500 Days of Summer

Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer has all the right things going for it: it's an indie rom-com about a sort-of love affair between Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The stars are adorable to watch; the dialogue is funny and personal; even the settings are a little bit romantic. We all want to fall in love with it, but the film isn't sure if that's what it wants. Instead, it offers us the kind of friendship that comes with a brilliant soundtrack, a story with a solid mixture of fantasy and truth, and the bolstering sort of hopefulness that we might, by accident, fall into a version of its world someday. Millie Stein