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TIFF 2009 Day 2: Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air

I’m making this sound like I’m a naysayer, there is plenty to appreciate, Clooney was spot on and could grab a Oscar nom as a modern day Cary Grant, and Jason Reitman adds a lot more subtext than what is apparently offered in the novel, but I didn’t much care for the more attempted mature aspects in the final act…

Unlike the slew of journalists who’ve been championing the film since Telluride and now TIFF, I’m less convinced of Up in the Air‘s Oscar potential when you measure it up against another TIFF comedy (the Coen Brother’s A Serious Man) which gets the tone right and has so much more going for it. I’m making this sound like I’m a naysayer, there is plenty to appreciate, Clooney was spot on and could grab a Oscar nom as a modern day Cary Grant, and Jason Reitman adds a lot more subtext than what is apparently offered in the novel, but I didn’t much care for the more attempted mature aspects in the final act, especially when the middle portion has Anna Kendrick’s character turning to mush and unconvincingly jabs into Clooney’s character – who decides to fill up his empty packsack. I wished that those docu interviews at the end could have come sooner, than later.

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Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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