Jonathan Levine‘s 50/50 and Jeff Nichols‘ Take Shelter are far and away the best new films to see this weekend.

But please understand that 50/50 is not a comedy, despite what Lou Lumenick and others are saying.

I explained it thusly earlier this month: “All mature art is mixture of drama and comedy. Any film that insists on being a drama-drama or a comedy-comedy doesn’t get this. Life is always a mixture of the two, and so naturally 50/50 is flecked or flavored with guy and gallows humor here and there plus one or two anxious-mom jokes and/or chemo jokes and/or jokes about being in denial, etc. The most you could say is that it’s amusingly jaunty at times. It’s good humored and good natured when the material calls for that…when it feels right and true.

“And any critic who knows quality-level filmmaking when he/she sees it is going to recognize that humor is definitely a part of the package, definitely an element.”