Come Anticipate Up in the Air: Jason Reitman, George Clooney, sad songs

this fucking movie.

Clooney's main trespass in the movie is cutting his family out, not his singlehood.

They're sort of equated, but the matelessness gets way more attention: Kendrick hectors him about it, and the whole punchline of Farmiga's character points to the black hole in his soul.

The last forty minutes are so condescending and soul-sucking that I almost threw my cellphone at the screen.

I was very confused by the Fresh Air interview with Reitman when he said he was people kept telling him that after being laid off, they felt they lacked purpose in life. Call me shallow, but my complaint with unemployment isn't that I'm bored or directionless, it's just that I'm broke. That's all, really. That's the only reason I even remotely WANT a job. I fucking hate jobs.

i heard this bullshit, too and i kinda wanted to reach through my speaker and throttle this dude. anyway, Kenan otm. seriously, if you need some workaday bullshit job lining the pockets of people who could give two shits about you (& let's face it, that's got to be about 97% of everybody ever) to have a "sense of purpose" well, son, that's pathetic.

I liked how suddenly the firee was a 'real actor' as soon as some Phony Themes needed to be sounded (ie, the JK Simmons scene, the weeping Detroit guy).

i mean you should just go join a church full of assholes ffs. oh, wait...

xpost

i heard this bullshit, too and i kinda wanted to reach through my speaker and throttle this dude. anyway, Kenan otm. seriously, if you need some workaday bullshit job lining the pockets of people who could give two shits about you (& let's face it, that's got to be about 97% of everybody ever) to have a "sense of purpose" well, son, that's pathetic.

also heard the interview, the "sense of purpose" stuff was condescending bullshit but there is some psychological value to the 9-5 gig aside from the paycheck.

i'm sure jason reitman knows full well the struggle of people without a solid foothold trying to make it in a difficult business

(can you tell i'm having an A+ day at work?) x-post

tbh based on this film (I skipped his first two) he has the slick bullshit down pat regardless of dad's name

'thank you for smoking' had some ok bits but it was smug in this bullshit libertarian way, and 'juno' was better than i expected but still kinda useless imo

tom carson loved this (and hated juno and smoking) and that's good enuf for me

this movie sucked pretty hard

Tom Carson is the most well-known hairstyle & salon photographer in the world. Tom's photos appear in today's top hairstyle magazines and travels all over the world shooting photos for today's top salons.

http://www.gq.com/contributors/tom-carson

Tom Carson is the most well-known film critic in the world. Tom's reviews appear in today's top men magazines and travels all over the world watching movies for today's top publications.

this movie was borderline condescending and also had really predictable plot developments and one-dimensional characters

it wasn't as bad as 'away we go' at least...

Really hated this.

"just SOMEONE WHO'S LOST"

I groaned very audibly at this.

more like laudably

Criticisms here well-taken but I gotta say this was still in the 90th percentile of movies. "Someone who's lost" -- I agree this is a bad line but that's why you hire good actors! She sold it. Lots of good small things in this movie. Excellent sound work in early scene where Clooney zips his suitcase a lot. Strange and totally successful moment of Lynch-like hyperrealism when the chief pilot sits beside Clooney. His mustache should be nominated for best supporting actor.

Also of course the point of the "someone who's lost" scene (or this scene combined with what follows) is the exact opposite of the "all must succumb to pair bonding to be fulfilled" message Morbs identifies -- that is there, but this scene complicates it. No one in the movie actually LIVES the monogamous pair-bonded life except potentially Clooney's youngest sister -- and that couple is clearly set up for ruin by the movie (otherwise why take the time to detail fiance's sinking of life savings into doomed real estate scheme?) If anything the take-home message of the movie is "nobody has a perfect fulfilling pair-bonded life, you just muddle through and try to find out what works for you" -- which for Alex is nice house in the city + mess-around on the side, and for Clooney is the ungrounded life he's established for himself, and to which he returns at the end of the movie, for good.

I also liked the less complicated and unabashedly pro-pair-bonding "Away We Go," by the way, and agree it's appropriate to compare these two movies.

