It's hard to really find much to say about Up in the Air. It was enjoyable, but not great. Eric Steelberg's cold, steely cinematography gives the film a beautiful visual style to match the personality of its main character, and George Clooney, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga all gave performances of great depth.
But nothing really stood out as pushing it into "great" territory.
It wasn't nearly as funny as Jason Reitman's other films (Thank You For Smoking and Juno, both favourites of mine), but then again it wasn't really meant to be just a comedy.
(Incidentally, I was disappointed that Up in the Air's opening titles weren't nearly as fantastic as either of those two films', both of which have gorgeous titles.)
It was quite touching, but about two thirds of the way through while I was noting to myself that it was nice to see a simple, romantic story between two characters without the cliche of some kind of trouble occurring in the second act, that's exactly what happened next. That was redeemed somewhat by the rather unconventional ending, but I think that's where I came to realise it wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be.
One really brilliant touch was to cast the recently unemployed as people Ryan Bingham (Clooney's character) sacks. Their responses to the question "if you could say anything to the person who fired you, what would you say?", which were edited to form part of the movie, were really quite moving.
