Up in the Air

Jason Reitman adapted the screenplay for Up in the Air from Walter Kirn's highly prescient novel, written long before the advent of the economic crisis we now find ourselves in. The film tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), the hired gun of corporations who wish to outsource the icky business of firing it's employees. He flies from state to state and delivers the worst news an employee can get with compassion and understanding. Bingham crisscrosses the country with the frequency of a political candidate running for office, yet unlike the candidate, Bingham professes to love the travel and it's single-serving lifestyle. He maintains few familial ties, is unmarried and seems to revel in the isolation that drives so many of us to crave the sedentary pseudo-security of a nine-to-five. Soon, however, Bingham faces his industry's own form of downsizing when a young rookie named Natalie (Anna Kendrick) pitches the impersonal method of firing-by-computer. As Bingham faces a crises of self, he is forced to re-connect with people in myriad ways. He meets the sexy Alex Goran (played terrifically by Vera Farmiga), who, as his female mirror, proves more than a worthy adversary who has the potential to be a substantive mate. Bingham soon consents to return home for his sister's wedding, which is just the type of warm and fuzzy clusterfuck he's spent his life trying to avoid.
I've expressed my feelings about Clooney previously, and Up in the Air doesn't change my opinion. Clooney is as always, likeable and debonair, but never delivers the acting goods. Clooney has now reached A-level status by possessing extreme business savvy, and as a result gets the pick of the plummiest roles out there. This only serves to highlight his deficiencies, as he is usually surrounded by the best writing, acting and directing talent available. Jason Reitman is unequivocally in that category. He continuously gives us fresh and original films, whether written by him (Thank You For Smoking) or another writer (Juno). Reitman clearly inherited his father's feel for comedy, but has soared even higher with his ability to truly understand the poignancy of drama without schmaltz.
Jason Bateman, as Bingham's boss left me wanting more of him, while Anna Kendrick left me wanting both less of her and her irritating character. Kendrick plays Natalie as type-A neurotic to the core, with her angry typing and buttoned-up demeanor. I know Natalie is supposed to annoy me, but Kendrick's one-note whining results in a character with too little depth. Vera Farmiga though, has finally been given a role worthy of her talent. Her Alex is tough and sassy, but vulnerable and sensual as well. She takes her time, savoring each scene and we end up wishing we knew more women like her. Up in the Air is taut, topical and deeply touching, and given it's strength, I am not surprised it's been given the Best Picture nod. The themes it explores (human connection, isolation, how technology both bonds and separates us) are as relevant as it gets and Reitman simply captures these modern dilemmas better than most artists tackling the subject of late. Reitman subtly serves us the film's main paradox; that Ryan Bingham fervently opposes Natalie's idea of firing people as too cold and unconnected, yet he lives his life in an airplane specifically to cut himself off from human warmth and connection. My Comment is about this very conundrum we as humans face. In this hyper-advanced world of computer correspondence, it is so bloody easy to disconnect from the world. The Boomers and Gen-Xers are already having a difficult time dealing with the Paris Hilton generation that feels that it's completely acceptable to text during a meal at a restaurant (or a movie, or sex etc.). We exalt in new gadgets and how they make our lives easier and yet we want kick the teenager who cannot manage to say "thank you" when you hold a door open for him because he can't tear his eyes away from said gadget. All of us are guilty of it- we are grateful to be able to fire off an angry email rather than have an awkward confrontation. But we wonder why we can't sustain certain relationships, or why we can never truly mend the problems within ourselves. Well, it's because you can't have a real connection with someone via computers and listening to a Dr. Phil soundbite can never take the place of true one-to-one therapy. As much as we want to retreat behind the safety and comfort of the electronic walls we build up around ourselves, we can't. We can't because in end, the human connection is the only one really worth anything. Spoiler: Ryan Bingham figures that out.

