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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/15/2009 : 11:00:19
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Up in the Air
If any further proof were needed that Clooney has totally inherited Cary Grant's place as screen-comedy supremo, this is it. While the film is way more than a quick screwball up against the wall, Clooney brings a souffle lightness to a complex character. I haven't read the novel so don't know how much of that complexity has been gestating inside writer/director Jason Reitman just begging to be released.
Here's the thing:
Clooney's the blue-eyed boy of Jason Bateman, CEO of the kind of firm that only capitalism can invent -- a company engaged by other companies to fire their employees for them. Clooney flies all over the States, his peripatetic lifestyle resulting in his finding airports and hotel rooms more inviting than any concept of home and/or family.
Then two things happen.
1. Bateman engages a biz whizz kid who's got a tekkie edge over Clooney, and who's invented a system to save Bateman some big bucks. He assigns Clooney to show her the ropes.
2. He meets his blonde match at an airport and they embark on the kind of affair that only two people can who only meet at airports on their way to somewhere else.
It's a terrific conceit for a story about modern choices and the sanitized option of an inability to commit. And it almost works ... until the end.
Literary fiction is crammed with bittersweet endings. I never liked them, but I can see how important they are. Life is full of unsatisfying "if onlys." But somehow, irrationally, I want films to have firmer resolutions. I don't mean everyone has to live happily ever after, but something more than dot ... dot ... dot ...
I suspect Reitman was a bit too glued to the book, but he's on the road to understanding film direction. No, that's too patronizing. He does understand, but he needs to focus more on the film story as opposed to the story story. If you see what I mean.
It's an interesting, funny adult movie. Go see it.
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/16/2009 : 06:48:54
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| Not a huge Clooney fan but this sounds like a nice one. |
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Salopian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/16/2010 : 22:18:13
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Up in the Air
Love Clooney in everything. Nice offbeat film, with the ending being the best thing about it.
4/5 |
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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 10/02/2010 : 11:20:07
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| The most depressing movie I've seen for quite a while. It left me longing for a nuclear war. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 10/02/2010 : 20:50:19
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| It gave me a lot to think about, none of which I wanted to think about. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 10/02/2010 : 23:12:04
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quote:
Originally posted by randall
It gave me a lot to think about, none of which I wanted to think about.
Agreed. I guess this makes it pretty good, I gave it 8/10 anyway. Here're the 'lessons' I took from this movie:-
- Marriage, work, kids, mortgage, retirement, death... is futile.
- However, you can escape from marriage with extramarital affairs, which you attain through lies and/or deceit.
- If you avoid marriage/children you set other goals, but when you attain them you realise they're completely meaningless.
- Avoid unwelcome human interaction through technology, e.g., break-ups with text messages and terminations by video.
- If fired, there's a decent chance you won't get another job, and some will solve this problem with suicide as life will no longer have a purpose.
In other words, an advanced materialistic society suffering from alienation and a loss of purpose. And all this was illustrated through characters who - superficially, at least - appeared to be happy.
*prepare for ICBM launch*  |
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Up in the Air
