At the movies

Up in the Air
The new George Clooney movie - holy shit is it good. There's something superlatively smart about this movie; it's unlike any movie you'll see this year. It doesn't follow a conventional story arc (it doesn't even really come close) and not only does it sidestep every conceivable cliche landmine, it avoids the melodramatic pitfalls that could easily come when dealing with people losing jobs.

Clooney plays a guy who works for a "career transitioning" expert - basically, he goes around the country firing people at the behest of their employers, who want to avoid confrontation. The firings are systematic, efficient, and emotionless (on Clooney's part). He spends over 80% of the year travelling, and he relishes that (he says in the movie "every part of flying that you probably hate, i love"). His company is going digital, however, and the terminations will be done via video tele-conferences, which will cut down on the outrageous travel costs of having to send Clooney and his cohorts around the country. Clooney, of course, hates this idea.

The video firings idea is the brainchild of Natalie, who is 23, a newly hired ivy league grad. Clooney decides to take her around the country to accompany him on his firings - his goal is to make her know all that she doesn't know (or something like that). On the road, he meets Alex, a Chicago native who is basically his female counterpart (as she puts it - him with a vagina).

To divulge where the movie goes from here would be irresponsible, but take my advice and go see it. It's the smartest movie of the year, and the best, and it sounds silly to say this, but it really is a "movie for the times." I'd also bet that it's going to win best picture - that's right, you heard it here first.

Invictus
This movie is terrible. It's boring, long, formulaic, and you feel emotionally detached from all the characters. After 2+ hours of screen time, I knew nothing more about Matt Damon's character than when the movie started, and what I knew about Mandela and his tribulations came only from reading I'd done over the years.

It's a pretty cool story, but one that probably would've been better told as a 60 minutes special. That's what this movie felt like. It's a shame to have so many talented people tied to a project and have it fall so flat. I rarely fall asleep in movies, but I found myself dozing off at least twice in this one.

I should've probably been forewarned at the lack of hype. Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Matt Damon in a movie about sports and Nelson Mandela. How could this not be the movie of the year? Well, you probably haven't heard a lot of good things about it, and it wasn't hugely hyped before the release, both for good reason. I'm sure they knew that it wasn't actually good. It's getting moderately good reviews, but that's because I think it's hard for critics to knock an Eastwood movie, let alone one with "cultural significance" at this point. The critics' ratings will probably be the equivalent of giving George Bush a B+ at Yale. It'll get its 3 star ratings and go down as a particularly unmemorable movie in a year of many such films.