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Jason Reitman

YOUNG ADULT

The last time Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody worked together the result was Juno. This time, they’ve produced a much darker, truly twisted minor masterpiece.

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Grade: A

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DVD

Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is a great film. What makes it so remarkable isn’t just that it’s timely and brilliant – it’s that it started out to be one thing and then, when the world’s financial climate changed radically, Reitman adapted it to fit the times in a way that is, topically at least, irony free – a first for him.

Ryan Bingham [George Clooney] is a corporate assassin. When companies downsize and don’t have the stones to do the firing themselves, Bingham’s boss [Jason Bateman] sends him to do the dirty work – which he does in a calculatedly semi-warm, dignified manner.

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Ian Fleming’s great spy, James Bond, once said, “Once is chance; twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.” Tailoring that reasoning to filmmaking: a director making one great film could be chance – a confluence of events that captures lightning in a bottle; a director making two great films [let alone two in a row] could, conceivably, be a coincidence, but a director making three great films in a row – and to start his career, no less? Not a fluke.

Ryan & Natalie at Work

Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is a great film – as were Thank You For Smoking and Juno. He’s not only the real deal he’s quite possibly the most consistently excellent new filmmaker of the decade. What makes Up in the Air so remarkable isn’t just that it’s timely and brilliant – it’s that it started out to be one thing and then, when the world’s financial climate changed radically, Reitman adapted it to fit the times in a way that is, topically at least, irony free – a first for him.

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