Precious

I avoided seeing this film until the last possible moment. I did not want to face the pain and the horror that Clarice Precious Jones endures for her first sixteen years on earth. After having seen Lee Daniels' film based on the novel Push by the author known as Sapphire, I can say two things with certainty: 1) Mo'Nique will win the Best Supporting Actress award and 2) there are far more girls out there like Precious than I would like to admit. Daniels has created a gritty portrait of life in which Precious (played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), an obese illiterate girl in Harlem attempts to better her situation. A situation which feels like a train wreck in a poor town that just got hit with a hurricane. Precious lives with her mother in Harlem in 1987. She is pregnant for the second time by her own father, who has been sexually abusing her since the age of three. Her mother Mary, jealous of these interactions, is viciously physically, verbally and sexually abusive towards Precious. As if that weren't enough to engender your sympathy, Precious then gets expelled from school when the higher-ups glean that she is pregnant. It is then that Precious enrolls in an alternative education program and meets Miss Rain, played by Paula Patton. Miss Rain encourages Precious to write, which allows her to find a outlet for all the depravity she has been forced to stuff inside.
When Mary feels Precious gaining strength, she tries mightily to stomp her back down. Mary has been on welfare for years, which she tells Precious she should take advantage of, as she will never amount to anything. Precious then meets Ms. Weiss, a social worker played by Mariah Carey in the best (and certainly the least vain) performance she has ever given. Although I haven't seen Glitter so I can't say for sure. Sidibe is mesmerizing, particularly having never acted onscreen previously. She is so restrained in her pain that at first we're not sure if she even feels it anymore. But it soon becomes horribly clear that Precious has concocted an alternate universe in which she is rich, famous and adored. She swans about movie premieres and nightclub gigs while fawned over by her "light-skinned boyfriend". She is the belle of her own personal ball so that she can escape the grimness of her own reality. Sidibe straddles both of Precious' worlds perfectly, with a grace and poise that very few actors have, let alone novices. Paula Patton does a nice job as Miss Rain, trying valiantly not to let her class of misfit young women believe all the crap they've been told about themselves. But the most astonishing performance in this film or any other this year is Mo'Nique's. She is breathtaking as Mary. We see her seething hatred towards her daughter and we wonder how any mother could be such a monster. Then, while sobbing in the welfare office, Mary explains the derivation of Precious' abuse. We suddenly feel sorry for her, then disgust at ourselves that we could empathize with her. It is Mo'Nique's talent and ability to careen so easily within these extremes that makes her so watchable. That the woman from Soul Plane can deliver such a performance is astounding. Or maybe I rushed to judgment on Soul Plane.
Daniels is no stranger to intense and aching material as evidenced by both Monster's Ball and Shadowboxer. As a homosexual, Daniels claims to have always identified with the feelings of the outcast, allowing him special insight into many of his characters. With Precious, Daniels has opened a world for most of us to thankfully only gaze upon. He never panders to his audience with cloying tactics, he simply lets the story and the acting speak for itself. My Comment revolves around both Daniels and Sidibe. With the recent spate of award nominations tossed their way, both Daniels and Sidibe have achieved the familiar glow of "fresh new talent". They are lauded both on the talk show circuit and in the press. For Daniels, the typical praise celebrates his ability to conjure up cinematic magic on a shoestring budget. Sidibe seems to be less applauded for her acting ability than her "decision" to remain overweight in a business that applies tremendous pressure on actresses to be thin. Both director and actress seem to be handling their newfound fame with aplomb, something I hope they are able to continue to do. The thing that Sidibe and Daniels both share is the supreme and utter self-confidence in themselves. Think of how many people actually possess that quality. In show business? Actors, directors and writers are the least confident people I know. For these two, it seems to be a non-issue. I don't know how they got there, but I sure wouldn't mind some of that juju.

