For even the casual news consumer, the Occupy Wall Street protests have morphed from a crush of neo-hippies “fighting the power” to a movement akin to a screaming toddler.

But when “Inception” star Joseph Gordon-Levitt perused the OWS landscape recently he saw something much different. Gordon-Levitt shared his experiences with the OWS throng on the cyber pages of The Huffington Post:

“I had a lot of long conversations with all sorts of people — kids, older people, some cops — I talked to some people who look really rebellious, I talked to some people who were wearing a suit,” the star said. “I talked to all sorts of people and everyone’s just feeling really positive and optimistic. They look around and they see people who are on the same page, and they’re not going to just sit around and say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing I can do,’ and it’s reassuring, it’s exciting.”

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Will Reiser beat the odds to triumph over a rare but potentially fatal form of cancer.

Now, can the movie inspired by his brush with death pull off an Oscar upset?

“50/50,” the serio-comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the role inspired by Reiser, didn’t obliterate the box office competition following its Sept. 2011 debut. To date, it’s rake in a modest $34 million, not too shabby for a film revolving around cancer but hardly blockbuster material. And the film’s 93 percent “fresh” rating at RottenTomatoes.com also bodes well for its awards season chances.

But the movie doesn’t have that Oscar feel, and while that’s no critique on the film itself it could matter when it comes time to tally up votes.

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A perfect blend of hilarious one-liners and tear jerking moments makes ‘50/50’ every moviegoer’s dream dramedy.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a 27-year-old who lives a healthy lifestyle and has his whole life ahead of him. He enjoys his job as a writer for radio programs and is working towards taking the next step with his girlfriend. When Adam starts to have back problems, he does the right thing and gets it checked out. Adam’s world is completely turned upside down when an unsympathetic doctor tells him he has a rare form of spinal cancer and even after surgery, only has a small chance of survival. The rest of the film takes the audience through Adam’s struggle to fight cancer.

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This movie could have been just a sad, slow-moving story if it weren’t for its star and supporting cast. Seth Rogen successfully plays joking, but well-intentioned best friend, Kyle, who interjects the most hilarious and witty one-liners throughout the film. Anna Kendrick tops her performance from ‘Up in the Air’ taking on the role as the young, awkward, but cute therapist, Katie. Katie is working on getting her doctorate by ‘practicing’ patient therapy and Adam is one of her first patients. Bryce Dallas Howard nails the manipulative but sexy girlfriend, Rachael, and Angelica Huston plays the lovable, worried mother who is scared to death for her son’s life.

**Some Spoilers Ahead**

Since Adam can’t drive, he has to rely on the people around him to get to his treatments. Rachael agrees to help him through everything, although quickly we see she isn’t up for it and their relationship falls to pieces. Kyle tries to cheer him up by getting Adam to concentrate on two things: sex and smoking pot. Things turn sour when Adam’s condition worsens and everyone realizes he could die during surgery.

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Despite their many differences, the new film “50/50” reminded me of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s previous movie, “(500) Days of Summer.” A gentleness and innocence pervades both of these two films. Both films focus on a young man (played by Gordon-Levitt) facing a major crisis in his life and coming to grips with it. While “Summer” found Gordon-Levitt stressing about his relationship with his girlfriend, “50/50” finds him worrying about something far more serious: cancer.

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As the story begins, Adam (Gordon-Levitt) spends his days working for a public radio station. Adam’s best friend is the immature but likeable Kyle (Seth Rogen) and he’s dating a beautiful girl named Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard). Everything is going well for the young idealist until he visits his doctor and complains about the back pain and the night sweats that he’s been experiencing.

The routine visit becomes something more when the doctor tells Adam that he has cancer. The scene where Adam is informed of the illness shows the way Adam faces his diagnosis. The world around him becomes blurry and he can barely hear the doctor talking to him anymore. He shouldn’t have cancer, he thinks. He’s too young.

His chances of survival, as the title suggests, are 50/50.

From then on, the film is driven by his crew of supporting characters. There is a gentleness in the way the story handles them and their personal flaws. Rachael, for instance, is presented as a fully-dimensional character despite the predictable mistakes that she makes as the girlfriend of a cancer patient.

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For a storyteller to fully satisfy an audience after promising to bring to life a particular concept, they must include every detail about that concept the audience is already familiar with, remind them of a few things they forgot, and then find a way to wrap all of that into a logical and clever story that touches on those familiar and unfamiliar beats while constantly surprising with the execution. That’s a tall enough order when Pixar is bringing toys to life. With “Inception,” writer/director Christopher Nolan brilliantly pulls this off in previously unconquered territory.

Nolan’s mind-melting triumph is without a doubt the most psychologically ambitious film I’ve ever seen. Previous cinematic attempts to grab hold of and realize the concept of consciously entering the world of dreams have usually focused on the visual (Hitchcock’s “Spellbound”), stuck to very simple rules (“Nightmare on Elm Street”), or fizzled out entirely (‘Dreamscape”) when the boundaries beyond simplicity were nudged. The idea of fully and successfully exploiting a psychological dimension where there are no rules seemed futile. Until now. Leave it to the director of “Memento,” a brilliant neo-noir Rubik’s Cube of a mystery audaciously told backwards, to be the first to successfully crack this genre.

What does the average person know about dreams? Among other things, we know that there can be dreams within dreams within dreams. We know time has no meaning, that we wake before we die or as we fall, and that oftentimes what’s happening, for good or bad, is a reflection of our subconscious fears, desires, and knowledge. Without giving any of the story away, Nolan takes these universally familiar ideas (and many others) and then uses a familiar framing device — The Last Big Heist Before I Get Out — to explore the living hell out of them. (more…)

Brendan Frye: “Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.”
The Pin: “Looky, soldier…”
Brendan Frye: “The ape blows or I clam.”

Fast and clever dialogue is one of the best things about hard boiled noir films of the past.  Tough guys didn’t need to be big and buff; all they needed was a quick tongue to get them out of the stickiest of situations.  Very few films are able to recreate this today.

Brendan Frye (in a sticky situation): “Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.” (more…)

We know – because we’ve been told – that love is many things. Unrequited love, however, is only a few things, mainly painful and baffling. But mostly baffling, because long after the pain ebbs the confusion remains: Why didn’t she love me?  In director Marc Webb’s feature debut, the clever and charming “500 Days of Summer,” that’s the question a despairing Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) asks as he looks back and tries to put the pieces of a broken relationship together in a way that might help to make sense of it all.

Like the fevered recollections of the newly heartsick, the plot leaps back and forth through the now-haunting highs and inexplicable lows of Tom’s 500 day relationship with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a girl he met at the office, a girl who warned up front that she’s not wired for any kind of permanent relationship. Foolishly, instead of taking that personally, Tom might have made the mistake of taking her at her word and goes all in, sure he’ll be the first to make his way through Summer’s natural defense, the ethereal aloofness that both draws him and constantly keeps him off guard.   (more…)

Something must be seriously wrong with “Killshot,” the straight-to-video flick starring the resurgent Mickey Rourke. The movie features not just Rourke, but rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Diane Lane, Rosario Dawson and Thomas Jane – reputable actors, all.

And it’s under the direction of John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”), working from an Elmore Leonard story. And it still rocketed past every movie theater save one in Arizona earlier this year, netting a measly $18,000?

The film, heading to DVD May 26, deserved a better fate. (more…)