Sherlock Holmes (12/30/2009)

Lettergrade: B+

I don't know much about the Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes books, honestly, but the early ads for Guy Ritchie's big budget Sherlock Holmes movie seemed to be pretty antithetical to them. Isn't Holmes supposed to be a stuffy know-it-all who wears stupid looking hats and hides a cocaine addiction? Casting Robert Downey Jr. as the guy seems appropriate as far as the coke head and self-absorbed asshole stuff goes, but what about all the shots in the trailer where Holmes is a super sexed-up, shirtless, kick-boxin' action hero who can outrun exploding fireballs and cause all sorts of mayhem and destruction? Was there anything like that in the original books? I don't have an answer to these questions... I'm just wondering.

Whatever the case, I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed the Holmes movie regardless of how faithful or unfaithful it might be to the source material. This is another strange case where the advertising makes the movie look a lot less appealing than it really is. Although there's certainly a lot of action stuff in there (most of which is actually pretty solid), there's also a good mystery plot, some clever sleuthing, and a great deal of wonderful byplay between Holmes and Jude Law's Dr. Watson, who almost steals the movie as the calm, stable center in Holmes' world of constant chaos.

The movie revolves around a crime plot, of course, but the details of it are weirdly hazy to me. The snooze-inducing Mark Strong plays the villainous Lord Blackwood, who belongs to some kind of cult that has the ambition of taking over England's government so they can reclaim the British Empire, etc, etc... conquer the world... yadda yadda. Blackstool appears to be a dark sorcerer of sorts and may have even risen from the grave after he was publicly executed, causing the London public to shit its collective pants in fear.

I felt weird about the fact that so much of movie deals with a highly supernatural element, which I also believe to be sort of anti-Holmes (unless, of course, we're talking about Barry Levinson's 1985 picture Young Sherlock Holmes, one of the forerunners of Harry Potter). Of course, this new movie's silly cult business has a resolution that I won't talk about here, but I will say that it seemed out of place for a good deal of the picture. I had always thought that Holmes was supposed to be based more in shit that was sort of plausible.

In classic Holmes tradition, there are scenes-a-plenty where Sherlock does explain many of the film's mysteries using his quirky OCD observations and a heavy dose of pseudo science. The film is miles above those shitty Da Vinci Code movies where they would have Tom Hanks rattle through a puzzle so quickly that you barely had time to understand whatever the fuck it was he just said before you the conclusion is reached. Holmes actually chews on the scenarios for a bit before deducing anything, which is a breath of fresh air indeed (despite the fact that it all builds up to a lengthy "Scooby Doo" scene toward the end where Holmes lays out things that he could have easily told us way earlier). Also, the Tower Bridge gets such an important introduction early that one of the characters might as well look into the camera and tell you that it will figure prominently into the film's climax up front.

Although there are clear influences from Harry Potter as well as Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow character from the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, the producers really made use of the Batman Begins template more than anything else here. They even set up the villain for the next movie (Holmes' arch nemesis Moriarity) toward the end of this one, much in the spirit of how Lt. Gordon whips out the Joker card at the end of Begins, paving the way for Health Ledger to assume the part three years later in The Dark Knight. Similarly, Ritchie leaves Moriarity shrouded in shadows in this one so they can cast whomever they want as the odious super villain whenever the next one rolls around. I don't want to give away any secrets, but I'm betting it will be Andy Dick.

All in all, it may piss off some Holmes purists, but it is a highly engaging movie in its own right and one of the better ones I've seen in a while. At 130 minutes, I'd argue that they maybe should have lost 20 or so (which seems to be my comment about every movie these days!), but so much was well done that it's hard to criticize it for overstaying its welcome a little.

It's Complicated (12/25/09)

Lettergrade: B-

This isn't the kind of movie I'd normally go see (I couldn't talk my wife into Avatar or Sherlock Holmes), but it's actually not bad. It certainly is a weird one, though. It's an uncomfortable Midsummer Night's Dream / Blame It On Rio style sex farce involving two 60 somethings, Meryl Streep and Steve Martin, as well the 50 year old Alec Baldwin, who plays Streep's ex-husband / future lover as a psychotic mixture of his Jack Donaghy character crossed with an unnerving serial rapist.

