50/50

50/50
Time/place: 4:30 showing at Irvine Spectrum with Korkie and Audrey

Hey, remember these?  Yeah… Mark has a job, again .

Actually, though, I may very well have found a way to see this movie, anyway.  I was hooked from the first trailer (and by its charming introduction with a star and writer), and I’m glad to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

I’m gosh darn tired from the last two days of work (early hours, non-stop lifting and moving of heavy things, etc.), so this won’t be TOO extensive, but I absolutely loved this movie.  50/50, to me, was perfect.  Unlike many “based on real-life movies”, it always felt very real.  It’s not a documentary, at all, so it takes full advantage of wonderful movie moments, but the characters’ reactions, the humor, the sadness… all of it was executed in a way that really drove home the idea that this simply happens, and it’s scary and sad and annoying, but we deal with it.  There is a long build-up of tensity near the end, that I think was the moment that made everyone in my party shed a tear (haha, I’m sure me more than anyone)… but it wasn’t big and grand – it was simple and quiet.  That’s what made it tense and emotional.  Like the “heavy” things in real life, nothing is ever as consistently big and painful as some movies make them out to be.  There were plenty of laughs, because that’s how life goes – even in the crappiest of situations.

…and those are my favorite kind of laughs .

50/50 hit every note perfectly, and I can’t say that in any other way.  If it takes a glowing recommendation from someone for you to check this movie out, consider this just what you needed.  I laughed, I cried, and on more than one occasion I smiled that classic, huge Mark Mushakian grin of pure joy.  Pure, perfect joy .

Grade: A+