Up In The Air

Not the feel good movie of the Christmas (that's right I said Christmas not Holiday) season, but UP IN THE AIR is a good one. It's not the best film of the year by any means and I honestly believe that the critics say UP IN THE AIR is the best is because they don't like it when genre films are the bread winner of 2009. George Clooney is cool. Men want to be him and women want to...date him. Clooney is 100% in this movie. He plays Ryan Bingham a corporate headhunter who's job is his life. Home for him is traveling, connections at airports, and executive status at the Hilton. He has a number in mind for frequent flyer miles only he hasn't hit it yet. Set in his ways Ryan's life is threatened when his company brings him home and “grounds” him. His company now fires people over the Internet. Unhappy with this Bingham proves to his boss that the new system is flawed. With success Ryan's boss puts him back in the air but with one condition, he takes the young woman that helped create new Internet job firing tool with him to show her the ropes in the real world. Along the way Ryan meets a woman who's business also includes a lot of flying. Will Ryan finally “connect” with someone besides his job?
Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking, Juno) does a really good job at keeping George Clooney and the story around his character interesting. A lot of people left the theater not liking the ending but I thought it ended the only way it could end. The only thing this movie should get is a Oscar nomination for Clooney basically playing a character loosely based on himself which is a hard thing to pull off, just ask Mike Tyson for when he was in THE HANGOVER.

I give UP IN THE AIR a very high C+

~Caleb