9. The Non-Chronological Order Is Pointless - (500) Days Of Summer
In a landscape where every romantic film, comedy or otherwise, goes to great pains to present itself as "real", (500) Days Of Summer is unique in that it actually does more than state that then go running through genre clichés. There's no grand gestures of love anyone in their right mind would find creepy and the happy ending isn't born of contrivance (well, almost). Instead, we get to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Tom enter into doomed relationship with free-spirit Summer, letting his movie-inspired expectations cloud his judgement as they would in reality. The film isn't presented in chronological order, instead jumping through the titular 500 days willy-nilly. This opens the door for some more surreal sequences - the post-coitous musical number and Expectations-Reality heart-breaker - but is in itself rather inessential to the film. It allows director Marc Webb to draw immediate parallels between the couple when Tom's deeply in love and when he's in the break-up stage, but that's the sort of thing even an unobservant viewer would pick up easily on re-watch. It doesn't matter too much as the film succeeds so much in its "story about love, yet not a love story" conceit, but does add another layer of kook to an already borderline twee movie.
