(500) Days of Summer
Published 2018-07-06
Film info
- Title (500) Days of Summer
- Director Marc Webb
- Year 2009
- Run time 1hr 35m
- Genres Drama, Romance, Comedy
- Tagline This is not a love story. This is a story about love.
- Cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chloë Grace Moretz, Clark Gregg
This is a story of a young man's no-holds-barred love affair. Tom still believes in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer, the girl, doesn't. But that doesn't stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 0:43 | I love it when things happen early on in a film, and we both say 5! Because it's bound to be a 5/5-er. (It often isn't). |
| 4:33 | Baby Chloe is so cute! |
| 7:38 | Coulson's new assistant, you mean. |
| 9:02 | Surely 0.4 of a double take is basically a single take. |
| 12:55 | Whilst I'm on board that his job is boring, it must be weird working for a greetings card company. All that enforced positivity. |
| 19:29 | "I named my cat after Springsteen." |
| 20:43 | I don't even know how to spell dothnt. |
| 24:53 | She wears a lot of ribbons in her hair. Not a style I've considered. |
| 33:40 | I like the dipping back and forth in time. Time travel! |
| 36:40 | Walking round a city must be like a toy shop for an architect. |
| 42:30 | I want a film of the brother and sister, so awesome. |
| 54:48 | Liking the French cinema. |
| 1:01:08 | "That's why I called her last night and said I was sick... like a ninja." |
| 1:06:03 | Dammit, I couldn't be more invested in their relationship. |
| 1:07:33 | "Truthfully, Robin's better than the girl of my dreams. She's real." DUDE. |
| 1:18:30 | Where's my mixtape, Mr C? |
| 1:19:40 | I want a whole wall of blackboard. |
| 1:25:31 | Dorian Gray is a good book. |
Thoughts
Ah, what a lovely little film. It took a little while to settle into the back and forth nature of the storytelling, from the happy days plunging into the dark moments as quick as snapping your fingers. But once you're in the story, you need to know what happens next so it doesn't matter which bit of the narrative comes next.
Oddly, I didn't really like either of the characters that much. Tom, in particular, was bordering on creepy with his obsession over Summer. And she was fun and carefree, which I liked, but sometimes quite mean to him for no apparent reason. Despite that, I really cared about their relationship - knowing that it probably wasn't going to end with a happy ever after, they warned us about that at the beginning - but hoping it was going to have a satisfactory resolution. Which it did.
That's a trick, to make me care, even though actually Chloe Grace Moretz's character was the best one in the whole film. The soundtrack helped a lot too, great music littered throughout so that every five minutes we were calling "choooon" and delving off into a discussion about music. Good times.
Rating: 5 / 5