While it feels like Steep and Martin are slumming a bit in this one, Baldwin, having long been identified with stage and film work until he began on 30 Rock in 2004, curiously feels like a TV actor giving a big, broad TV performance, laced with shameless Jay Leno style audience pandering. Nevertheless, the movie is surprisingly sensitive in places where you might not expect it to be, and although I wince a little at seeing a respected actress like Streep behaving like a boy-crazy school girl, it's hard to deny that the picture as a whole works.

Streep and Baldwin live a lavish, obscenely wealthy fairytale life in Santa Barbara, sharing custody of the children, the youngest of whom is getting ready to go off to college (or go from college to grad school or something - hell, I can't even remember what genders the kids are). The impending graduation causes Streep and Baldwin to spend more time together for the sake of the kids. That, when added to the pressure on Baldwin to have another child, as imposed by his freakishly manish 2nd wife (Lake Bell, soon to be seen in HBO's How To Make It In America), leads him to realize that he never stopped loving his first wife, and that it's completely appropriate to now hound and stalk her until she agrees to start sleeping with him again.

Now around this same time, Streep, who owns and operates a local bakery, decides that her amazing, unbelievable dream kitchen just isn't up to her standards, so she enlists a shy architect, played by the heavily be-cosmetic-surgery'd Martin, to design an even more ridiculously grandiose, cathedral-like one for her that's so goddamn big that they need to break ground on a new wing of her mansion in order to accommodate the fucker. Long story short... will she wind up with the terrifying, super-aggressive, crazy, adultering asshole who hurt her so deeply so many years ago, or will she finally forge a relationship with the thoughtful intellectual who understands and appreciates her? You'll have to sit through the movie's 2 hour, 15 minute running time to find out!

If the picture has some faults, they're all there in those last few sentences. The film's running time is painfully self-indulgent, particularly when you consider that this is a fantasy with only one clear outcome. Of course, the same is often true of most romantic farces, but the point is that the this picture could have easily lost 20 minutes or so of its total length and been much richer for effort. I firmly believe that the pleasure of watching a movie isn't so much in knowing what's going to happen, but in watching something that feels plausible and credible unfold, and really believing it. Again, this picture is largely able to pull this off (although the reactions of some of the children late in the movie felt a little bullshitty to me). There's a difference, though, between drawing something out for dramatic effect, and leaving the audience somewhat at sea, wondering when things will wrap up so they can go home or do something else. This movie skews toward the latter, of course, which is a real shame when you consider that there's very little to find fault with otherwise.

It's another movie from writer / director Nancy Meyers, who along with Something's Gotta Give has turned this kind of thing into a new sub-genre as well as her speciality. In spite of my tounge-in-cheek complaining about the fact that this is a movie about the romantic troubles of the repugnantly wealthy leisure class, I must say that in an age where movie stars seem to be getting younger and younger, it's nice to see a well-made picture about adults. That sort of thing only happens occasionally, and usually, for some reason, Jack Nicholson has to be involved: Something's Gotta Give, As Good As It Gets, About Schmidt, The Bucket List and even Terms Of Endearment, which was produced in 1983, back when Nicholson was only in his 70s. So to revise my statement, it's nice to see an adult movie about adults with adult problems, none of whom are Jack Nicholson.

Not being a 60 year old divorced woman (at least, not yet), I can't say that I fully understand what it might be like to be in Streep's shoes on this one. This picture probably wasn't green-lit with the 31 year old male demographic in mind. Nevertheless, the picture does get you to feel a great deal for the people involved and in a year where movies like Transformers 2 exhibit behavior that doesn't even get close to human behavior as I know it, it is something to be thankful for indeed.

A Single Man (12/24/09)

Lettergrade: C

A Single Man shows us a few days in the life of a 1960s lit professor played by Colin Firth who is coping with the recent death of his longtime boyfriend. It's the directorial debut of Tom Ford, who recently completed a wildly successful stint as the creative director of Gucci and is largely credited with saving the company. I mention this up front because although the film has no shortage of stellar acting, it suffers from being a little too stylized for its own good at the same time. For me that extends to several aspects of the movie... the bludgeoning score (which mysteriously got nominated for a Golden Globe!), the heavy sets and photography, and the long, brooding passages where people sulk and stare off at nothing. The picture is effective at what it sets out to do, I suppose, but it is deeply rooted in something of an old fashioned art house idiom that almost feels like a clichéd parody of what Awards movies are supposed to be these days.

