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Forgotten Film Friday: Seeking a Friend For the End of the World

A review by Brooks Rich

We're kind of doing a mini-directors month here in March as we have a triple feature of writer director Lorene Scafaria, someone more people need to be aware of. No one is writing screenplays like her right now and she deserves to have much more attention. We need more films from her. . She is what I want from writers like Diablo Cody. Azzam has already covered Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and now we have her directorial debut, the amazing Seeking a Friend For the End of the World. I love this movie so much. It's one of those that if I see it streaming or catch it on TV, I have to watch it.

The film is about two people, Steve Carell, who is amazing in this, and Keira Knightley, the best she's ever been, who form a friendship in the last days of Earth as an asteroid named Matilda approaches. It's a planet killer and there's no chance of survival. But the film isn't about trying to find someway to survive. It's about the need for human connection. Two people at lonely places in their lives find each other in the last days of human existence.

The chemistry between Carell and Knightley is one of the film's strongest points. Their relationship feels real even with the situation around them. There's even some trust issues to start. Watching them grow close and having it all come together in the incredibly beautiful and bittersweet ending is what this is all about. We see this weird world through their eyes. There is some ugliness left in the work, some wackiness too, the scene at the restaurant is probably the big comedic set piece of the movie, but at the end of the day we see the  beauty of human connection through the eyes of these two characters.

I do not get some of the brutal reviews this film gets. I don't understand criticism sometimes but I'm sure one day someone will say that abut a film I review. I adore this film and urge everyone to go out and find it. Lorene Scafaria does not get the credit she deserves. We do need to focus more on women writer and directors and Lorene Scafaria is a great one to start with. See this film, Nick and Norah, and The Meddler, which I will feature on the blog. Consider these three reviews a directors week inside Tony Scott month. Lorene Scafaria week. Sounds good to me.


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