This month is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and one great way to show your support for Breast Cancer Awareness than to share a few movies with your friends that bring attention to this disease. There are a number of thought-provoking, and sometimes funny, movies centered around cancer.
50/50 (2011) directed by Jonathan Levine, tells the story of a 27 year-old journalist, Adam, played by Joseph Gordon- Levitt, who has a rare cancer and must undergo chemotherapy. Adam skeptically begins going to the young and inexperienced therapist, Katie McCay (Anna Kendrick), and he slowly begins to open up to her about his disease and how it affects him. During chemo treatments, Adam befriends Alan (Philip Baker Hall) and Mitch (Matt Frewer), two older cancer patients who give him perspective on life, love, and illness. Although Adam at first claims to everyone that he is fine and handling his disease well, his composure slowly begins to unravel as the realities and seriousness of his illness become increasingly sharper. When the doctor informs him that his body is not responding to the chemotherapy and his only option is dangerous surgery, he is forced to emotionally confront his situation, and figure out what and who in his life is truly important to him.
Decoding Annie Parker (2013), directed by Steven Bernstein, is based on true events, and is the hopeful and touching story of two remarkable women and their fifteen-year battle against a cruel and insidious illness, breast cancer. Waged on both scientific and emotional fronts, they are drawn together not just by the disease but by their shared determination and unconventional approaches to their research and to their lives. The two women are played by Samantha Morton and Helen Hunt.
Terms of Endearment (1983), directed by James L. Brooks, depicts thirty years in the lives (and love/hate relationship) of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger). Terms is still a must-watch today for two big reasons: the A-list cast, including Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels, and John Lithgow; and the reminder that young women are not victimless when it comes to breast cancer.
The Lovely Patient (2014) tells the story of 19-year-old Leonard Marshall (Joseph L. Glenn) and his mother who struggle to survive in their rundown motel. Leonard aspires to help his mother recover from a stroke, but when he gets fired from his job he does not reveal to his mother he is unemployed. Leonard successfully finds an opening for a driver for hire position under a former truck driver Frank, played by John Collier, who is a male breast cancer patient living at a cancer treatment clinic. Leonard learns that Frank needs a "gopher" to help him around the clinic and a driver to take him to his daughter’s wedding. Leonard relationship continues to grow with Frank as he becomes the father he never had.
