plot point, the movie never breaks for clarity. This is one of the reasons that Brick may leave some viewers scratching their head. It’s a very intelligent film that trusts its audience to be just as sharp. When characters aren’t whipping snappy dialogue back and forth, they do a lot of visual investigation and silent thinking. The film requires the viewer’s undivided attention to follow its many turning points, as Brendan descends into an ever-more-violent world with practically nobody to trust but himself.
Which isn’t to say that Brick is all grim and dirty. Although it takes pride in its style, the movie never forgets that it does, in fact, take place in a high school. It’s hard not to smile when locker meetings and pressure from the school’s Vice Principal are critical puzzle pieces in a murder mystery. And the man at the top of the food chain, the King Pin (Lukas Haas), supplies the most humor at all, from living with his mom (who’s more than happy to provide all of his underlings with after-school snacks) to riding around in a van equipped with a front room table lamp. Although everyone in the sizable cast embraces their character, Haas is definitely the one who has the most fun.
Its the light moments such as those with the Pin that make Brick such a solid and complete movie. Films such as this really exemplify the benefits of a director working with his own material. You can tell that Johnson really cares about the story he’s crafted, as he should, since it manages to be familiar and original at the same time. He and the cast give full commitment to a script that’s intelligent almost to a fault, and he ensures that every stylistic element goes hand-in-hand with the world being depicted. As a favor, he has everything explained outright by Brendan in the end, for those who may have been trying but failing to keep up. The explanation doesn’t diminish anything at all, instead leaving you certain that the film you just watched really was as awesome as it seemed.
Final Rating: 8.5/10
Stray Observations (stolen straight from the A.V. Club):
- I love how the style shows up in little ways all over the place. Early on, when Emilie de Ravin rolls up in a car, the hoodie she has on looks just like an old-fashioned woman’s head scarf.
- Could you ask for a better “teenage” femme fatale than Nora Zehetner?
- Of all the characters, Tug (Noah Fleiss) was definitely the weakest. His change of character was one of the few unnatural turns that the film made, and seemed pretty jarring, as if they just needed to get on with the rest of the movie and couldn’t figure out how to get there.
- Steve Yedin’s got some great cinematography going on, including some really great wide-angle shots when people meet outside. Reminded me sometimes of Michael Slovis’ work on Breaking Bad.
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Last week I watched (500) Days of Summer. I’ve heard a lot about this, and everyone around me seemed to adore the movie. I remember wanting to see it when it came out, but I never got around to it. Now I finally did. And I was a bit underwhelmed.
Maybe it’s because I had seen almost all of the first third of the movie in previews and review shows. Maybe it’s because although I think Zooey Deschanel is cute, I don’t think she’s the most attractive and endearing girl in the universe like some people do. I don’t know.
I enjoyed some of the aspects of the movie. The framing device is of course very cool and interesting. I love when movies aren’t chronological, and this is no exception. It provides a perfect means of comparing different points in a relationship. Other specific points that I heartily enjoyed were the music and dance sequence in the park, and the expectations vs. reality side-by-side part. These were all really interesting and captivated me for their entire duration.
But somewhere near the beginning of this movie, I was removed from a loving standpoint. This is an “Indie” style movie, not only in means of its production but also its genre. It’s true that “Indie” has taken a certain connotation now that stands separate from the related grouping of “independent” movies. They’re movies like Juno, where there’s indie music heavily featured, quirky characters who speak quirkily, and lots of drawn title cards and frames.
I’m not a fan of typical indie dialogue. It’s almost like it’s trying too hard to be unique and witty, and I feel like it ends up being very unnatural. That’s one of the major turn-off points of this movie for me. Even though my current relationship had some very strong parallels to the beginning of the filmic one, I just couldn’t believe that people behaved and talked this way. Maybe I don’t have cool, indie enough friends. Truth is, maybe I don’t want to.
I also wasn’t a fan of Deschanel’s Summer character. She just seemed cold and aloof, and I couldn’t see why Joseph Gordon-Levitt was so infatuated with her. Gordon-Levitt, by the way, does do a great job. He’s a strong leading actor that shows he can carry a movie, and he brings a nice breath of fresh air to a romantic comedy with an emotional yet grounded and reliable character.
In the end, I probably would have enjoyed this movie a lot more had I not seen so much of it before actually seeing the movie. Because of my pre-exposure to it, I ended up feeling like the dialogue was weak, and characters like Summer and the younger sister were just annoying. It still has a good story, a strong framing device, and enough cinematic tricks to keep you interested the entire duration, however. I just wish I could have loved it as much as everyone else did.
Final rating: 6/10
–James A. Janisse