One of the more talked about techniques in the film (at least among my film friends) is that the color will go from warm to cool and back again within a single shot whenever a character's mood changes. It's interesting, to be sure, but not much more subtle than having the actor look directly into the lens and tell the audience he's feeling sad now.

But gripes aside, Colin Firth really does do a stellar job and is very much deserving of all the acclaim he has been getting for the role. Julianne Moore chewed the scenery a bit as Firth's long-time friend Charley, whom he once boinked before coming to terms with his own sexuality. I don't know anything about Christopher Isherwood's novel, or what it might have been like to be a gay man living in that time period, but something about her callous lack of understanding about how real her friend's love is and how deeply he's hurting just doesn't have the ring of truth to me.

Other supporting characters include Jon Kortajarena as a sultry latin character whom Firth meets in a liquor store, and Nicholas Hoult as one of Firth's students who holds an aggressive yet apprehensive attraction toward his teacher. Hoult is seriously channeling Jack McBrayer's "Kenneth The Page" character from NBC's 30 Rock in this film, a problem that's only augmented by the fact that his character is also named "Kenny." Shockingly uncredited, though is Drew Carey, who selflessly lent his horned rim glasses to Firth for the duration of the shoot, doubtlessly delaying Price Is Right tapings for weeks on end.

Ford reportedly put a good amount of his own money up in order to get the movie made, both because it is subject material that he identifies with, being gay, but also because he wanted a career as a film director. His gamble certainly paid off: He's got a good deal of acclaim now, and will assuredly get a second movie from this -- one that we won't have to bankroll himself. It feels like we're in an age where people rarely put their money where their mouth is when it comes to making a film they'd like to see. I respect that Ford dipped into his considerable savings to make this picture, but I still wish he had made one that felt a little less stodgy.

2009 MOVIE RECAP: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE FUGLY

Ah 2009... While we still saw a good number of movies in the theater (35 or so, with a handful more on DVD), it was a lot fewer than we had in previous years.

2008 had a slew of wonderful pictures, both summer popcorn fare and those of the dramatic, award winnin' variety (plus exceptional entires like The Dark Knight which managed to be both). So plentiful were the great movies that the Academy Awards made the infuriating decision to expand the number of Best Picture nominees this year from five to ten, only to be met by the cruel irony of 2009's films being on the whole decent, but without nearly the same caliber of highlights. What the hell are they going to do now? Nominate Star Trek for Best Picture?

In any case, however, of what I saw, here's what I liked and what I didn't:

THE GOOD

Adventureland
In the first 20 minutes or so, I was concerned that we were in for another horny teenager movie, but I was really surprised by how good it got as it went on. Excellent writing and directing that is as personal and as soulful as it is funny. Everyone involved gives great performances... Jessie Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Margarita Levieva (Lisa P), and Ryan Reynolds in a revelatory performance. Expert work all around. My list isn't alphabetical: I've put it at the top for a reason.

The Hangover
My theater experience with this one was so good that I'm hesitant to watch it again on DVD. I usually don't like movies (or life situations) where people are really f'ed up on booze or drugs and acting crazy, but this one was so insane and bizarre that I had to love it. A star making role for Zach Galifianakis... let's hope he learns a lesson from the sad stories of Seth Rogen and Jack Black and doesn't wear out his welcome fast via a mindless stream of lazy follow-ups.

A Serious Man
I have no idea what the hell this movie is about, but I really enjoyed it. My buddy Mike, more familiar with the Bible than I, argues that it's a retelling of the book of Job. Whether that's true or not, it's still a good movie.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
I had not liked a Wes Anderson movie since The Royal Tenebaums, and was really surprised by how much I loved this unique, imaginative stop motion romp based on the Roald Dahl short story. The most interesting thing to me is that the picture emulates Anderson's style perfectly without punching me in the face with its smugness and self-importance (I'm looking at you, Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited!).

