Up in the Air | The Fourth Kind | New York, I Love You

I´ve got nothing against Jason Reitman, but I´ve found the wunderkind´s highly-acclaimed first two features, Thank You for Smoking and Juno, to be underwhelming and immensely overpraised. I enjoyed Up in the Air more than the aforementioned, but you can still add it to that list; it´s a timely, precise, extremely well-acted film that deserves most of the praise that´s being thrown at it, but it still left me wanting. George Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, who has made a career out of firing people; he works for Career Transition Counseling, a corporation that provides layoff hitmen to companies that are unable or unwilling to fire their own employees. Bingham´s job, of course, involves a lot of travel – he´s gotta be there in person to lay off people all over the country – which results in a lifestyle that many of us are unfortunately familiar with. He´s on the road so much he barely has a home (his hotel-like apartment is the most alien setting in the film). He has no close relationships, even his family members are kept at a cool distance. His identity lies in the virtual realm, numbers and cards in his wallet. In one of the film´s best scenes, Ryan picks up Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) in an airport lounge. You get the sense he´s done this before. And so has she. They´re two of a kind, each know who they are and what they want. Clooney and Farmiga play off each other wonderfully. But Career Transition Counseling, under the rule of slimy Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman), might have just made Ryan´s job redundant. They´re about to implement a virtual firing system, a kind of layoff-by-video-chat, that would save the company untold riches in travel fees and eliminate the need for Bingham´s position, or at least the travel-friendly position he has been accustomed to. Young upstart Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) has devised this system, and Gregory asks Ryan to take her out in the real world to try it out. Here´s one of the problems I had with the film. It makes this new system – by all means a logical extension of what CTC does – out to be cold and impersonal. Which it is, of course, but it compares that to what Ryan does, which is apparently something more noble. Only it isn´t. He´s a corporate hitman, in flesh or on video, whose job shouldn´t be necessary in an ideal world. Bingham does sound sincere while reading his scripted responses, though, I´ll give him that. “We´ll be in touch.” Eventually, Ryan forges a larger relationship with Alex, and takes her “home” for his sister´s wedding. And eventually, Up in the Air asks us to care for Ryan Bingham. I can relate to Bingham, identify with him, I can even like the character in a certain way. But I don´t care about him, not in the least, his personal philosophy prevents it. If Bingham were watching the movie, he wouldn´t care about the character either. There´s a huge, HUGE plot point in Walter Kirn´s novel that has been forcibly removed from the screen version by Reitman and co-writer Sheldon Turner. I´m not sure it would have made the film significantly better, but it would have filled a gaping hole in regards to Bingham´s character. But at least half of Up in the Air is excellent; a timely, pinpoint satire of corporate ethics and corporate travel lifestyle. Acting is first-rate all around. This is one of Clooney´s meatiest roles, and while his character is rather soulless the actor is as charming and likable as ever. Kendrick and (especially) Farmiga offer some wonderful support.

Most films based on factual events (and some that aren´t – see Fargo) are content with that old standby opening text (“this film is based on a true story”) that audiences have learned to instinctually distrust, and maybe some scrawl at the end about what happened to the characters since. Not Olantunde Osunsanmi´s The Fourth Kind, which features the usual opening and closing bits but also assaults us throughout: every five minutes there´s “real” audio or “real” video and imposed text on the screen just to make sure we know the change in film stock means that what we are seeing is indeed, yes, “real”.

It´s all bullshit, of course, which you might confirm through a quick Google search when you get home from the cinema. Or not, because you´re not likely to be fooled during the course of the movie anyway. This isn´t a film like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, where they might deceive us initially but at least keep the gimmick going for the course of the movie; this is a Milla Jovovich thriller that constantly interrupts itself, turns to the camera and lies to the audience (“hey, this is really real, remember?”) and then tries to continue.

Milla Jovovich opens the film by speaking directly to a swirling camera: “Hello, I´m actress Milla Jovovich. What you´re about to see is real, and may be disturbing to some viewers.” Thanks, Milla, sounds good. Jovovich plays Dr. Abagail Tyler, a psychologist who lives in Nome, Alaska, with a son and daughter. Her husband died under mysterious circumstances, and now Dr. Tyler (kind of) investigates mysterious disappearances around Nome, using some of her patients as a kind of bait. Will Patton plays the local sheriff who doesn´t like what Abigail is up to, Elias Koteas plays a friend/colleague, and Hakeem Kae-Kazim plays an expert she turns to.

New York, I Love You

Rating:

Directed by Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes, Shunji Iwai, Wen Jiang, Joshua Marston, Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Randall Balsmeyer, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman. Starring Bradley Cooper, Natalie Portman, Rachel Bilson, Blake Lively, Shia LaBeouf, Justin Bartha, Orlando Bloom, Hayden Christensen, Ethan Hawke, Anton Yelchin, Drea de Matteo, John Hurt, Christina Ricci, Robin Wright Penn, James Caan, Eva Amurri, Chris Cooper, Andy Garcia, Maggie Q, Eli Wallach, Cloris Leachman, Julie Christie, Olivia Thirlby, Qi Shu, Jacinda Barrett, Burt Young, Irrfan Khan, Taylor Geare, Ugur Yücel, Emilie Ohana. Written by Shunji Iwai, Israel Horovitz, Hu Hong, Yao Meng, Israel Horovitz, Scarlett Johansson, Joshua Marston, Alexandra Cassavetes, Stephen Winter, Jeff Nathanson, Anthony Minghella, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Olivier Lécot, Suketu Mehta.

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But the restugh. After the first film, I was looking forward to New York, I Love You. The concept is solid. But red flags went up when I saw the list of directors. Paris je t´aime set a pretty high standard with the talent involved; in New York, we have exactly half of the number of directors involved, and they just don´t stand up. Akin and Nair, sure. Attal, Iwai, and Jiang, okay, maybe. Kapur and Hughes are each more than a decade removed from artistic success. Marston has directed one feature, Portman none, and what in the world is Brett Ratner doing here?