Maybe also "Up in the Air" against "Broken Flowers," a somewhat similar but much worse movie. Clooney is able to DO something while he's looking out the window at nothing; Murray just looks empty.

Clooney is able to DO something while he's looking out the window at nothing; Murray just looks empty.

I have become a Clooney convert. He knows how to put himself in front of a camera and fill up a scene. Reminds me of Cary Grant in that way.

Clooney is fine in it. The acting is certainly not this movie's problem.

I don't remember Broken Flowers having a moral stench.

Nothing out there is any good this year, so a halfway winning film about semi-recognizable adults is being oversold as Sturges 2.0.... tarted up with inexcusably mawkish, Laurent Cantet-for-the-USA Today-set inserts of "real" people (not actors!) addressing the camera and describing their emotions following the loss of their jobs due to downsizing. This spray-on gravitas is preposterous, not just because it's so clearly phoned in, but more importantly because these "real people" are there not to complicate The Ryan Bingham Story (what an actual art film would do with, you know, extra-diegetic nonfictional material), but to cement its home-and-hearth trajectory as American gospel.

http://academichack.net/reviewsDecember2009.htm

Hey Morbs, I checked out 35 Rhums on your rec and it was really good. Thanks!

glad!

yeah i thought the use of REAL FIRED PEOPLE was pretty disgusting

This fucking movie. Only the Academy would consider Anna Kendricks' kewpie doll performance nomination worthy.

The real fired people really add a dollop of meaning to the story of this rootless guy who wishes he had someone to go steady with.

I almost talked to this panhandler I saw a couple of blocks from my hood because I wanted to feel better about my shitty life.

Nothing out there is any good this year, so a halfway winning film about semi-recognizable adults is being oversold as Sturges 2.0.... tarted up with inexcusably mawkish, Laurent Cantet-for-the-USA Today-set inserts of "real" people (not actors!) addressing the camera and describing their emotions following the loss of their jobs due to downsizing. This spray-on gravitas is preposterous, not just because it's so clearly phoned in, but more importantly because these "real people" are there not to complicate The Ryan Bingham Story (what an actual art film would do with, you know, extra-diegetic nonfictional material), but to cement its home-and-hearth trajectory as American gospel.

http://academichack.net/reviewsDecember2009.htm

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Saturday, December 26, 2009 5:36 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i agree with this dude but "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is a terrible turn of phrase. also, come on. it's annie hall/reds he's obviously going for.

(by which i mean reitman is going for)

Read that whole Academic Hack review! Speaking as a guy who liked this much more than he did, I thought it was great. Except:

"his gradual abandonment of a philosophy of selfish isolation in favor of family and connection -- i.e., switching from being a perpetual traveler to forging a "home""

strangely ignores protagonist's final-reel realization that up in the air, without family or connection, really IS where he belongs!

Re the "real fired people" -- in the context of the movie, though, these guys don't play as real people at all, but as actors. It never occurred to me they weren't actors until people in this thread said so. So I think this is something to hold against the movie's PR campaign, not the movie itself, in which these characters are presented as no more "real" than Clooney himself.

Wait, so they took interviews with flesh and blood people who have gone through some difficulties in the last year and inserted their stories in the end credits? Am I getting this right?

strangely ignores protagonist's final-reel realization that up in the air, without family or connection, really IS where he belongs!

I didn't read the ending that way at all. I thought he was considering Natalie's (?) idea that he should just use his miles to fly somewhere cool and actually enjoy it and maybe grow some roots, instead of living in a world of airports, hotels, and trade shows. But anyway, whatever the ending is, I think there's some ambiguity there. But clearly he's sick of being perpetually airborne, and I think his conversation with the pilot speaks to that.

I've seen plenty of press about the 'real ppl' interviews (start and finish, and a few in the middle) all over the place.

s1ocki, "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is my favorite line in that!

watching reitman on charlie rose, hes really hard for me to even listen to

if i ever see this it will be a few years from now on tnt

Couldn't stand this predictable, trite, perpetually annoying film, but JK Simmons is pretty much always great though. I wish the movie had been about his character.

