126. Up In The Air (2009)

Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Director: Jason Reitman

Running Time: 109 mins

Up In The Air is an American film about a corporate businessman who travels around the USA, stopping off in cities to go to offices, to do his job: sack other companies’ employees because their bosses don’t want to. Along the way, however, he finds a woman who he grows to be very fond of…

I’ve never heard of this film, but it was absolutely fantastic! I know of a lot of corporate people who do exactly the same thing as the main character, Ryan Bingham, and I was intrigued to see what goes on on the other side of their plane journey.

Also, as well as being a very interesting film, I found it brilliantly funny, mainly because of George Clooney’s desperate attempt to rack up as many air miles as possible to ‘join the club’ of 10 million miles. All of the sadistic travel humour was hilarious, as it was all just very realistic, such as finding the right queue to not get stuck in at the security checks.

Surprisingly, this film managed to cover three genres very well, more so than I have perhaps ever seen, as along with the comedy and drama of travelling around, the film touches upon a romantic aspect, which I thought was actually covered very originally, and entertainingly, however there is a massively gut-wrenching twist at the end of this film, which makes you feel so sad…

Also, the message that this film puts across is just so interesting and timely. It talks fantastically about the way in which modern life is ruining human beings’ true nature, as well as discussing the fact that it is so important to have a place to call your home, having family to be with you and care for you; and watching George Clooney’s character discover that as the film progresses is a fascinating line.

Overall, I’ll give this an 8.9, because it was a brilliantly written, original, yet realistic and timely story to do for a movie, while it had many interesting aspects to it, which was definitely a pleasant surprise.