50/50 (2011)

This movie was decent, but there were elements that stood out to me.

I really liked how they portrayed Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character as an old man. His character is really 27, but everything about him screams angry old man. For one, he works in Radio. This is a medium that is not considered "contemporary" by any standards. In today's instant gratification social media networking work, his radio piece on volcanoes probably doesn't garner much attention. Another aspect is that he lives in a house somewhere in a more remote area (but probably not too far from downtown). This is not typical for someone his age. Having a house to yourself at 27 is more rare in today's culture. Another, and the most obvious is that he doesn't drive a car. While most young people who don't drive, are like that because they can't afford one, Joseph's character choose not to drive because it's the 5th leading cause for death, which to me sounds like an old man kind of statement.

The aspect of the film that I thought was weak, was that they only gave Joseph's character one guy friend. While it makes sense because it allows for more depth of the character, because you are spending less time describing other supporting characters, I felt like he should have been given one or two cronies at least for maybe some different comedic relief off of Seth Rogen's character. But that aside, giving him only one male friend, paints him more as an old man.

I liked the dynamic between Joseph and his cheating girlfriend. Even though it was sad for the character, I really felt like this added to the script.
I also really like Angelica Huston as the mother. She played this role really well, I wish there would have been more scenes with her.

Visually the film was decent. One scene had a cool split screen going on, when Joseph and Seth were burning his ex girlfriend's painting, that was a funny scene.