"Up in the Air" and "Nine"

Up in the Air – “Who the f%#k are you?!” That’s a question you would get asked a lot if you were Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). It’s easy to understand why. Ryan works for a firm that specializes in traveling the country to fire employees when bosses don’t want to do it themselves. Ryan’s technique is notable because he puts a positive spin on the situation. He’s fond of the phrase, “Everyone who ever changed the world or built an empire sat where you’re sitting right now.” Given his successful sideline as a motivational speaker it only makes sense that Ryan would pitch this to the newly unemployed.
Given the constant travel and almost no contact with people in a positive frame of mind, Ryan is understandably isolated. He likes it this way, or so he tells himself. The closest thing he has to a friend is a woman in his apartment building, the place he calls home for, by his estimation, about 44 days a year.
The only thing that Ryan seems to truly care about is reaching 10 million frequent flyer miles. They’re not to go anywhere really. “The point,” he explains, “is the miles.” While on his journeys he meets a like-minded woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga, “The Departed”). They bond over wanting nothing serious in a relationship and thus begins a casual relationship built around figuring out when they’re next scheduled to be at the same airport again.
Things change for Ryan when his firm hires a young woman on the go. Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) plans to revolutionize firing people by having the firm’s employees stay home. The solution is to perform layoffs via video conferencing. Ryan is disgusted by the idea, telling his boss (Jason Bateman) that, “There’s a dignity to the way I do it.” Surprisingly this line doesn’t come off as a cynical joke. Ryan truly means it and from what we’ve seen we can’t help but agree. His boss decides that Ryan has a point and due to Natalie’s inexperience, the two are sent on a training run across the country. Ryan’s going to show Natalie what firing people is really all about.
Co-written and directed by Jason Reitman (“Thank You For Smoking”), “Up in the Air” is funnier than its subject matter would suggest and sadder than its trailer would lead you to believe. The role of Ryan Bingham is tailor-made for Clooney but he’s far from coasting here. He gives one of the finest performances of his career as a man who’s never truly connected with anyone and is just now figuring out how lonely that isolation really is. What is interesting about the performance and the film as a whole is how we see that Ryan is not only unable to commit to a romantic relationship, he has no real friendships, and even his family feel like strangers. It’s hard to imagine any actor but Clooney making such a character relatable, let alone likeable.
Kendrick meanwhile gives a breakout performance as a young woman who like so many other people in their twenties is obsessed with the idea of living on a timeline. “I’m 23 years old, I’m supposed to be driving a Range Rover by now.” In one of the best scenes in any movie of 2009 Natalie, Ryan, and Alex discuss life and the idea of timelines.
Reitman has fashioned a movie that is as timely as it is good. It’s so timely in fact that many of the people we see getting fired are not actors. They were people who recently lost their jobs and were given the chance on camera to either re-create their on the spot reaction or to say what they wish they would have said to the person letting them go.
There are moments in “Up in the Air” that I related to and others that reminded me of the struggles of my own friends and family. Any movie that can do that and still entertain is pretty special.
Believe everything you’ve heard, this is one of the best movies of 2009. Not to be missed. 10/10.

Nine - Several years ago I took a class all about Italian film director Federico Fellini. He made some good films ("Nights of Cabiria"), some great ones ("La Dolce Vita"), and some nearly unwatchable messes ("Satyricon"). Fellini was erratic but he did make at least one undisputed masterpiece, "8 1/2." The story of a movie director having a mental and emotional breakdown because he's run out of things to say is probably one of the most personal films ever made. That was 1963.
In the decades to follow Fellini's film was adapted into a novel which was adapted into a stage musical which has been adapted into Rob Marshall's "Nine."
Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is set to begin filming "Italia" in ten days. After making several beloved "early films," Contini's latest offerings have been by his own admission, "flops."
Seemingly the whole of Italy is hoping that "Italia" will be a return to form. But what Guido isn't telling anyone, except his trusted costume designer Lilli (Judi Dench), is that not one word of script has been written. In his desperate search to recapture the creative spark he turns to his life's obsession, women. Amongst others there's his muse, Claudia (Nicole Kidman), his mistress, Carla (Penelope Cruz), an enamored reporter (Kate Hudson), and his neglected wife, Luisa (Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"). Guido hopes they will help him find his way but with each passing day he just comes further and further apart at the seams.
As with Marshall's earlier film, "Chicago," "Nine's" musical sequences are framed as fantasies of the lead character. The highlights belong to Cruz ("A Call From the Vatican"), Dench ("Folies Bergere"), and the best singer of the bunch, Cotillard ("My Husband Makes Movies" and "Take It All").
"Nine" doesn't come anywhere close to the greatness of "8 1/2," but it is a good and worthwhile movie with a dynamite performance by Cotillard. Her Luisa has long put up with Guido's infidelity and lies. She's finally had enough. It's the most fully realized woman in the film in both the script and the performance.
Day-Lewis meanwhile had a lot to live up to after "There Will Be Blood" and while this won't make anyone forget Daniel Plainview, his work here is very impressive. At one point Luisa tells him, "You think this is your job but this is our lives!" Day-Lewis has breathed life into a man who cannot separate the two. When this is the case the inability to create goes well beyond writer's block. 7.5/10.