Well, George Clooney would have shot him.

“New York Magazine: Jason, after just three films you’re already polarizing critics. For example, Armond White of the New York Press opened his Up in the Air review with: “Jason Reitman’s movies come in three forms: Rubbish (Thank You for Smoking), Crap (Juno), and Swill (Up in the Air).”
Jason: [Laughs.] That’s a good one.

New York Magazine: My editor wanted me to get your reaction to that.

Jason: Did your editor also suggest you tell me I’m extraordinarily pale and Jewy-looking and I should lose some weight? [Laughs.] What was the name of the guy who wrote that?

New York Magazine: Armond White.

Jason: Well, I don’t think he’s going to like my fourth film any better. My films are polarizing. I don’t want to tell my audience what to think. Thank You for Smoking—liberals thought it was theirs and conservatives thought it was theirs. And pro-lifers thought Juno was theirs and pro-choicers thought it was theirs. Up in the Air has a similar divide, depending on what people think the ending of the movie means. I would be curious to hear what Armond thinks of The Insider, a film that goes [slams down fist]: “Smoking bad! Tobacco people bad!” And for me that’s so boring. But, look, for some that’s the experience they want and those movies exist for them. I want people to talk.”

hahaha

dude is high on his own supply imo

s1ocki, "laurence-cantet-for-the-usa-today-set" is my favorite line in that!

it's a cute line except that a.) it's laurent b.) cantet doesn't rhyme with set and c.) there really is no such thing as "the usa today set," which is kind of the point of usa today.

(ok i just went back to the original and see he got laurent right. still.)

also like i said above dude is clearly going for reds/annie hall, not laurent cantet.

i haven't even seen this yet so i don't know, but yeah it's pretty hard for me to imagine jason reitman going for laurent cantet.

But anyway, whatever the ending is, I think there's some ambiguity there. But clearly he's sick of being perpetually airborne, and I think his conversation with the pilot speaks to that.

to me the ending was that he realizes he's sick of it but that he missed his chance to do anything about it. I guess him picking his own destination off the board was sorta "hopeful" but it still seemed like a downer ending to me. in a good way

Unless there’s a big name attached (Spielberg, Clooney), I don’t know if political films ever make money any more. (Meaning films about actual politicians, or famous political stories attached to them.) Maybe that’s always been the case, I don’t know. I’m not even sure if The Post or The Ides of March did especially well. Everybody knows everything by now, and nobody needs a movie to pull back the curtain on anything.

I thought The Front Runner was okay. The book was better, not surprisingly--Matt Bai’s central argument, that Gary Hart’s ’88 implosion was qualitatively something new, was framed persuasively. The film catches some of that, most effectively when J.K. Simmons’s campaign manager pleads with Hugh Jackman as Hart to address the runaway story, and Hart--beyond the fact that he’d simply rather not respond--seems to genuinely believe that it’s a non-story not worth addressing, one that will run its course in a day. Reitman tries hard for fly-on-the-wall war-room atmospherics, to the point that sometimes you’re left watching the camera glide past people sitting in a room mumbling, and the film stops dead. Jackman’s pretty good, though they let Hart off easy--I remember him as much more hapless and empty than the seriousness he’s given here. There’s a good moment where, after exploding at a staff member for prying into his private life, the same question comes at him during a key press conference, and he turns diffident and evasive; it’s like a rough draft of Michael Dukakis’s robotic capital punishment answer at the debate a few months later. The film tries to be fair to Donna Rice but completely bypasses any and all interaction between her and Hart--a big mistake, I’d say (legalities, I suppose).

I always mention how much feel for period these kinds of films have. I know that that kind of thing can get really clunky and intrusive if you overdo it, but I think there ought to be some attempt to place the events in a historical moment. Except for a brief television clip of Jim and Tammy Bakker (which was not unrelated to Hart’s story) and glimpses of some really large cell phones, The Front Runner doesn’t even try.