Up In The Air

Incisive Look at Life's Emotional Baggage Through the Journeys of a Corporate Hatchet Man
As someone who has both laid off staff and a year later, became the victim of a layoff after twelve years with the same company, I had a personal interest in seeing how director/co-screenwriter Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno) was going to adapt Walter Kirn's smart, unsettling 2001 novel. Even though eight years have elapsed since the book's publication, the filmmaker - along with co-writer Sheldon Turner - manages to deepen Kirn's themes in this wry, emotionally resonant 2009 dramedy and make them even more relevant with the pervasive downsizing of corporate America. The movie also manages to surprise even when certain plot turns seem evident before they occur. Initially, there is a veneer of cynicism that makes you think the story will be an abject lesson in the impermanence of life, but instead, it evolves into one man's journey...

Hands down the best film of 2009.
Hard to understand how a movie that manages to make you feel down in the dumps in many instances can have you laughing out loud the rest of the way. Perhaps because UP IN THE AIR is a movie so very full of surprises and complete knowledge of its main subject (I swear the next time I go through security in an airport I'll be looking for the oriental businessmen and avoid babies at all costs).
All throughout the movie I was expecting the obvious conclusion (the firer being fired) and was surprised to get something completely different in return, but even UP IN THE AIR's schocker scene, managed to make so much sense it's hard for me to understand how I didn't see it coming.
There's no question in my mind UP IN THE AIR will be the movie future generations will look back in trying to understand this particular era we live in. It is quiet simply a classic.

Sparkling Jewel
This hybrid comedy-drama-romance is a rare treat that honestly addresses job loss, love and relationships without resorting to common cliches or contrived situations. George Clooney and co-star Vera Farmiga are reminiscent of Cary Grant and Deobrah Kerr in An Affair To Remember.

Vera Farmiga is the strong, female co-star Clooney has long needed. She is beautiful, sophisticated and restrained, similar in many aspects to Brigit Bardot and Sophia Loren. She is Ukrainian but was raised in America. However, she did not speak English as a child which probably explains her elegant restraint when speaking English. Men will truly enjoy the brief but wonderful scene of Farmiga naked in Clooney's motel room. Wow, what a hot body.

Clooney is superb as a confident, insensitive but charming employee terminator during the economic collapse of 2008. Clooney works for a corporate consulting company based in Omaha, Nebraska that performs the dirty work for spineless business...

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