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

I am anti- this movie, after all. I just give it credit for being a slick fraud.

― really senile old crap shit (Eric H.), Friday, 4 December 2009 18:36 (6 months ago)

succinct, otm. should just have read this thread first tbh.

absolutely gutted at the butt-double. it really was the best thing about this

I didn't catch this on release, bought a used copy today, and I'm glad I did. I'm sure there were reviews out of the gate that went way overboard, and that always leads to backlash. But it ambles along, and I thought it came together at the end. The most interesting character was the mousy assistant. The Hurt Locker basically left my mind the minute I left the theatre, but Up in the Air I'll mull over for a few days.

First I'll scroll back and read about how awful it is.

Still mulling Vera Farmiga wearing Clooney's tie tbh

In a world that inspires so much ambiguity, how marvelous to look at Up in the Air and know that I can vomit without shame.

Um, anyhow...She's unusual. Amazingly, I managed to watch this months after the fact without knowing a thing about the big surprise. One or two people upthread said it was telegraphed; they're a lot more alert than I am.

I'm glad that a film about losing jobs was able to create one for Young MC.

It busts a move alright.

this movie was repulsive

I've changed my mind. I feel unclean for having seen it. Proceed apace.

In a world that inspires so much ambiguity, how marvelous to look at Up in the Air and know that I can vomit without shame.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

<3

hated this boring, awful, smarmy movie. but loved george clooney in it mostly because i love george clooney in anything, always. weirds me out that he isn't a big romantic superstar making bank on daffy romantic comedies with jennifer aniston and julia roberts. cuz the best moments in this are where he's wasting time in a bar, flirting with his ladyfriend. he's so good at that kind of thing, makes it seem so effortless and joyful, it's like watching fred astaire dance. all the more poignant cuz fred astaire actually spent the bulk of his career dancing.

Turned this off after 20 mins.

^^^ good idea

awful film

I know the movie's old news, but I truly don't get the more-loathsome-than-Jerry-Springer-crossed-with-Satan vitriol here. I hardly ever feel that way about any film any more, and generally try to reserve it for truly juvenile idiocy like, oh, Inland Empire.

In the end, it settles on a pro-family-and-marriage "message." Big surprise--it shares that with 97% of Hollywood films ever made. 48 and single, I guess I could have done without that, but 1) given a choice I'd rather be married, so I hardly recoil from that, and 2) it really sends out mixed signals anyway, since no matter what it thinks it's telling you at the end, the fact is that Clooney's perfectly happpy for most of the film. As far as the work-related half of the movie, that's something it shares with about 1% of every Hollywood film ever made, so that's inherently of interest to me right away. I don't see what's smarmy about it, and really don't see how the unemployed talking heads were exploited, as suggested somewhere upthread. You get a wide range of reactions from these people; I've only been fired once in my life, and it was 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure my reaction landed somewhere on the spectrum you get in Up in the Air. Clooney stepping in to save the day with the guy who wanted to be a chef was a bit much, agreed. Maybe as a unionized teacher with enough seniority that I'm immune to ever losing my job, I'm too detached from what's going on out there to pick up on what's smarmy about Up in the Air. As is, I just found the job-related half consistently interesting.

it's a movie about a hangman that never once seems to realize that there might be some moral ambiguity to what he does for a living... it's one of the most consciously blinders-on movies i've ever seen

I wanted to punch the screen when it went to handheld at the marriage ceremony. It was like all the little things were piling up and piling up and then that moment it crossed the Rubicon into 'awful' territory. The only really good thing about the film, aside to some degree the performances (which can be enough if the material is benign, but when that material is actively bad, it isn't), was the fetishization of efficient packing at the beginning. And I liked the establishing shots of the cities.

im glad i've forgotten it

That the movie's so handsome and polished – like its leading man – fooled a lot of critics and people; it made the thing doubly loathsome.

I was fooled--thanks, got it. Jesus...

never once seems to realize that there might be some moral ambiguity to what he does

Well, if it had been a Ron Howard film, he would have led you around with a pointer and given Clooney a big soul-searching speech on the moral ambiguity of his job--I don't think you want that, so I'm not sure what you mean. The ambiguity is there--just by virtue of it being largely unaddressed, it's there. To me, it's like a Hawksian thing: he's a guy with a loathsome job (made extra clear by the silly self-actualizing spiel they stick him with), but a guy who has some ideas on how to do it well and make it as unloathsome as possible. I think it does a very good job of not tipping its hand one way or the other; if that's not ambiguity, it's close enough for me. Where the film does lapse into speechifying is with the relationship half, especially Anna Kendricks' "You're like a 12-year-old" harangue.

in general, films having "halves" is not a good thing.

jerry maguire is an example of a film which (i) integrates the guy's job into the drama without simply having one half of the film about a profession because it was a timely gimmick, and the other half about a completely separate aspect of his life (ii) does not deal with the "family = good" thing in quite the same loathsome/i hate my audience/i am going blow their minds with a reactionary reverse way. and i don't even like jerry maguire that much. up in the air is worse than paedophiles.

Excellent. From "vomit" to "loathsome" to "paedophiles." I'm stumped as to what's next on that spectrum.

reitman killed a guy

it's a bad film!

reitman killed a guy

just to watch him die

If 10% of the country is out of work, and you make a film that deals with people being out of work, how is that gimmicky? I mean, couldn't it also be called "topical"?