Inglourious Basterds
There are a lot of things I admire about this movie, in particular the cultural sensitivity and the unbearable tension in certain scenes. Nevertheless, something about it didn't entirely do it for me. It certainly felt a little bloated, and the dialogue, while always interesting with Tarantino, struck me as even more self-indulgent than usual. The violence was gruesome too (the scalpings in particular made me squirm), but all in all it's an excellent picture that leaves a hell of an impression.

Capitalism: A Love Story
I'm usually a sucker for Michael Moore and the various causes he advocates, but his arguments have gotten increasingly shaky and his recommendations for fixing the problems he addresses even more slim. Regardless of that, it is powerful filmmaking that still manages to make me laugh, cry, and think like no other films do.

The Princess And The Frog
It's formulaic to a fault, but what a wonderful pleasure to see a high-quality traditionally animated picture in theaters again. I love 1920s New Orleans jazz and believe Randy Newman to be one of America's best living lyricists and composers, which probably buttered me up considerably too.

Extract
I probably like this one more than I should as well. Not as culturally resonant as Office Space or as brilliant as the first half of Idiocracy, but a funny movie with the same wry observations that Mike Judge always brings to the table.

500 Days Of Summer
A sassier, very modern take on the When Harry Met Sally formula, but geared toward any guy who's ever liked a girl more than she likes him (which characterizes most of my teens and 20s). I felt the style of the movie really got in the way of the storytelling at times. As the movie skips around in time, it's quite easy to get lost thinking about what has and hasn't happened yet, but the whole thing was interesting and soulful enough not set off my date movie gag reflex.

Julie & Julia
My wife really loved this one (in part, perhaps, because of her own love of cooking and her recipe blog). Although "love" is a strong word for me, I was surprised by how deeply I connected to it as well. I liked Julia Child's story because, well, it was interesting and well acted. I liked Julie Powell's story because I know all too well what it's like to be in your early 30s, feeling creatively undernourished and that your friends have passed you by. A rare exception to my Nora Ephron embargo.

Marley & Me
A manipulative dog movie in which the dog meets the same fate that befalls the dog in pretty much every other dog movie, resulting in buckets of tears, no matter how unmerited. Against all odds and known logic, the dog story actually takes a back seat to an unexpectedly good performance by Owen Wilson as he goes through life and develops a career and family. From the director of The Devil Wears Prada. He doesn't make the kind of movies that I would normally go to see, but I have seen them both and must admit that he knows how to make good ones.

Sunshine Cleaning
Many signs of a troubled production: Choppy, weird editing. Certain subplots disappear mid-way through the movie and are never heard from again. Nevertheless, I love Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and the rest of the cast, and the movie had enough heart to stick in my mind for the rest of the year.

Up In The Air
I was harder on this one in my review than I probably should have been. My main beef with it is that it's a good movie that many people are mistaking for a great one, but that's certainly not the movie's fault.

THE AVERAGE (ranging from slightly above to slightly below)

Where The Wild Things Are
A movie I admired, but did not especially enjoy.

Star Trek
I liked this when I first saw it, but it doesn't hold up on video or when you... oh, I don't know... think about the plot for more than a few seconds. It relies on some biiiiiiiiig goddamn coincidences and events like the evil Romulans sitting around doing nothing in space for nearly 25 years in order for the story to stick together. It's a better Trek movie than we've had in a long, long time, but it bothered me that tonally it's much closer to Star Wars than the series has been before.

Up
I've gotten a lot of flack for not loving this one, but I'll still maintain it feels like the folks at Pixar had a lot of unrelated ideas sitting around and decided to find a single movie to park them all in. Dogs with collars that make them talk? Why the f**k not! Coming after 2008's Wall•E and 2007's Ratatouille (which ties with Toy Story 2 as the best Pixar movie in my book), I just expected a lot more, and certainly a lot less shameful pandering to kids. My gripe might be similar to that of the similarly titled Up In The Air - it's not that it's bad, it's just insanely over rated in a way that makes me grumble.

Away We Go
I never got around to writing a review about this one. I thought the scenes between expectant parents Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski were realistic and endearing, but the highly episodic story structure kept having them interact with more and more ridiculous caricatures as the film went on, the most artificial and irritating of which was Maggie Gyllenhaal as some kind of new age earth mother. I have a major axe to grind against director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road), whom I'm sure thinks of himself as an Artist with a capital 'A.' I usually find his movies to be beautifully designed and photographed, but condescending, pretentious and devoid of anything I would describe as recognizable human behavior. A healthy percentage of this movie actually works a little, which for him is a monumental achievement.

