Up in the Air

I went with my wife to see ‘Up in the Air’ last weekend. Originally, I was thinking about seeing ‘Alice in the Wonderland’, but I could get the ticket for that. So, I chose this one instead. Did I regret it? Not a bit!

I read some blogs about this movie and decided to check that out. The overall of this movie is good. I think the script is tight and the acting in the movies is quite decent. It is a movie laterally about a professional traveler’s life, aka. ‘a bird without legs’. What if that bird suddenly has a pair of legs and need to learn how to use it? Many people regard traveling as a mean, but for the main character of the movie, it is an ultimate end rather. I always like to see movies or read books about people who have very different experience than mine. Hey, that’s what movie should be all about – to escape of reality. This movie certainly does that.

I’m not gonna go via the story plot in details, please refer to wiki if you are interested. I would say that the story itself is really a timepiece that reflects a certain days and age of modern life. When we look back this movie in a decade or so, we will look back and get a laugh on how people are using blackberry in our communication today, like in the movie that they use it in flirting between a couple, in breakup of relationship, and basically for running our daily itinerary. Also, it shows the pros and cons of video conference and face-to-face meeting in business setting, how they will play out and all that. I think it is interesting to show that video conference can only do so much in some situation when many companies are so overwhelmingly promoting it these days. Also, the job of being a hired gun to fire people from job just show how bad the current U.S. economy is, and how chicken out some corporations in handling their HR issues. In spite of the movie try to spin the depressing mood of how people can react to being fire at the end of the movie, it just can’t hide the pain that most people do suffer when such news broke out. To be honest, those scenes did generate few flashes of uncomfortable thoughts cross my mind when I was seeing it….

Well, the acting is decent, I’ve never been a fan of George Clooney. He is a good actor I was told, but this role doesn’t require him to do much dramatically emotional. He just plays a cool smartass single bachelor, kinda just playing himself in real life I guess. He doesn’t need to lose or gain weight to play his role, no crying or screaming, I don’t know why he is nominated for an Oscar though he lost anyway. Nonetheless, he did fit this role perfectly, better than other A-list actors if they were playing it. On the contrary, I found the acting of the actresses in this movie actually a bit better than George Clooney’s. Though they are not very well-known, they do give me surprise in terms of their acting. Vera Farmiga did play a very good role as a female equivalent of George Clooney. Her acting and the premise of her role is so convincing that I do believe she women did exist in real life. Anna Kendrick as the protégé of George Clooney in learning the real life of a hired gun is just funny and I do believe that’s how many young grads who are borned in 1980s really behave that way. They are not well-known actresses, which make them more believable than as if they were played by Nicole Kidman or someone famous.

Overall, I enjoy this movie, did have a good time watching it.