Gotta like these odds

50/50 @ Vintage Vista Cinema

The Movie: 4 of 5 Kernels

A film that balances on the precipice of comedy and drama ends up really hitting home in the end while delivering chuckles throughout thanks to it’s great cast, if you like Seth Rogen you’ll prob love this film.

The Pop: 5 of 5 Kernels

Buttered Popcorn, Diet coke, plus store bought M&M’s.

The Film

Mixing genres is simultaneously one of the best bets to invigorate a film with life, and to make a mess. Genre is great because it sets up a series of expectations to be met, but the sheer limited amount of genres means that they’re only so many films to rehash. Then we get into the mess of genre mash-ups. In our post internet freewheeling media world the audience is definitely a lot better at processing these intersecting genres, but if you look at material like the recent Cowboys VS Aliens , its clear that just hitting your genre’s beats aren’t enough to make a good film. 50/50 manages though not just to survive the crash of genre but thrive due to the collison.

The basic premise of the film is pretty typical, man goes about his tepid life with his sweet girlfriend and then he gets the bad news he’s got cancer. Turns out having cancer is hard and dude eventually loses the girlfriend, and leans on his best friend and his nubile young therapist. Sparks fly between the two and we’re left to wonder if he’ll pull through his tricky cancer and if those two will fall in love.

Grafted wonderfully onto this solid piece of genre is a really fun Bro-mance. The typical male adolescent character in the form of the ultimate adolescent Seth Rogen plays Kyle. Here I’m sure lies the real dividing line in the film will be for most people, because the rest of the film is really good touching drama with Joseph Gordon Levitt, but if you enjoy Seth Rogen’s brand of humor then Kyle should have you gut bust laughing at times. He is the comedy and the rest of the film with its somber situations is the straight man. He is as inappropriate to the situation as can be, yet still gets a wonderful redemptive moment at the end.

Everyone else in the film does a great job as well, but they are really playing much more the tragedy of the moment and they all do it really well. The women in the film are top-notch as soon as you see Bryce Dallas Howard, Anna Kendrick, and Angelica Huston, you immediately understand their roles in the film and are eager to see them play out. Joseph Gordon Levitt is one of my favorite young actors and he delivers again with some real intensity, his performance is rather dry, but towards the end you’ll be in or near tears.

Of course Levitt’s lucky to have a great script, really solid directing and super effective music from Will Reiser, Jonothan Levine and Michael Giacchino respectively. Reiser’s script is harrowing and well structured, Levine gets great performances and uses just enough style, too much could’ve been distracting while Giacchino turns in one of his more underperformed but still emotionally hard hitting scores.

I gotta say this film is another in the tide of great films coming out. The films that aren’t quite sure if they’re Oscar contenders so they’re getting released in the relative calm of the post summer hangover. I hope that when the real contenders come out they can match the emotional rollercoaster and joy of a film like 50/50.

The Corn:

Vista’s usual goodness, seriously go to there if you haven’t such a great place to watch a movie.