Film Review - Up in the Air

Film #9 of 2010 - Up in the Air

Jason Reitman, director of Up in the Air has made three films in a row that deal with different subject matters (relationships, politics) but all three have at least one thing in common: they are all really, really good.

I loved the premise of Up in the Air: corporate hatchet man Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a man who travels among thousands daily, yet lives a life of complete solitude. The 1/3 of the year he isn't traveling is spent in a sparsely furnished apartment in Omaha, NE, where he feels an oppressive weight every day he's not jetting off somewhere else. His life in the air is a science; it's his life on the ground that he can't cope with. Throwing a wrench into his well-tuned life is the entry of Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a fresh faced young dynamo with bright ideas to make the company she and Clooney work for more efficient and cost-effective - she wants to automate the firing process, which would involve the fired person sitting in front of a terminal getting fired remotely from Omaha. With his own job as it stands being threatened, Bingham is instructed to mentor Keener and show her the ropes of what he does, and the complexities of human interaction during the process. Along the way, Bingham meets and beds Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), a fellow constant traveler whose no-strings-attached approach to a relationship appeals to Bingham's philosophy and lifestyle.

Up in the Air is an excellent film that does the nearly impossible: it is extremely entertaining, compelling and full of emotion, but at the same time, has a complexity that is refreshing. More than one person I know who have seen this film have mulled it over for days after they saw it, and even though they were favorable to the film initially, found that the more they thought about it, the more they liked it. The performances in the film weren't so much "performances" as "players", because they were incredibly natural. George Clooney, god love him, has somehow become one of my favorite contemporary actors, something I've fought tooth and nail for years, until I came to the realization that while I don't go to see a film because George Clooney is in it, I go to see all George Clooney films because they look really good. I couldn't help but think during the film how much he has become the modern Cary Grant. Anna Kendrick, who I know from nothing (I understand she's in the Twilight series which, thus far, I haven't touched with a ten foot pole) was awesome in her role as the young over-achiever, and Vera Farmiga, another one of those "oh her" type of actresses, was perfect and completely believable in her role.

This is a film about relationships; friendships, love, even the three main characters made up a makeshift family, and Up in the Air is a very "grown up" movie. Reitman and Sheldon Turner turned out an excellent script that wasn't full of hip jargon like his previous film, Juno, but more of a believable tale that I'm sure many people can and will relate to on some level. Jason Reitman has become a director that, until a few missteps occur, I will follow and look forward to his work. Somehow, based on his track record, I don't think those missteps will happen any time soon, however. This guy is the real deal, and I loved this movie.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Film Review - Leave Her to Heaven

Film #8 Leave Her to Heaven

This was not the first time I've seen the film Leave Her to Heaven, but it is a film that stands up to multiple viewings. Starring Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent Harland, a woman with (putting it mildly) a few screws loose and an Electra complex with her late father, who meets and quickly marries Richard (Cornel Wilde), a writer who resembles her father. In order to have Richard all to herself, she blocks out (some, permanently) members of her family and his; scheming to keep Richard's love, at all costs. Leave Her to Heaven also co-stars Jeanne Crain as Tierney's adopted sister Ruth, whom Ellen views as a threat.

I've always considered Leave Her to Heaven to be a somewhat hidden gem, because so much Gene Tierney love goes to the film Laura (another great film). Tierney is really convincing as a seriously mentally ill person (I understand she struggled with mental illness in her "real" life later on) and the lengths she goes to are astounding and really creepy. Tierney is a beautiful actress, and though I think that she coasts on her presence in a few of her other films, she really shows some chops in this film. I've never understood the appeal of Cornel Wilde; he has a face that looks like he's perpetually whining, and it's really hard to get past that. Crain is really good; she has the ability to express strength and vulnerability at the same time, and was able to showcase her talents despite the tour de force performance by Tierney.

