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

I remember watching this movie and liking it but literally nothing in frogbs's summary rings a bell w me so I guess it didn't make much of an impression, e.g. from the discussion here it sounds like there was a backpack in it which i don't remember at all

i did not like this at all

i felt bad for young mc

I felt mad for Young MC.

This film calls to mind a discussion we had on the board a month or so back about film's being forgotten once their Oscar runs are finished, sort of like the awards-bait version of "Forgotbusters." This is a prime candidate: I doubt I've thought of it once since seeing it (forgot about Young MC until just now!) and this is the first time I've seen anyone bring it up in years.

yea sorry

it was on Netflix and we were just like, "I heard that was good"

I actually liked it up until the bit where the cardboard cutout came in and it was pretty obvious this couple was gonna be framed as the polar opposite of Clooney's life and wind up teaching him an unexpected lesson or two

reitman's got a new movie with charlize theron - i'll watch it just for her. tbh his movies are comfortable pap for the most part

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.