Movie Review: "Up in the Air" starring George Clooney

Clooney works for a firm specializing in outplacing/firing people through face to face, one on one meetings. He travels constantly, 322 days/year and doesn’t even keep an apartment any more. At home in Omaha, he stays in a hotel on points.

He meets one woman at a bar, who, it turns out, travels a great deal also (Vera Farmiga). They have casual sex several times in various motels where their flight schedules intersect. After several sessions, the woman says to Clooney, Think of me as your soul mate with a vagina.

In the meantime, a younger woman, new at Clooney's firm (Anna Kendrick), broaches the concept of firing by teleconference, thus saving much travel time and money. Clooney's boss wants to experiment with this approach. In one teleconference, the woman who's just been fired says casually to Clooney and Kendrick she will now kill herself. Clooney's young associate brushes this comment off.

At a subsequent airport conversation, in between flights, Kendrick seeks conversation with Clooney and Farmiga. The latter tells the younger woman, as you get on in life, you settle for less in a mate. You just hope, though, that you're compatible. The look she gives Clooney at this point could easily be interpreted as her thinking longingly of him as the one for her.

The problem with the Farmiga character's evident world view is that a soul mate really means one who shares your fundamental, deepest values. If words have meaning, then casual sex, even on a repeated basis, is not the same as a soul mate.

At this point, Clooney has been invited to his niece's wedding. He's never been close to his sister or any portion of his family. His niece surprises him by asking him to give her away.

Clooney has a rendezvous with Farmiga and asks her to accompany him to the wedding. She asks, surprised,You mean, like a date? but agrees. Then, right before the wedding, the bridegroom is getting cold feet. Clooney, the confirmed bachelor, after an urgent request, talks to him about the need to avoid long term loneliness. Somehow, he convinces him to follow through with the ceremony.

Clooney's boss is in a mild panic. The woman who had originally threatened suicide has actually killed herself. Possibly, their firm faces legal action. In any event, the teleconference experiment is over for now and full blown travel to corporate sites and individual firings will resume.

Clooney defends Kendrick and says neither one of them had any inkling that the employee really meant suicide. This incident has caused his associate to quit. Clooney writes a glowing recommendation letter for Kendrick, which enables her to get a new job.

Before resuming his arduous schedule, Clooney decides to do what he has always avoided and embark on a chase. He knows Farmiga lives in Chicago and he finds her home address. He knocks on her door and is shocked to find she is not happy to see him and tells him to leave.

As he goes back to O’Hare, she calls him on his cellphone. He doesn't answer, but hears her message. Farmiga's indignant and asks, Didn’t he realize he was always a “parenthesis? Clooney doesn't bother to return her call.

So he resumes his travel schedule and, presumably, has been influenced by his exposure to family affairs and his talk with the bridegroom. Does he reject Farmiga's argument that casual sex with someone is synonymous with a soulmate? Will he make an effort to find a different kind of soul mate and adjust his travel demands on some basis?

Norman E. Hill, FSA, MAAA, Member AICPA, ASCPA
NoraLyn Ltd.
Books By Hills

"Winner and Final Chairman"
Member: IFWTWA.Org
Member: Society of Professional Journalists

Movie Review: "It's Complicated"

It's Complicated, stars Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin.

Meryl Streep is divorced, with 3 grown children, the youngest just graduating from college. She has her own catering business, which seems to be doing well.

At a chance meeting at a party, she gets involved again with her ex-husband, Alec Baldwin. He's remarried, with a much younger wife and stepson, and this wife wants to have another child. He says to Streep that he's not happy in his second marriage. This results in unexpected sex and Streep enjoys it very much.

At the same time, Streep has become attracted to Steve Martin, her architect, who is helping her design an addition to her post-divorce home.

The movie explores some serious themes:

• If Streep is still attracted to Baldwin, but she had divorced him because of his cheating, are there enough values there to warrant a reconciliation?
  

• If he cheated on her originally and now he cheats on his second wife, will he one day cheat on her again?
  

• If they had grown apart before the divorce, was this the real cause of the separation, not his cheating?
  

• Although, in a way, Streep enjoys being the other woman, is this the basis for a serious relationship?
  

• Is Streep's potential new relationship with Martin worth casting aside for an ex-husband?

The script is well-written, including several portions of low-key comedy. Once, when Streep goes from her kitchen to confront Baldwin, her daughter's fiance removes a carving knife still in her hand.

Baldwin's amorous attempts seem to have ended Streep's possible relationship with Martin, who says she needs a new architect to complete the project.

These are the conflicts faced by Streep’s character. The plot of It’s Complicated ends on a hopeful, heartwarming basis.

Norman E. Hill, FSA, MAAA, Member AICPA, ASCPA
NoraLyn Ltd.
Books By Hills

"Winner and Final Chairman"
Member: IFWTWA.Org
Member: Society of Professional Journalists