so first off I just wanted to say that I’m not doing a Muse Challenge post today or tomorrow because I just don’t do those on the weekends.  I has things to do.  That being said, in between studying for impending finals I managed to watch the movie “50/50”.

  I must say I quite enjoyed it.  Now I have to mention that I do have a bit of a soft spot for the subject matter, being a cancer survivor myself, but I attempted to look at it as objectively as I could.  There’s nothing especially outrageous or groundbreaking about the movie, it’s a pretty standard drama.  What I found really cool about the movie was the atmosphere that it created.  They did a great job of not being too melodramatic, like most dramas tend to do.  I for one have always shied away from the genre because of the constant overacting that it produces because the creators don’t seem to trust their audience to understand that a situation is hard or emotional.  All the emotions feel so understated and subtle which makes the whole story feel very authentic.  Joesph Gordon-Levitt was great (as usual), Angelica Huston was a treat as the over-protective mother and I, for the most part, liked Bryce Dallas-Howard’s character as well.  The two actors I was most surprised by though were Seth Rogan and Anna Kendrick.  I was astonished at Rogan’s restraint.  The trailers focused very much on his character’s exaggerated silly side, but he did an amazing job of holding back on his normal idiot humor (which normally I love by the way) and keeping his character’s actions, once again, authentic and human.  Kendrick surprised me mostly because over the break I watched all three of the Twilight movies, with the Rifftrax (I couldn’t have made it 5 minutes into those things without somebody talking over it), and just about everyone in those movies is so horribly, disgustingly stiff and one-dimensional and just exaggeratedly stereotypical that I was scared that she may bring that same type of performance to this film.  Thankfully, she did quite a good job and brought just the right amount of awkwardness to the table without hitting Zooey Deschanel in “New Girl” levels of trying-to-hard…ness.  All-in-all, it was an endearing and refreshing movie that I, having first-hand knowledge on the subject, think did a great job of displaying how average, real people deal with these types of unorthodox situations.  Plus there is something to be said about a movie that can hold your attention entirely for an hour and forty minutes without explosions or guns or even that much in the way of sex.