1. Despite its best attempts at fulfilling every indie movie trope, from sweeping indie music soundtrack to a shoehorned-in love story to spirited stabs at black comedy, Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 is a surprisingly moving document of isolation and pain that comes with battling cancer, and a rather touching and hilarious movie in and of itself. Loosely based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s life, the movie follows the story of Adam Learner, a persnickety, risk-averse clean freak who finds out he has spinal cancer with a 50% chance of survival, and even though it goes to exactly the place you think it’s going, you don’t so much mind that it takes the most predictable route to get there. 

2. Levine’s major directorial debut, The Wackness, was an underappreciated gem of 2008, following a drug dealing, hip hop loving wayward protagonist, thrown into the fires of post-high-school-graduation rites of passage. It’s only natural that Levine graduated himself to a more superficially mature topic, focusing on a young man approaching his 30s, stable job, girlfriend, life figured out, only to be thrown into upheaval. In a weird way, Levine’s handheld, digital styling of 50/50 is almost the polar opposite of the warm, almost grandiose stylings of The Wackness, whereas the latter was bathed in warmth and sunlight, 50/50 is trapped in the rainy, overcast clouds of Seattle, and mirrors the numbness of Adam. It’s a kind of a step back, technically, but probably one that’s more honest, and possibly more effective, given the subject material. 

3. Thank the heavens that Gordon-Levitt and Kendrick decided to take on these roles. The film would have fallen apart from the almost heavy-handed delivery of their romance, but the two are so damn engaging, that they pull it off. 

4. Rogen gets the best joke of the movie, and it’s because he’s Seth Rogen that he can pull it off so well. Say what you will about his style being a rehash of his charcter in Knocked Up and the such, but I will kind of miss the fact that there’s a decent enough chance that we may never see this exact version of Seth Rogen again. 

5. For all that I could possibly complain about in this movie, it’s hard to really find fault in a personal document about a man’s battle, both physically and emotionally, with cancer. Reiser’s portrait of Adam is never perfect, Adam’s never exactly the hero or blameless in how he treats others, or even treats himself. It’s a starkly honest and wonderful portrayal of a confusing and incredibly difficult trial for any person to go through, and manages to make you nervously laugh, smile, cry, and shake your head, in all the ways we do when faced with personal tragedy. And that last shot, with the music playing? I knew it was coming, I held my hands up and conducted the black-out moment when it hit the credits, and laughed when it did it in perfect sync with my motions. Just because you know where it’s going, doesn’t mean it’s not wonderful when it happens.