Wolverine
Origin story in which we meet Wolverine's even white-trashier brother played by Liev Schreiber. There are many reasons why this movie should be declared awful and skipped without a second thought. I will say, however, that Hugh Jackman is great in his signature role and the X-Men world is intriguing enough to help me get past how insanely stupid everything else about the movie is.

Angels & Demons
Exciting. Pretty photography and good editing. Certainly better than The Da Vinci Code. Still, though, it's kinda mechanical and by-the-numbers. This and Da Vinci are the only movies I can think of where Tom Hanks seems to be miscast and puts in a kinda sucky performance.

Earth
A cut down and repackaging of BBC's Planet Earth series with new, blood-thirsy narration by James Earl Jones (replacing the series' Richard Attenborough). It was nice to see something like this in a theater, but it's not especially noteworthy otherwise.

Whatever Works
My love of Larry David has me holding this in higher esteem than I probably should. David plays a weird amalgam of himself, Woody Allen (who wrote and directed), and Zero Mostel, for whom Allen originally wrote the script in the 70s. If Allen really had the script sitting around that long, it's a shame he didn't put much effort into making it more coherent.

The Men Who Stare At Goats
I almost put this one in the next category. A highly uneven movie with some actors that I really like. Otherwise, I think you can skip it unless it happens to be playing during an airplane flight.

THE UGLY (I'll list the worst first)

Watchmen
Holy shit. 3 hours of solid agony and pain culminating in even more confusing, tedious blandness. The most memorable part of the movie was seeing Billy Crudup's blue, radioactive junk, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Year One
A comedy with zero laughs. I've been debating if this is worse than Watchmen, and I still don't know. It's an hour shorter, yes, but it feels just as long. I'm leaning toward this because when you consider the talented cast and the fact that it's Harold Ramis (director of Caddyshack, National Lampoon's Vacation and Groundhog Day), you realize that there's more tragedy in a guy like that making something like this than if the asshole who made Dude Where's My Car? had done it.

Observe & Report
We went to a test screening of Brüno which filled up before we could get seats. Our consolation prize was a free ticket to Observe & Report, which, although we did not know it at the time, added significant insult to the injury. It's an unbearable movie about a mentally deranged mall cop on heavy medication. During the film I realized that whatever it was about Seth Rogen that made me laugh once is dead and gone. Christ, is it messed up, painful and torturous. We never did see Brüno, though, so maybe they did us a favor.

Funny People
I just saw this on DVD and it really rubbed me the wrong way. Feels like two or three movies smashed together, and is packed with nothing but loathsome, unlikable characters. Adam Sandler is playing Rodney Dangerfield or something, and doesn't seem to realize that the shitty movies his character has been appearing in for the last several years aren't all that different than the garbage he himself has been sleep walking through since 2000 or so. I think there's a problem with making a movie about people who are trying really hard to make you laugh. If you have a sense of how much effort they're putting in, you don't, which I didn't. And I didn't buy it as a drama either. I caught part of The 40 Year Old Virgin on TV last night. Apatow was so much better when he didn't fancy himself in the same league as Cameron Crowe or Paul Thomas Anderson (the latter of which supervised an uncredited recut of the move, which is probably part of the reason that I found it to be so goddamn drawn out and bad). Get your head out of your ass, Judd!

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen
I stand by every word of my original review. I again want to emphasize, though, that the movie is every bit as head-ache inducing and nauseating as I knew it would be going in. It's hard to be too angry when I knew I was getting into.

Land Of The Lost
Shitty. Really shitty. The movie is simultaneously aimed at children (dinosaurs, little people in alien suits, etc), teenagers (action scenes, drug and sex jokes, Danny McBride), and 40 somethings who might have fond memories of the 1960s TV show. I can't imagine that any of those groups would like the end result, and I certainly don't either.