Academy Awards Special - Inglourious Basterds

Auteur thy name is Tarantino. There is no film student who matriculated in the early 90's who didn't want to be Quentin Tarantino. Ironically, Tarantino didn't go film school. Or college. Or most of high school. Yet the director has churned out some the most original, maniacally brilliant films in the American canon. Tarantino has always utilized non-linear story lines and stylized violence to tell his tales, and yet one aspect present in nearly all of his films is rarely discussed. Tarantino has some of the most uniquely realized feminine characters ever to grace the screen. They are so evolved that they have achieved post-feminist status. In True Romance (which Tarantino wrote but did not direct), Alabama is a beautiful hooker who has had only a handful of clients. She meets Clarence and falls deeply in love, forsaking her career in prostitution. Despite Alabama's penchant for animal prints and push-up bras, Tarantino never paints her as cheap or wanton. He presents a full-blown heroine whose one mission in life is to love her husband. In Natural Born Killers, Mallory Knox is a serial murderer who, after years of sexual abuse at the hand of her own father, is moved to kill indiscriminately with her beloved husband, Mickey. An ass-kicking beauty seems trite in the age of Angelina, but in 1994 those broads were few and far between. Finally, in Kill Bill; Volume I and II, Tarantino gave us Beatrix Kiddo. Kiddo is a martial-arts expert and killer-for-hire who undergoes a profound change once she becomes pregnant. She leaves both her lover Bill and her life of crime to pursue a quasi-Ozzie and Harriet-type life. Bill and his gang of female killers finds Beatrix and guns her and her wedding party down in cold blood. Beatrix awakes from a coma years later to find her in-utero cargo at large and the lady is pissed. Somehow, somehow, Tarantino (and of course, Uma Thurman) gives us an incredibly relatable character who avenges the loss of her baby by brutally murdering all complicit. Thurman becomes that virtually illusive woman who can both stomp ass and be touchingly vulnerable.

Which brings us to Basterds. In this rather imaginative (in Hollywood, what?) script. Tarantino places us in Nazi-occupied France. Christoph Waltz is the sociopathic Colonel Landa whose job it is to rid the French countryside of their pesky Jew problem. Landa and his thugs murder the entire Dreyfus family, save for their beautiful daughter Shoshanna, who escapes to Paris. Shoshanna hides in plain sight for years as the proprietor of a theater with her black lover Marcel. By this time, America has become aware of the genocidal evils of the Germany's National Socialist Party and has deployed a small band of Jewish soldiers to fight them. The crew call themselves the "Basterds" and are led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, pulling off the year's most inexplicable feat by being the worst actor in the film and simultaneously the most watchable). The Basterds have one mission; kill and scalp as many Nazi's as they can. While the Basterds formulate a plan to get the biggest fish in the Nazi tank, Shoshanna is devising her own plan of remarkable similarity. Again, Tarantino makes his female lead the true heart of the story. Shoshanna is smart, tough and ravishing in the vein of Catherine Deneuve. She displays incredible fortitude in the face of unbearable fear. She is the character we long to return to, even as we salivate over the brutish Eli Roth's savage beating of a smarmy German officer. The talented Melanie Laurent is Shoshanna, and my one complaint about her acting is that she does not have the pathos needed to really make us cry for her. But Laurent is still young, and it is possible that she is just a bit too European in her approach for the emotional American movie-goer. The other actors in Basterds are top-notch, with Waltz being the standout. Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger are both delicious, as is an unusually reserved Mike Myers as an English officer who desperately wants to partner with the Americans if it will only end the war. Inglorious Basterds is splashy, deeply colorful and touches lightly on camp, but it achieves the substantive feel with the rock and roll vibe that so defines all of Tarantino's films.