The movie's interested in the unemployed insofar as it can turn them as fodder for a fable in which a silver-haired man who looks like George Clooney realizes how much he wants a family.

it could be if it didn't suck

xpost

Yes, it tries to do to things at once--is that the objection, or is it that you just don't like where it arrives on one of them?

and indeed, it's just kind of cosily 'wouldn't it be better if there were fewer unemployed'. no doi. and just uses those vox pops for vague authenticity.

"Two."

If 10% of the country is out of work, and you make a film that deals with people being out of work, how is that gimmicky? I mean, couldn't it also be called "topical"?

i did say timely. but if you completely fail to do anything with it other than take up minutes and draw the most facile on the nose comparisons with the other half of the film, yes, it's a gimmick.

are you saying they should have put an economy half in the other 2010 best film nominees to make them timely? would that have made them better films?

my problem (i) is a question of competence. this is a badly put together story because the halves are not connected in terms of plot or theme. like this film could have been a bit better if they'd just gotten rid of the economy red herring. my problem (ii) in re: the way the moral of the story (which I don't have a problem with per se) is arrived at and expressed is a question of jason reitman being a bad person and people who like his films being bad people too.

Again, it's not Welfare. I don't think it pretends to be, although everyone here seems to think it does. This reminds me so much of some of the Obama carping on other threads.

if you're going to make a movie during a period of huge unemployment with a main character somebody who fires people for a living, you have to go a little more blackly comic than this movie feared to tread.

if precious was going round sacking people, would that have been a better film? because when you sack people you feel sad and lonely? and when you get beaten up and raped at home you feel sad and lonely? so they're connected, right? and sacking people is timely.

I think there's a very definite attempt to connect the halves together. You may think it's clumsy or even wildly off the mark, but that is there.

Bell's gone, back to work. More on this later.

there's a certain heaviness and darkness to the subject built-in, and if you're not prepared to grapple with that on at least some level—even a very subtle one—you're swinging above your weight.

xxp yes, ok, we agree. they attempt to connect them. i'm not denying that. i'm just saying they utterly fail, like they would have done if they'd tried it in avatar or hurt locker or precious. this may have something to do with jason reitman being a bad person.

like that scene when a woman commits suicide off-screen so that anna kendrick can learn that... i dunno... it's ok to be the trigger for a desperate person's suicide

like that shit is just CLUELESS

I didn't hate this film as much as some people on this thread but it definitely irritated me. most I can say for it was that it looked nice, all shiny and slick.

however, clemenza liked this and hated Inland Empire so ummmm

like that shit is just CLUELESS

Clueless was better than this movie tho

clemenza wouldn't even be in the godfather 2 because he thought he was a huge star and could make crazy demands so i wouldnt really trust anything he says tbh

I know the movie's old news, but I truly don't get the more-loathsome-than-Jerry-Springer-crossed-with-Satan vitriol here. I hardly ever feel that way about any film any more, and generally try to reserve it for truly juvenile idiocy like, oh, Inland Empire.

I agree with this completely.

Loathing for this film probably stems from its smug sense of self-importance.

Also, speaking of timely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-LhEHGRH_g

David M: thanks for the support. My standard joke when someone takes my side as really mean and evil people pounce on me from all sides on this board: your complimentary set of steak knives is in the mail.

like that scene when a woman commits suicide off-screen so that anna kendrick can learn that... i dunno... it's ok to be the trigger for a desperate person's suicide

Anna Kendrick didn't trigger anything; the woman committed suicide because she was fired, not because of the way the news was delivered. There's the suggestion that she and Clooney were negligent in not reporting the woman's bridge threat--I was confused as to whether Clooney, when questioned later, forgot about the woman or whether he was lying--but not preventing something and triggering something are not the same thing. Having said that, how do you conclude that Kendrick learns that "it's ok to be the trigger for a desperate person's suicide"? She leaves the firm, obviously because it upset her. If you want to say the woman's suicide is a rather clunky plot device meant to hammer home a point that had already been made--getting fired is devastating--I might agree with you; saying that Kendrick reacted cavalierly to her suicide just seems factually wrong to me.

"Smug sense of self-importance"? As opposed to what--giant bunny rabbits spun forth from (cue solemn voiceover) the mind of David Lynch?

I'd never seen a film about a man who fires people for a living. I liked that. I've seen The Hurt Locker 40 times: in 1986 it was called Platoon, in 1980 it was called The Big Red One, in 1956 it was called something else. Some were a little better than others, some were a lot better. But I generally prefer seeing things I haven't seen before. (The relationship part of the film, yes, I'd seen that before.)

I'm not convincing anyone here, so how about we leave it at this: it's a film that tries to say something about the here and now, and tries to say something about relationships, and tries to tie the two together. I think it does a pretty good job, everyone else--except for the piercingly honest and shrewdly insightful David M--thinks it fails miserably. But the notion that someone liking something that you've convinced yourself that you've seen through amounts to being "fooled"--well, it wouldn't be a bad idea to retire that.

i can't believe u still think u like it

giant bunny rabbits spun forth from (cue solemn voiceover) the mind of David Lynch?....But I generally prefer seeing things I haven't seen before.

curious what other films featuring giant bunny rabbits, identity-switching, killer prostitutes, and demonic eastern european circus families you've seen before

I mean, like this movie all you want but let's not pretend it's groundbreaking or novel in any way. It's standard "asshole learns important lesson about life" feelgood bullshit, Hollywood cranks these out on the regular FYI

clemenza, I'm sorry for insulting you. Not my intention.