Movie review: ‘500 Days’ a witty journey in love and loss

We've all been through it—a wonderful love affair with someone you were sure you were destined to meet and be with the rest of your life.

Sadly, the "rest of your life" turned out to be a lot shorter than you dreamed.  As you sort through the wreckage of the relationship, looking for clues to where and when things went wrong, you may discover the truth lies somewhere between your version and the other person's.

Director Marc Webb's "500 Days of Summer" takes us on just such a journey and rewards us with a witty and sophisticated trip.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("The Lookout") is Tom, a writer for a greeting card company in Los Angeles. He's in his mid-20s and has thought of being an architect, but lacks the motivation. He's sleepwalking through another day at work when he meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel, "Yes Man") who has just been hired as his boss' new assistant. When the two share an elevator ride, they discover they have similar tastes in music.

Tom's interest in Summer grows, even after she tells him she doesn't believe in love and relationships. Tom goes back and forth between hope and despair of making a connection with Summer. Just when he thinks nothing will happen something sparks and the two singles become a couple.

When, after several months together, Summer suggests they start seeing other people because they've evolved into a couple "like Sid and Nancy," Tom protests he's nothing like the punk rocker who stabbed his girlfriend to death.

Counters Summer, "No, I'm Sid."

Their split leaves Tom feeling rudderless until they meet again, with unexpected results.

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber use an intriguing style to tell their story, moving back and forth along the 500-day timeline of Tom and Summer's relationship. As we drop in on episodes from various days, the numbers of the day roll backwards and forwards on screen.

Bell and his actors do a great job of keeping the characters true to their natures while shifting with the flow of the plot.

Gordon-Levitt delivers another impressive lead performance as he graduates from his childhood television work ("3rd Rock from the Sun"). His Tom is a good guy, slightly flawed and somewhat insecure, but worthy of love. Deschanel's Summer is beautiful and quirky, wounded by a childhood trauma and painfully honest.

Even supporting characters, like Tom's worldly-wise younger sister, are well drawn.

Turning the typical boy-meets-girl story on its head, "500 Days of Summer" brings a refreshing breeze of creativity to a movie season that can definitely use it.

Rated PG-13 for profanity, sexual situations, drug content and some violence.

Joe's rating: Three and one-half stars.

Also opening July 17:

» "Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg"—Long before Roseanne, before Mary Richards, before even Lucy Ricardo, the most famous woman in American popular

culture was Molly Goldberg.

Never heard of her, you say?  Well, that's one good reason, among several, to see documentarian Aviva Kempner's ("The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg") very entertaining and informative new film.

Gertrude Berg was the creator/head writer/star of "The Rise of the Goldbergs," network radio's first domestically-set situation comedy. The Goldberg family's adventures ran on radio from 1929 to 1945 and the show became television first "sit-com" in 1947.

Kempner uses priceless archival footage, along with interviews with Berg's children, grandchildren and surviving cast members, to tell the remarkable story of this talented woman who was a significant force in front of and behind the microphone and camera and behind them as well. She did this at a time when women and Jews were barely tolerated in many places inside and outside broadcasting and show business.

The film exposes the sad and shameful tale of how blacklisting in the 1950s damaged Berg's career and lead to the replacement of actor Philip Loeb, who portrayed Molly's husband, David, for more than two decades. A passionate progressive who worked for civil rights and actor's equity, Loeb has no ties to communism and died after hi

removal from the television version's cast.

Like Kempner's equally engaging Hank Greenberg, "Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" brings to vivid life a story and an era we might have forgotten without this movie. Such a pity that would have been.

The film opens exclusively at the Cinema Arts Theater in Fair City Mall in Fairfax on July 24. Rated G.

Joe's rating: Three and one-half stars.

Film Cli

» "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"—It starts a bit slowly, but soon hits its stride as things continue to take a dark turn at Hogwarts.

The sixth film in the series, based on the sixth novel, involves secret alliances, unspoken attachments and (if you haven't read the books) a stunning departure. "Prince" proves a sturdy "bridge" film to the final adventure, the "Deadly Hallows," which will be split into two films, arriving in summer, 2010 and 2011.

In the meantime, grab your wands and enjoy.

Rated PG-13 for scary images, violence and mild sexual content.

Joe's rating: Three stars.

» "Bruno"—Sasha Baron Cohen's follow-up to "Borat" obliterates the line between edgy comedy and exploitative bad taste. This mock documentary follows the search for international fame by the gay host of a pop culture show in Austria. When he's fired, he comes to the U.S. seeking attention.

Where "Borat" had a kind of simplistic and rude charm, "Bruno" is crude, empty-headed and utterly, desperately unfunny.

By giving this film an R rating, the MPAA Rating Board has proven itself utterly worthless. It should have treated this as an NC-17. The film contains male frontal and female nudity, simulated homosexual sex, other sexual activity, profanity and violence.

Joe's rating: One half-star.