My Comment relates to the chick thing. There are very few stories that combine the duality of woman, particularly on film. In the last ten years, there has been a fascination with the angry, violent, cartoon-like images we see in action films. Angelina Jolie has always played these roles, because the studios realize the value in a feminine beauty who acts nothing like a woman. Jolie herself fed the frenzy by acting like a man in public. She was never the betrayed, always the betrayer, and she presented a black-leather clad package of testosterone wrapped in gorgeousness. More and more, I hear women say that they never want to get married or have children. It's as if they are warding off the inevitable label of desperate that so many men apply to women looking for a husband. These woman want to be seen as independent (read; not clingy), tough (not a silly girly girl), and interested in fun (able to pound non-faggoty drinks like tequila). But I offer up the theory that many of these women are actually using this act in order to impress men. In effect, they are acting like men so that men don't think they act like women, and then the men will want to date, marry and procreate with them. What is really so wrong with being independent and still wanting to fall in love with someone and have children? Why do we have to make a choice between the two? I submit that the post-modern feminist is the one who finds a way to be strong, self-reliant, able to play beer-pong with the boys and not be afraid to admit that her mate and baby make her sloppy with emotion. Come on ladies, if Angie can do it, why can't wait. Oh wait, because she's really hot and has nannies. Screw Angie, just do it.

Avatar-Academy Awards Special

This post is part of a series wherein I will review all of the Best Picture nominees. Given how many there on the docket this year, I will be doing nothing for the next four weeks but seeing movies and busting out of my Sansabelt pants from too much popcorn. I have already reviewed An Education, and you no doubt know that I feel it belongs nowhere near the Best Picture List. Now, to Avatar. Oh James Cameron, how you wend your way around my hyperactive, film geek sensibility. Nothing excites us Star Wars freaks like the promise of new, shiny technology. Cameron has more than delivered on that promise. He and long-time collaborator Vincent Pace have created a revolutionary new way of capturing 3-D images on screen. Using stereoscopic cameras, CGI and a "performance capture" stage, Cameron was able to literally change the way that modern films can be made. The result is a film that is beautiful to look at. It is visually stunning, prompting the viewer to question what is real and what is borne of a brilliant imagination. However, Cameron's dialogue is laughable, and the plot hits the viewer over the head with the bluntest of instruments. All of Avatar's actors are good, but it is very difficult for them to shine while having to say lines like "You are not in Kansas anymore!". Moreover, there is something perverse about having Zoe Saldana (one of the more beautiful actresses working today) looking the entire time like Rocky Dennis auditioning for Blue Man Group. Avatar's Utopian world is called Pandora, and it's race of inhabitants are the Na'vi. Lush and verdant, Pandora has myriad food sources and is chock-full of a valuable natural resource called (ready?) Unobtanium.
The message of the film is that we as humans, in our never ending quest for more (money, resources, stuff), have destroyed everything of real value on our planet. We have raped Mother Nature with a blow torch and one day she'll get up, take some jiu-jitsu classes and kick us in the balls. As a result of the movie, there have been several websites popping up that discuss "Avatar Depression Syndrome". The jist of it is that after witnessing the pristine wonders of Pandora, the affected viewer can no longer see Earth as anything but miserable. How these dipshits didn't figure that out after watching Jersey Shore, I'll never know.
The irritating part of all this is that James Cameron is capable of fantastic writing. When it was released, Titanic was technically cutting-edge in ways we had never seen before. But it was almost insignificant when compared with the beautiful fiction that he wove into the true story of Titanic-a story every American was thoroughly familiar with. That we remained engrossed for three hours enraptured by characters in a story that we already knew the ending to; that is the real testament to Cameron's genius.
My Comment isn't about how Avatar relates to society, it's about how it relates to film and the Academy. You might think that because of the way I feel about the film, I don't think it should be up for Best Picture. Well, you'd be wrong. I think Avatar does deserve to be up for Best Picture because filmmaking is not just about acting, or writing or editing. It is also about a movie's contribution to filmmaking in general. And Avatar's contribution to film itself cannot be argued. James Cameron has invented a newer, different and totally brilliant way to make a movie. For that, he should be honored, and millions of people obviously agree. I know I sound whiny, but I just wish I cared about the disturbingly feral avatars the way I cared about Jack and Rose.