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince
The books get better as they go along, but the films have steadily gotten worse. Such a curiosity is David Yates. He handles some aspects of the books better than any of the other directors have, but mangles others needlessly. His two Potter films are so goddamn dour and joyless, almost mechanical. Someone needs to remind him that this is still a fantasy story about teenage wizards, intended for children. It's not J.R.R. Tolkien, damn it, and it shouldn't be treated that way!

Black Dynamite
A great trailer for a movie that overstays its welcome by at least an hour (and it's only 90 minutes or so). It did confirm for me that Michael Jai White is an amazingly charismatic actor with some mean comedic chops, though.

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Dull and unimaginative. What kid is going to get the references to all these crappy 50s monster movies? What parent isn't going to think about hiring someone else to take their children to movies from now on?

Taking Woodstock
I like Ang Lee movies, and I like Demitri Martin. I found this lengthy, meandering movie to be pretty excruciating, however, and nearly unwatchable. Maybe if I had a background that included a lot of drugs and/or any particular affection for this era of music I'd feel differently. Also, this movie spoke to my extreme hatred of big crowds and long lines, neither of which existed at theaters where this sucker was playing.

The Informant!
I hated every second of this movie. I hate what it's about, how it's told, the quality of the photography, the chipper musical score by Marvin Hamlisch... everything. I liked Steven Soderbergh until he sold out as upsettingly as any gifted filmmaker can and started making unwatchable, tension-free studio shit-buffets that all had the word Ocean's in the title. This movie was the last straw. Not only will I skip any movie with his unholy name on it in the future, but I will avoid re watching his pre-2001 output that I used to like. Thanks a lot, Steven Soderbergh. Thanks for all the pain and the suffering for the whole decade, you asshole.

So, that's it! My list is, as always, incomplete. I haven't gotten around to seeing Avatar or Crazy Heart or Terminator: Salvation or Saw VI, all of which I'm sure are destined for multiple Academy Award nominations. On to 2010!

The Princess And The Frog (12/12/2009)

Lettergrade: B+

It's formulaic to a fault, but what a wonderful pleasure to see a high-quality traditionally animated picture in theaters again. I love 1920s New Orleans jazz and believe Randy Newman to be one of America's best living lyricists and composers, which probably buttered me up considerably too.

Up In The Air (12/06/2009)

Lettergrade: C

Up In The Air is a good movie, but a lot of critics are placing it atop their "Best of '09" lists, proclaiming it to be a film for the ages, and with that kind of praise I take some big exceptions. I hate to be the fun-buster here, but while it is a movie with no shortage of excellent actors and performances, the general storyline ultimately struck me as a little tired, and sort of emotionally "untrue" by the end. Again, I hate to bag on a picture that's generally pretty good and largely worth seeing, but I think that this one of those instances where a better-than-average movie is a victim of waaaay too much acclaim.

Let me tell you what I'm talking about: George Clooney works for a Nebraska based company that flies him around the country firing people who work for other companies when their bosses are too chicken-shit to do it themselves. He's on the road, living in hotels and airports, for all but a few days a year and that's just the way he likes it, as indicated by a series of witty voice-over montages. Anna Kendrick is a young upstart at Clooney's company who convinces the boss that firing people via Skype would be much more cost-effective than flying people like Clooney around all the time, which as you might imagine royally wanks Clooney's crank. The boss, played by Jason Bateman in full-on douche mode, asks the begrudging Clooney to take the new youngling on the road for a few months and show her the ropes (um... even though that won't happen anymore once they switch to her new plan?). In doing so, Bateman creates an unlikely comedic pairing in the grand tradition of Oscar and Felix and Tango and Cash, only without much of the comedy. Quickly, Kendrick learns that Clooney's job is highly personal and unpleasant - not nearly as much fun as when Donald Trump does it or when J. Jonah Jamieson repeatedly fires Peter Parker in the Spider-Man movies.

Mixed up in all the flying and firing is, of course, a chick, here played by Vera Farmiga. Formica is a fellow traveller whom Clooney picks up in an airport bar and begins a quasi romance that largely consists of brief liaisons whenever they happen to be in the same region. Is this the kind of love and companionship that Clooney has set up his whole life in order to avoid? Well... the movie has its pick of two standard plays on that front, and I can't say the one it chose was terribly surprising or even all that interesting. For that matter, I think you can say the same thing about what ultimately happens in the Anna Kendrick storyline too. Isn't it strange that this is a movie with such wonderfully handled personal moments but hardly any true surprises?

But back to the fact that Clooney's job consists of him firing people, which is my major beef with the movie. In the novel the film is based on, apparently, his character has a different job altogether. The "corporate downsize specialist" thing was an invention for the film, clearly because unemployment is so widespread these days, but also because of the fact that such a business is an industry at all is horrifying. Nevertheless, I don't think the movie actually does anything with Clooney's job other than attempt to wring a lot of cheap sympathy out of it. There are countless scenes of people being let go (sometimes they even come in the form of bizarre celebrity cameos like J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis!), and then later in the movie, there are several ham-fisted testimonies from real-life actual people who have been really, really fired recently!

Now... I've certainly been fired once or twice in my life, and while it does unquestionably suck, I will maintain that that aspect of Clooney's character has zilch to do with Clooney's problem... that he's constructed a nomadic life for himself that has left him without any real friendships or attachements. His job is a plot device to keep him on the road and cut off from anything permanent. It could be anything: He could be a regional office manager, he could be an insurance claims adjuster, he could even have the same job he had in Michael Clayton two years ago.

The thing that bothers me about the occupation they chose is again how they exploit the hell out of it. Director / co-writer Jason Reitman seems to be counting on the audience to be so distracted by the power and timeliness of how the movie deals with this devastating occurrence that they do not realize it is not germane to the rest of the movie at all. You could, perhaps, argue that because Clooney has to wall himself up in order to tell people they've lost their jobs, his chosen profession helps illustrate his desolate character, but I don't buy it. It's a bit unclear how we're supposed to feel about him or what he's doing. And I don't mean "good" unclear. He is played by George Clooney after-all, meaning that he comes off as charismatic and likable whether he's intended to be that way or not.

I watched At The Movies after seeing the flick, and frankly I was surprised that Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott kept referring to it as a romantic comedy. I think of it more as a drama punctuated with a little romance and a handful of good comedic moments. Maybe Paramount wants it described that way so people will not avoid it based on the subject material? Nevertheless, the classification kinda fits in a vague way, and sort of explains why several of the movie's characters fall into weird caricatures. Anna Kendrick's character is directly from the Tracy Flick mold, and contains shades of every buttoned up corporate attorney character from every movie made in the last 25 years, particularly the poor saps in Erin Brockovich who were there only to have Julia Roberts sass them. There's even the late-in-the-picture letter of recommendation ala The Devil Wears Prada which doesn't feel earned at all, really. The letter shows up as a surprise at a job interview... a logic minded viewer might realize that amazing psychic ability and/or CIA Intel would have been required in order for that to happen.

Again, the wacky celebrity cameos are distracting and seemingly more befitting of your standard bullshit Will Ferrel comedy than a movie like this (the omnipresent Danny McBride even shows up in a small role). In addition to McBride, Simmons and Galifianakis, Sam Elliot appears as an Airline captain late in the film, as the conclusion to a subplot that feels extraordinarily out of place and about which I had completely forgotten by the time it came to fruition. And as for the ultimate wrap-up for Clooney's character... well, it feels like the kind of behavior people only exhibit in movies. Maybe there are people like the three leads in this film out there, but they feel exaggerated and... well, fake.

And for that matter, it irks me a little that this is a movie peripherally about getting fired which has been made by the wealthy son of another wealthy filmmaker. If he has ever been let go from a job, I doubt it caused him nearly as much concern as it causes anyone who appears on screen. It feels like it was made by someone who understands that losing your job is one of the most horrible, demoralizing things that can happen, but who doesn't know what it really feels like.

One of weird tenants of giving decent criticism, I think, is that you've got to try to look at things in terms of what they aspire to be and put that up against what they actually achieve. After that, it's fair to say whether or not you liked it. Believe me, I understand how crazy it seems to be more enthusiastic about a movie like Wolverine than I am about this one, but Up In The Air aims a lot higher, meaning it should probably be held to a higher standard, which I am. In spite of my red-faced ranting here, it is still an interesting picture, and probably worth seeing. I know that it's on a direct path for a shit-load of Oscar nominations in the spring, but if it wins Best Picture or Screenplay, I might seriously lose it.