Clooney Turns Left
It’s awards season again, and time for me to pick a film for review that I think is going to win. And then scupper its chances like I did last year. This year’s unlucky recipient of the Orson Cart Albatross Round Its Neck Award (OCARINA®) is Juno director Jason Reitman’s [/i]Up In The Air[/i].
George Clooney stakes his claim once again to the title of best actor of his generation (while Robert Downey Jr is mucking about in a big red metal suit) with a beautifully understated, sympathetic performance as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer who travels the breadth of America firing people so that his bosses don’t have to get their hands dirty. His dream? To get to the mythical Ten Million Air Miles, whilst carrying as little baggage (both physical and metaphorical) as possible. However, his routine is about to be disturbed by two women – Vera Farmiga’s sassy Alex ("Just think of me as you, but with a vagina"), who just about deigns to fit Bingham into her schedule, and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), the fresh-faced grad who wants to downsize the downsizers (correction – ‘termination engineers’) and have them do all their firing by webcam.
I’m not actually going to spend much time on plot, because that’s not what this film is about. In fact, it’s almost devoid of accent and cadence. All three of the central performances, however, are what will be vying for gongs in the Kodak Theatre come March 7th. Clooney Plays Clooney® - a Cary Grant for our times, without the annoying vocal tics. Farmiga is brilliant. The most gorgeous Film Star You Won’t Recognise for an age, who matches Clooney Platinum Card for Platinum Card. Kendrick is a callow youth, eager to please like a puppy but totally out of her depth when emotion is called for – both in empathy for her firees and when she gets dumped by text message. The surprising thing about the performances, though, is that on paper all three characters look like the kind of Gordon Gecko pantomime greed-merchants that’ll have the audience hissing in the aisles. On the contrary, it turns out that - despite their regrettable vocations – they’re the good guys.
Reitman coaxes these performances from the trio in a very unflashy way. There are few stand-out scenes, no "you had me at hello" bawl-point, no big ending. No verse, no chorus, no middle eight. And it’s this lack of convention that will probably attract the Academy’s attention. That, and the fact that the script has – totally coincidentally, since it’s been in development since 2007 – captured the zeitgeist of these straitened times, but has done so without turning it into a ‘worthy’ piece. In fact, it’s all the things you don’t expect – funny, tender, uplifting and - above all – masterfully played. First Class.
It’s awards season again, and time for me to pick a film for review that I think is going to win. And then scupper its chances like I did last year. This year’s unlucky recipient of the Orson Cart Albatross Round Its Neck Award (OCARINA®) is Juno director Jason Reitman’s [/i]Up In The Air[/i].
George Clooney stakes his claim once again to the title of best actor of his generation (while Robert Downey Jr is mucking about in a big red metal suit) with a beautifully understated, sympathetic performance as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer who travels the breadth of America firing people so that his bosses don’t have to get their hands dirty. His dream? To get to the mythical Ten Million Air Miles, whilst carrying as little baggage (both physical and metaphorical) as possible. However, his routine is about to be disturbed by two women – Vera Farmiga’s sassy Alex ("Just think of me as you, but with a vagina"), who just about deigns to fit Bingham into her schedule, and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), the fresh-faced grad who wants to downsize the downsizers (correction – ‘termination engineers’) and have them do all their firing by webcam.
I’m not actually going to spend much time on plot, because that’s not what this film is about. In fact, it’s almost devoid of accent and cadence. All three of the central performances, however, are what will be vying for gongs in the Kodak Theatre come March 7th. Clooney Plays Clooney® - a Cary Grant for our times, without the annoying vocal tics. Farmiga is brilliant. The most gorgeous Film Star You Won’t Recognise for an age, who matches Clooney Platinum Card for Platinum Card. Kendrick is a callow youth, eager to please like a puppy but totally out of her depth when emotion is called for – both in empathy for her firees and when she gets dumped by text message. The surprising thing about the performances, though, is that on paper all three characters look like the kind of Gordon Gecko pantomime greed-merchants that’ll have the audience hissing in the aisles. On the contrary, it turns out that - despite their regrettable vocations – they’re the good guys.
Reitman coaxes these performances from the trio in a very unflashy way. There are few stand-out scenes, no "you had me at hello" bawl-point, no big ending. No verse, no chorus, no middle eight. And it’s this lack of convention that will probably attract the Academy’s attention. That, and the fact that the script has – totally coincidentally, since it’s been in development since 2007 – captured the zeitgeist of these straitened times, but has done so without turning it into a ‘worthy’ piece. In fact, it’s all the things you don’t expect – funny, tender, uplifting and - above all – masterfully played. First Class.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram