Up in the Air (****)
Jason Reitman's two previous movies, Thank You For Smoking and Juno, are both very good movies--In the case of Juno, I liked it enough to call it my favorite movie of '07 here--but pretty different ones. Smoking was a bitingly cynical look at the tobacco debate and the lobbying industry, while Juno was a warmer movie about growing up. According to IMDB, Reitman has actually been working on Up in the Air, based on a novel of the same name, since before either of the other two movies were made. I think he was well advised to wait before making this movie, firstly because there are elements from both of his previous two movies that can be seen at work in Up in the Air, and secondly because the movie is especially prescient during a time when the country is still trying to get out of the worst recession since the great depression. My initial impression is that it's a better movie than Juno, and it might be my favorite movie of 2009, which would make two Reitman movies at #1 on my list in a three year span.
Our protagonist is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who is a "transitional specialist" which, when you translate that, means his job is to travel around the country firing people when they don't want to deal with the unpleasantness of firings themselves. The job is dressed up somewhat. He's equipped with handy informational packets and he lets every soon to be ex-employee that he'll be in touch in the future (except he really won't), but when you strip down the corporate veneer of it, ultimately the reality is that he spends his time telling people that they have to pack up their stuff and get the hell out. The character of Ryan Bingham has some elements of Aaron Eckhart's character from Thank Your for Smoking in that he seems to be flourishing in a job in which he's routinely hated because of it, as well as the title character in Michael Clayton, not a Reitman movie but also a George Clooney role, in that he's sort of the corporate go-to guy for dirty work (in this case, it's really more just "unpleasant work", whereas in Clayton it was more like trying to make crimes go away). Being farmed out to whatever company happens to be laying people off at the time means Bingham spends most of his time flying around the country--up in the air. Many would find such a life stressful, but not Bingham. He fetishises his stockpile of frequent flyer miles--one of the biggest ever accumulated--and all of his preferred customer cards from every airline, rental car company, and hotel he's ever used, always made out of some very important looking material. He's not bothered by not being able to spend more time with his family because he doesn't have one, and doesn't plan on it. In his spare time he even gives motivation speeches selling this lifestyle on the basis that people are meant to be "movers." He calls it "What's in Your Backpack?" and asks his audience to imagine all the people and things in their lives weighing them down as they try and walk.
Things are going pretty well for Bingham at the outset of the movie. With the country mired in recession, his boss (Jason Bateman) excitedly declares "this is our time!" He even meets Alex (Vera Fermiga), a woman with a similar lifestyle of near-permanent travel and, seemingly, an apathy for anything more serious than a casual relationship. Bingham runs into a bit of an issue, though, when his company hires Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), an energetic and determined young woman fresh out of college, who tries to prove her worth by introducing the concept of firing people via webcam to eliminate travel costs. With his attachment-free, never-stand-still lifestyle threatened, Bingham tries to convince his boss that this is a bad idea and that the nature of their job necessitates face-to-face interaction. His boss is unconvinced, but to try and appease
Bingham, he tells him that while the new system is being set up, he can take Natalie to jobs across the country to show her the ropes of the job. Natalie is a quick study, and knows inside and out what psychology textbooks say people want to hear when they get fired. When things get heated, Bingham gently explains to her that when someone is fighting back tears opining that they're not going to have money for their house payments, pointing out that studies show that "career transitions" can have a positive mental effect probably isn't going to put them at ease. Reitman filmed a whole bunch of scenes of people reacting to the news that they've been fired. Some of them are shown in little clips in montages, others extend out a bit, including one with Reitman movie mainstay J.K. Simmons, who initially is an especially hard sell
Most of the middle part of the movie is Ryan and Natalie bouncing around the country, with Ryan stopping to hook up with Alex whenever possible. The end of the movie has two important scenes: one where Ryan shows up in the middle of Wisconsin for his sisters wedding and has to confront the rest of his family that he's ignored over the years in favor of work, and another where Ryan discovers something that creates a major obstacle to his ultra-casual, carefree relationship with Alex. The movie runs the gamut of emotions, from laugh-out-loud funny, to very somber. All of it feels is not only compelling but feels very genuine, which was one of the biggest strengths of Reitman's Juno. It never goes out of it's way to pull on your emotions one way or another, it flows naturally from the story. Up in the Air works on a lot of levels. It's a timely piece documenting the effects of a struggling economy, and also a character study of a man trying to live as a nomad in a society where most people tie themselves down. Jason Reitman has been three for three thus far in making his movies interesting and thought provoking. Hopefully he stays hot. This is one of the best movies of '09.
*****
A couple of other quickies:
District 9 (***1/2)
An interesting sci-fi movie from newcomer Neill Blomkamp, who got the gig from producer Peter Jackson after working with him on the Halo movie that never materialized. Filmed in the style of a documentary, the beginning of the movie sets up the premise of aliens living in a slum in South Africa after their ship traveled to earth, but then seems to run out of juice while some sort of a virus kills much of its crew, leaving it hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. The slum, bearing the titular name of "District 9", is controlled by an international corporation and guarded by PMCs, although at ground level, much of the influence within the slum is actually in the hands of Nigerian gangs, who make money off of scamming the aliens in various ways, and who are convinced they can gain the aliens' power through magical rituals. Our hero and protagonist, Wikus Van Der Merwe, generally wants to help the stranded "prawns", as they're nicknamed, but his higer-ups have ulterior motives, like trying to learn how humans can use the alien weapons, which is synchronized with their genetic structure and thus can't be fired by human hands.
When trying to lead a team sent in to relocate the aliens out of the slums to a new camp set up by the corporation, Wikus stumbles upon a vial of black fluid and when he gets exposed to it, it begins to transform him into a hybrid between human and prawn, turning him into a fugitive from his former employers, who want to use him as a medical experiment to try and unlock the prawns' bio-tech. There's a lot of big action set pieces at the end of the movie with the prawns and the PMCs, but it never feels gratuitous and doesn't overshadow the larger story. Because it takes place in South Africa, many see the movie as a metaphor for apartheid. It's certainly easy to see why, though there are many more movies who deal with issues of prejudice in a much more heavy-handed and forced way as District 9, and the smart writing and the knowledge of South African culture and demographics that the filmmakers show gives it a lot of credibility. Even if you don't care about any of the moral issues in it, it's a fun sci-fi movie.
Extract (**1/2)
An entertaining, but somewhat disappointing movie from Mike Judge, (of Bevis and Butthead and Office Space fame) starring Jason Bateman as Joel, the owner of an extract factory. Concerned that the passion has gone out of his marriage, and trying to deal with a lawsuit brought on by an employee who was injured in a region that you really don't want to be injured in, Joel takes a lot of bad advice from his bartender (Ben Affleck), who fancies himself as something of a wise shaman, but who is basically just an odd dude in possession of a lot of drugs. It has it's moments, but doesn't have anything anywhere near as the best scenes in Office Space and doesn't have any characters as memorable as Lumburgh or Milton. The funniest scenes are probably those involving David Koechner (Champ from Anchorman) as the quintessential neighbor who won't go away, in the proud tradition of Flanders from "Simpsons." Creating characters like him is what Judge is best at, he just does a lot more of it in Office Space than in Extract.
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