Filmed in vivid technicolor that always reminds me of a Douglas Sirk film, Leave Her to Heaven could have just as easily been filmed in black and white and labeled film noir, but I think it would have gotten further lost in film history had it not broken out of noir label and forged its own identity as a suspense-melodrama. Truthfully, when I watched this film, I was sick in bed and only put it on because I'd seen it before and thought I could probably just fall asleep to it. Instead, I found that I not only stayed up and watched the entire movie, but was completely riveted: in my opinion, the sign of a great film.

4 out of 5 stars

Film Weekend

With being sick for a while and then work completely monopolizing any part of my brain that has thinking ability, I have been terribly lax with my blog, and hope to catch up on my reviews, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

However, I will NOT be blogging this weekend, or at the very least, not on Saturday because Chris and I will be making our semi-annual drive to Madison to go to the Sundance theater to see a few movies that we can't see around here without jumping through significant hoops. On the menu for Saturday: Crazy Heart, Broken Embraces and A Single Man. I have to admit that I'm the least excited about Crazy Heart, but I've heard from several people that it's a good movie, so I plan to enjoy the experience.

Reviews to come are:

Leave Her to Heaven
Dragonwyck
Up in the Air
Sherlock Holmes

More 2010 Films

One of the rules of my personal 100 Movies challenge is that it can include films watched in 2010 that you've seen before. So far this week I watched 2 films with Chris that I've seen before, and while I normally would write a review (even if it's just a capsule review) they were both on my Top 10 list of 2009 so I'm not going to write another blurb about them:

Film #6 of 2010 - Up

Film #7 of 2010 - Night at the Museum 2

Film Review - And Then There Were None

Film #5 of 2010

Based on Agatha Christie's play "Ten Little Indians", And Then There Were None (1945) stars Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston as two of ten guests invited to an island by U.N. Owen (get it?) because they were involved in various crimes in the past, mostly murder. Owen doesn't show up, but the guests get murdered one by one according to the traditional "Ten Little Indians" rhyme. It's up to the quickly diminishing guest list to find out which among them is the murderer.

I've actually seen this film a couple of times in the past two decades because my Mom used to read Agatha Christie novels then pass them on to me. When I was 9 or 10, "Ten Little Indians" was one of my favorites, and when I had the opportunity to see the film I did. I've always thought that this was a really underrated movie: that perhaps under the Hitchcock moniker it would have been more popular. And Then There Were None is extremely suspenseful, well acted and clever. There have been at least eight years since I've last seen the film, and though I remembered who the culprit ultimately was, I forgot the circumstances leading up to it, so it was fun to follow the clues again.

I would highly recommend this film for it's cross-genre appeal; it's definitely a hidden gem.

4 out of 5 stars

At the risk of sounding like I'm either 87 or a technical moron, I'd like to officially marvel at the fact that I'm blogging in bed. From my phone. Crazy.

Film Review - The Notorious Bettie Page

Film #4 of 2010

Bettie Page, one of America's most famous pin-up girls who became notorious for the content of a lot of her pictures probably has a really interesting story to tell: about her childhood, what led her to choose modeling as a profession and then what made her go off the deep end to go full throttle with pictures depicting sado-masochism and role playing, among other things. Unfortunately, The Notorious Bettie Page completely glosses over almost all of her development and spends the better part of an hour showing her various photography sessions, and that's really about it.

Gretchen Mol looks the part as Bettie Page, and if she was truly a wide eyed innocent throughout her entire career who always looked at everything with surprise and wonder, then she nailed the part. The film was stylish and entertaining on a shallow level, I suppose, but when it ended I was like, "Okay, and then what?" which is pretty much what I was saying to myself the entire film. I had heard really good things about this movie, but I just didn't see it, frankly, which is too bad. I suppose there are definitely times when it's best to pick up a book to learn about someone's life rather than hope for a decent biopic, and The Notorious Bettie Page fits that to a "T". Truly disappointing.

2 stars out of 5