
Though Jason Reitman's latest effort
Up in the Air lacks some of the wit and sparkle of his earlier films
Thank You for Smoking and
Juno, it is absolutely a movie for our time. I wish I could tell you how many of my friends have been laid off this year or how many rounds of cutbacks my company has gone through (the last of which was last week), but I honestly started losing track somewhere around August. In the film George Clooney's Ryan Bingham travels the country handing out pink slips to the employees of companies who have hired him to do their dirty work for them, and he revels if not in his job then at least in the familiar anonymity of airports, rental cars, and business hotels. One of the most gorgeous sequences in the film is the quick succession of shots that follow Bingham as he goes through an airport metal detector. He's like a ninja of airport security, and frequent traveler that I am I couldn't help but gasp in admiration. Clooney is his usual charming self even when playing a man who actively avoids any human connection, but he also has impressive female costars here in the form of Vera Farmiga, who plays a love interest, and Anna Kendrick, who plays a coworker. Reitman is a very capable filmmaker and even throws in a nice Coen brothers moment with a cameo by Sam Elliott, but the story at times feels too predictable and even uncertain of the message it is trying to convey about whether Bingham is destined to be happier isolated in his airborne world or down on earth amongst us screwed-up people. The many layoff scenes are deeply affecting, however, and I wager I was not the only one in the theater feeling my heart wrench in my chest. Here's hoping that 2010 is better for everyone.