(500) Days of Summer ***

Director: Marc Webb
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel
Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg

When the movie starts we are warned "this is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story."
The movie doesn't mean this out of a selfconscious attempt to re-invent the romantic comedy or be ironic, it says so because the actual dilemma at its center is that it doesn't really know what love is.
If you're not sure what something really is how can you talk about it?
The next ninety minutes are spent presenting two opposite views of what this abstract concept is.
We have Tom (a charismatic, revelatory Gordon-Levitt), a greeting card writer who is a firm believer in fate, romance and love at first sight. Then there's Summer (the lovely Deschanel) a cynical girl who's into being "casual".
Tom of course falls for her the minute they meet and despite her warning of not wanting anything serious they begin "something"...or not.
The plot then travels backwards and forwards during the title five hundred days as we see their relationship go from "friends only" to "hot shower sex" to pure hate and drinking binges.
Shaped from the delightful screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the film often falls for conventional indie flick elements (quirkiness and retro band references abound) but it finds a personality of its own in the familiar.
It becomes a postmodernist dissection of relationships for this generation and the way it stares at us with a blank look upon its figurative face is, ironically, what makes it so sincere.
And it's clear that Webb and the writers might not have a clue about the way to define romantic love, but the whole movie is clearly infatuated with cinema.
From references to the New Wave, Fellini, "The Graduate" and a particularly cute Bergman tribute, this is terrific filmmaking.
Also, because like the relationship at its center it defies our preconceptions of how to define a movie. You can read it both ways.
It's fair of you to hate Summer and like Tom decide she's "an evil, emotionless, miserable human being, or... she's a robot". But also couldn't she just be straightforward?
In the same way, we can see Tom as a breathtaking romantic hero we all would be lucky to be loved by, but sometimes he comes looking off like a spoiled, immature brat and something of a psycho too...
"(500) Days of Summer" asks us why have we remained limited by the parameters that have jailed the romantic comedy for decades now.
Sure, it often commits some of its mistakes, but most of the time it's trying to open up its own path.
And how can you not fall for that?

The Happening *

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel

John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Spencer Breslin, Betty Buckley

If such things as film deities exist, M. Night Shyamalan is seriously out of favor with all of them.

After the stupifyingly stupid "The Village" and the masturbatory "Lady in the Water", he returns with his take on the impending apocalypse to deliver a thriller that ends up being mostly unintentional comedy.

"The Happening" begins in New York City, Central Park to be exact, where all the people suddenly freeze like extras from "Last Year at Marienbad" before they start comitting suicide.

Construction workers jump from buildings, policemen shoot themselves and teenage girls use their hair pins as weapons.

The media begins to assume its terrorism, while others debate it might have natural causes and Shyamalan does his best pseudo-Hitchcock impersonation relishing in the creepy factor raised by the unknown.

The story then moves to Philadelphia (where else?) where high school science teacher Elliot Moore(Wahlberg) listens about the event and flees town with his wife Alma (Deschanel), his friend Julian (Leguizamo) and his little daughter Jess (Sanchez).

When their train makes an unexpected stop they realize they're on their own and must travel cross country until the event ends and before they perish.

The acting is appalling, the writing lazy, to say the least, and together they end up with a weird plant raiser (Frank Collison) saying "You know, hot dogs get a bad rep. They gotta cool shape, they got protein." while all everyone else can think of is running away.

Wahlberg seems stale and zombie like, or out of "The Blob", Leguizamos is satisfying and Deschanel seems to be so aware of the garbage dialogue she's given that she doesn't even try to hold back her mocking smile.

Audiences familiar with Shyamalan will be expecting a surprise twist (which isn't completely fair of them to expect or of him to feed) and while that moment arrives they will undoubtedly try to figure out what the hell is actually going on.

Things that might pop in your head might include extraterrestrial attacks, some sort of lazy metaphor for not thinking before we act, bees (don't ask) or even the preposterous idea that the disaster is only deviced to aid the leads realize that they do love each other.

This time around, unable to sustain his egocentric charade long enough for us to care, Shyamalan tries to deliver his own philosophical take on what we're doing to the planet and before you can say "an inconvenient fool", his preachy message has made Al Gore look like the most subtle speaker out there.

But while apathy, irresponsible behavior towards the planet and the unbeknownst future of the human race are things that provoke fear, the only thing that induces terror in "The Happening" comes off in the opening credits when the words "Written, Produced and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan" appear.