(500) Days of Summer - About one minute into this feature a narrator tells us the following: "This is the story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story." What follows is a film that carves its way around standard rom-com tropes and delivers a film that circumvents the standard definition of a film romance and delivers something far more real and relatable. For those audience members that have lived through experiences like this, what you are given is a hard hitting film that will stick with you for days. Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes for a strong, albeit unconventional leading man in this narrative and I like that the film has no problem painting him in a negative light when called upon to do so. He, like many entitled males, feels he is owed the relationship he want s with Summer because he wants it, but fails to listen to her wants and needs. Through the course of the film, his character (slowly) takes a more introspective look at their relationship and learns the valuable lesson of their relationship. The casting of Zooey Deschanel was a brilliant choice. She is the embodiment of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and the film treats her as such because that is how Tom views her, but she absolutely isn't that trope. She is her own character with her own agency, he just never bothered to listen to her. The film has some excellent beats of humor, especially from Chloe Grace Moretz who plays Tom's little sister who he seeks for relationship guidance. But it is the more dramatic beats that really hit close to home. The film is written excellently by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. They wade into some interesting territory in dissecting relationships from a distinctly male worldview and lay commentary on how society nurtures adolescent males into romantic entanglements as depicted in the film. Director Marc Webb brings the excellent screenplay to life through rich cinematic scope and an interesting visual language. This was my favorite film of 2009.