The result is truly compassionate comedy. It manages to mine humor, pathos, and simple honesty from a dark situation, and is not afraid to “go there”. Similarly, 50/50 strikes a delicate balance between the bromance gags, the date-movie elements, and the grave subject matter at its heart. Between his overbearing mum (Anjelica Huston), slightly obnoxious but good-hearted bestie (Seth Rogen), self-help groups, and his therapist (played by Anna Kendrick), he struggles to find a way of acquiescing to his 50/50 chance of survival. It also stars indie cutie Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young and fit Adam Lerner, who works as a writer for public radio before learning that he has malignant tumors all along his spine. And then it might come as a surprise that this subtle attempt at cancer comedy comes courtesy of Superbad creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. And while there may be a good share of failed attempts in that category, 50/50 is not one of them. It might seem like a no-brainer that trying to make a comedy movie featuring a character with cancer is not a great idea. This sets off a raucous, raunchy, and wildly entertaining ride. Why, oh why, did they choose academic success over partying, when, clearly, they could have had both? On their last day in high school, now here’s a trope, they decide to make up for all the years of lost partying on one night. With excellent grades in their pockets, they head off to college only to find that the same in-crowd from high school that was doing nothing but partying, now goes to the same college as them. Molly (Beanie Feldstein, incidentally, Jonah Hill’s younger sister) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are best friends, class presidents, and academic overachievers. Like its two main characters, one could say it’s a bit smarter than Greg Mottola’s seminal bromedy. Yes, it’s coming-of-age comedy, but, like Superbad, it tried something a little different. The powerful performances are indeed what drive this drama and they contribute significantly to telling a story that needed to be told.ĭo you keep re-watching Superbad when you’re hungover? Next time you are, try the film that has been praised as ‘the female Superbad”: the amazing Booksmart. It’s a funny sidenote to a serious movie that many actors in this Southern drama are from Australia, including Edgerton, Crowe, and Kidman as well as Red Hot Chili Peppers bass player extraordinaire, Flea, who plays a drill-instructor-type PE teacher at the camp. The unspeakable camp is led by the Victor Sykes, who is as sinister as he is stupid, played with aplomb by Joel Edgerton, the writer and director. When their son comes out to them after concealing his sexuality for some time, they pressure Jared into going to a Christian conversion camp, where his “lifestyle choice” is to be “prayed away”. Crowe plays the father, a car dealer and a preacher, and Kidman the mom, who is a sweet-natured hairdresser with traditional values. Set among deeply pious Christians in Arkansas, Hedges plays 18-year-old Jared Eamons, who discovers that he is gay. The story is based on the memoir by Garrard Conley, a true story. Russel Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and the immensely talented young actor Lucas Hedges (Manchester By the Sea) form an amazing pack of talent in this excellent drama. Simmering with rich emotion and crackling with class politics, Howards End is the crowning glory of the Merchant Ivory powerhouse and the rare perfect period drama. It’s the liberally minded Schlegels who cross the class divide of 1910 London to bring these two distant social circles so close to each other, but it’s the old-world values of the Wilcoxes that make that meeting a tragic one. The film charts the tragic entwining of three families: the progressive and intellectual middle-class Schlegel sisters, the much more traditionally minded and wealthier Wilcox family, and the Basts, a down-on-their-luck working-class couple. Ravishingly shot and performed to career-best heights by many of its cast, Howards End loses nothing of the elegance we expect from a period drama, and yet it also feels thoroughly modern. With Howards End, the magic trio of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala converted yet another turn-of-the-19th-century EM Forster novel into exquisite cinematic form.
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