//SPCL RVW: Goodbye Not-So-Cruel World

What're the chances of me reviewing two movies in a row that star Mark Webber? Technically he's not the lead in this film but his importance as a character persists (enough to warrant a mention, anyway). Tackling the collapse of American capitalist structure isn't much of an easy task, I'll give Dennis Hennelly, the director, that much. With movies like the Book of Eli and The Road associating large amounts of fear and violence into its very notion, it is strange to see a movie that goes down the opposite path. Not that this movie doesn't get under your skin at times... realism is still realism but is desperation so miserable?

The premise is only hilariously relevant in this motion picture. They call it the end of the world but it's only the U.S. (as far as we know) that's undergone a wide digital collapse. Pandora's box has been opened and society's comfort has burst the same way as Hannah's literal bubble (need to watch the movie to understand the previous sentence). Luckily enough, two couples, a securities expert, a congressional employee and a small girl have a small house in the Californian hills to keep them safe... that is until trouble comes to their neighborhood all the same.

You're a terribly written character but you're so hot.

The trouble that does come from down the road in military uniform isn't the real issue anyway. It barely seems to upset or worry our main characters as they're already neck-deep in a wide range of their own adult baby-drama. Add in Zach Braff and a couple of songs by the Shins; this movie might make a good sequel to The Last Kiss. The plot does become way more focused on who's hooking up with who and less on the structural violence erupting many miles away. It works because it does split audiences down the middle the way it does the world the movie is set in. There are the ones focused on the violence and the ones looking past into the human connections we try to keep as a way of avoiding societal disintegration. This is what Adrian Grenier's character, James the levelheaded husband and father, thinks is survival and what Remy Nozik's character, Ariel the College Tramp, calls 'Weak' ( she is so hot tho, ain't gon front).

This way the movie brings up important questions necessary to complement a serious back-story without having to lie on extremities on the side of horrors or absurd comedy. Isn't it silly we call it the end of the world when it's really a lapse in a very specific man-made theoretical anchor? Will everyone become prey to the militarisation of everyday or will dire times bring out our true nature; our inner drunks, inner leaders, inner optimists, inner sheep, inner rapists or even inner-vigilantes? The movie is definitely strange in where it decided to go story-wise but the underlying thought-provoking questions are still there- they're only wrapped up in a dark-comedic wallpaper and tied up in a chick-flick ribbon.

Also, Kid Cudi is in this?