Life is Worth It

Is it a love story or not? I'm talking about (500) Days of Summer one of my favorite movies from this past year. In the beginning someone might think that this movie is a really cute love story, however as the movie progresses you soon realize it is not just a hokey, fantasy love story, but an honest look at real life. It specifically shows that things don't always work out the way you want. Directed by Marc Webb, a great music video and short film director, he takes a chance by following a new track and creates an incredible feature film.

The film's references are: À bon chat, bon rat (1909), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Modern Times (1936), The Seventh Seal (1957), Peeping Tom (1960), "I Spy" (1965), Persona (1966), Z(1969), Patton (1970), Heavy Metal (1981), Porky's (1982), "Knight Rider" (1982), Porky's II: The Next Day (1983), Porky's 3: Revenge (1985), "Small Wonder" (1985), Sid and Nancy (1986) (Tom and Summer talk about the tragic end of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen's relationship.), Dirty Dancing (1987), "Mr. Bean" (1990), Henry & June (1990), "Friends" (1994), "Nowhere Man" (1995), "King of the Hill" (1997), As Good as It Gets (1997), "Sex and the City" (1998), "Big Ideas" (1999), But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), Longitude (2000) (TV), High Fidelity (2000), Requiem for a Dream (2000), "24" (2001), Amélie (2001), "The Bernie Mac Show" (2001), "American Idol" (2002), "Monk" (2002), "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (2003), Bruce Almighty (2003), "The O.C." (2003), "Arrested Development" (2003), "Lost" (2004), "Rome" (2005), "Jericho" (2005), Rent (2005), "30 Rock" (2006), "Planet Earth" (2006), Clerks II (2006), "Dirt" (2007), King of California (2007), Superbad (2007), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)



"Sid and Nancy" (1986)

Throughout the entire movie the mood and the light really helps move the plot along. How the scene is lit really changes the mood and you can tell when things are going right and when they are going wrong. I really like that Marc Webb doesn’t place his sequences in a specific order of what a viewer might expect from this type of film He films his scenes so that there is a sense of good things happening throughout the story as well as the bad. It is easy to follow what is happening on the screen, but it is definitely a change to most movies that are love stories.