(Warning: Spoilers)

Like Crazy. As in, hurts Like Crazy. To watch. You keep thinking everything’s going to get better, and it just doesn’t. It just punches you in the groin repeatedly, and then spits in your face. It squeezes your heart like an angry overweight man squeezing a stress ball. It reaches deep within you and rips out every one of your internal organs one by bloody one.

Like Crazy, unlike most modern romances, is not here to make you feel better. It’s not here to pat you on the back and tell you that there’s someone out there for you and it’ll all be okay. It’s here to make you feel like total and utter crap. “Masochism” doesn’t even begin to describe it. This is a film that sinks to Frederick Nietzsche levels of nihilism.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little dramatic. But having just watched the film, it’s difficult not to feel just a little upset. Most romances can be comfortably divided into about four acts: Act One, where interest is established between to the two leads, Act Two, where the two leads start dating, Act Three, where the relationship goes to crap and lots of sad music and montages are played while both characters walk around and cry, and finally Act Four, the happily ever after.

Like Crazy goes to Act One, then skips directly to act three and just stays there. It’s a movie solely about pain and frustration, about painfully sad music and buckets of anguish and tears. It’s a horrible, brutal, realistic view of what love is really like, and how it really ends. A friend of mine once said that love is nothing more than a promise to hurt someone more deeply than they’ve ever been hurt before. The writers of this film certainly agree, and after having watched the film it’s hard not to agree myself.

But I suppose that’s the hidden genius of this movie. Anna and Jack both grew up seeing the same movies that we did, and reading the same books. They have the same idealized vision of love and romance that we do. They, like us as we watch the film, believe that everything will work out in the end. It’s true love that they have, after all. How could things not work out?

It’s this pursuit of perfection that drives them to do all the crazy things that they do. They both give up perfectly good relationships with people that were wonderful, kind, and caring people because they couldn’t get the thought out of their heads that there was some perfect soulmate out there for them and that they would never be truly happy until they were with that person. Anna and Jack do finally end up with each other…but there’s no happy music. There’s no sunset. There’s only the realization that whatever they once had, is gone. The relationship they once had now exists only in their memories.

It almost makes you want to scream at them for ditching their wonderful, amazing partners and running away toward some fantasy shimmering on the horizon like a mirage. But then, at the same time, how can you blame them? Neither Jack nor Anna are really happy in their ancillary relationships, and staying with someone you’re not truly devoted to is a disservice to both them and yourself. Maybe there isn’t someone better for us out there…but how can you know for sure? Do you stay with someone that makes you happy, or do you chase someone that might be able to make you happier?

Like Crazy certainly doesn’t have an answer. Maybe there isn’t one. At the end of the day, perhaps none of us truly know what to do. All we know is how we feel. Crazy.

Rating: 3/4 stars

Its all superheroes and explosions these days, it seems. Every year brings us another pile of visual comic books, replete with the same cookie-cutter plots, flashy color palettes, expensive budgets, and a complete lack of anything resembling a story or character development.

Good films, and good science fiction films, by comparison, are very hard to come by. But that’s probably why the few good ones that come around are so special, and so surprising. Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” is one of those rare treats, a king-sized candy bar hidden among all the fruit and weird healthy candies old that people love to hand out during halloween.

What makes “The Martian” so special is the human story it tells. The film does an excellent job of developing the characters and making sure they’re not just expendable faces on the screen. They all seem like real people, and talk like real people.  There’s lots of great dialogue, lots of great bleak humour, and by the end of the film you’re really rooting for Matt Damon’s character to make it back home.

The other huge selling point of the film is its dedication to scientific accuracy. Its not perfect, and there are a few moments where you might be raising your eyebrows a bit, but for the most part everything seems at least plausible, if not probable. And that’s probably one of the most enjoyable things about the movie. You really get to take a look and see what a mission to Mars (something that may very well happen in the not-too-distant future) might actually look like. Its the best kind of fantasy: one that might come true.

Where maybe the film fails a bit is that it never gets too serious or cerebral. It doesn’t really ask any difficult questions, or challenge you to think about any weighty, moral issues regarding space travel, but then, maybe that’s okay. Movies that make you think are very good, but sometimes its nice just to be able to sit back and enjoy something.

And with The Martian, that’s what you get to do. It’s incredibly fun watching Matt Damon’s botanist astronaut Mark Watney figure out all kinds ingenious solutions to his various problems, especially knowing that during the Apollo missions the same sort of problem solving and creativity was needed to bring everyone home in one piece.

Ultimately The Martian is a love letter to space exploration, and to the ingenuity of the human race as a whole. Its a good, smart film, and definitely one of the better movies this year.