Category Archives: Film Review

Documentary Review: Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth (dir by David O’Neill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was Lord Lucan?

He was a British aristocrat, born not only wealthy but also with all the right connections.  His birth name was John Bingham but he eventually inherited the title of Lord Lucan when his father died in 1964.  At the time, the new Lord Lucan was 30 years and had been married for less than a year.  Lord Lucan was handsome and charming, so much so that Cubby Broccoli considered him for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  Lucan had no formal acting experience but he had the right look.  Nothing, of course, ever came of the idea of casting Lucan as Bond.  It’s rumored that he may have done a screen test but nothing can be said for sure.  Would Lord Lucan have had better luck with the role than George Lazenby?  Well, it’s hard to imagine how he possible could have had worst luck.

Like James Bond, Lord Lucan loved to gamble.  Unlike Bond, who was rarely seen to lose a hand whenever he sat down at the poker table, Lucan was not a particularly good gambler.  In fact, he lost so often that he was often broke.  Fortunately, his rich friends usually took care of him whenever he needed money or someone to testify as to his courage whenever he was accused of neglecting his wife, Lady Lucan.  When Lord and Lady Lucan separated in 1972, it forced the members of British high society to pick sides and most of them sided with Lord Lucan.  That remained true even in 1974 when Lord Lucan was accused of murdering his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.  Rivett, who bore a superficial resemblance to Lady Lucan, was bludgeoned to death with a piece of lead pipe while making a cup of tea in Lady Lucan’s home.  Lady Lucan claimed that she came across Lord Lucan in the house and that he admitted to having attacked Sandra in a case of mistaken identity.  Meanwhile, shortly after the murder, Lord Lucan reportedly called his mother and told her that he had just happened to be driving by his old home when he saw an unidentified man fighting with his wife.

The same night that Sandra Rivett was murdered, Lord Lucan vanished.  Both the police and Lady Lucan speculated that Lord Lucan had committed suicide by drowning himself in the Thames.  However, for years after Sandra Rivett’s murder, there were regular sightings of Lord Lucan around the world.  While many of those sightings were undoubtedly due to hysteria caused by the extensive press coverage surrounding the case, there were other sightings that seemed to be a bit more credible.  There was much speculation that Lucan’s powerful friends had helped him escape from Britain and he had relocated to either southern Africa or Australia.  As late as 2012, sightings of Lord Lucan were still being investigated.  If Lucan were still alive, he would be 86 years old today.

The story of Lord Lucan and the murder of Sandra RIvett is a fascinating one and the 2017 documentary, Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth, is a must-see for everyone interested in the case.  Produced for British television, this documentary is essentially an hour-long interview with Lady Lucan, during which she discusses not only her abusive marriage but also her feelings about the question of whether or not Lucan was still alive.  (For the record, she felt that he committed suicide “as a nobleman would do.”)  The documentary also features video that was shot by Lucan himself in the 60s, showing himself, his wife, and their wealthy friends touring Europe and basically acting like members of the idle rich.  Lady Lucan discusses how the notoriety surrounding the case affected her own life, leading to her becoming estranged from her children.  When asked if she was a “cold” towards her children, Lady Lucan chillingly replies, “All of my relationships are cold.”  When asked why she once claimed that Lord Lucan was still alive and hiding out somewhere in either Europe or Africa, Lady Lucan replies that she was “drugged up” when she said it and, as such, had no control over anything she said.  The documentary than shares a clip of a very stoned-looking Lady Lucan being interviewed in 1981 and saying that her former husband was still alive.

It’s an interesting story and a rather sad one.  Lord Lucan: My Husband, the Truth is a documentary that should appeal to anyone who is interested in true crime, missing fugitives, and the scandals of the very rich.  Despite the rumors of him still being alive, Lord Lucan was declared dead in 2016 so that his son could inherit his title and his place in the House of Lords.  As for Lady Lucan, she committed suicide shortly after being interviewed for this documentary.

Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth can be viewed on Amazon Prime.

 

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 (1976, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 begins with ominous shots of a crowded California interstate.  It’s the 4th of July weekend and old people are returning home, young people are looking for a party, and Sergeant Sam Marcum (Robert Conrad) of the California Highway Patrol is looking for a killer.  When one car swerves into the next lane and hits another, it leads to a chain reaction as hundreds of cars, trucks, and one motorcycle crash into each other.  While the vehicles crash, we see the people inside of them.  There’s Buddy Ebsen!  There’s Vera Miles!  There’s Sue Lyon (of Lolita fame) on the back of a motorcycle!  In a voice-over, Sam tells us that the accident will be classified as being due to “mechanical failure” and that 14 people are going to die as a result.  He might be one of them.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is a 70s disaster film so, after the pile-up, the movie flashed back 48 hours and we get to know everyone whose lives are going to eventually collide on Interstate 5.  Erica (Vera Miles) is recently divorced and trying to get back into the dating scene.  Albert (Buddy Ebsen) is trying to bring some joy to his terminally ill wife’s final days.  Lee (Scott Jacoby) and Penny (Bonnie Ebsen) are the hippies who are trying to get to Big Sur without getting arrested.  Burnsey (Sue Lyon) loves her biker boyfriend.  Some of them will survive the pile-up.  Some of them will not.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is an above average made-for-TV movie.  It’s got a notable cast and the movie does a good job of mixing together’s everyone’s subplots.  For instance, Burnsey and a group of bikers show up in the background of several scenes and harass Erica at one point long before the crash on the interstate.  It’s only a 100-minute film so the film doesn’t go into too much detail about everyone’s past but we learn just enough to make everyone stand out.  The crash itself is intense, even when seen today.  Made before the days of CGI, this is a film where the stunt crew definitely earned their paycheck.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a patrolman who is also Sam’s brother-in-law.  I was surprised when I first saw him but as soon as I saw the strained smile and heard the accent, I knew it was him.  Jones’s role is small and probably could have been played by anyone but the mere presence of Tommy Lee Jones definitely makes this film cooler than it would have been otherwise.

One final note: This film was directed by the made-for-TV horror specialist, John Llewellyn Moxey.  Be sure to read Gary Loggins’s tribute to this often underrated director.

Scarred City (1998, directed by Kim Sanzel)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

John Trace (Stephen Baldwin) is a patrolman who has managed to shoot four unarmed suspects in one month.  Most people would say that it might be time to put Trace on desk duty but Lt. Devon (Chazz Palminteri) thinks that Trace will be a perfect addition to the SCAR unit.  SCAR is an elite group of police officers who deal with the city’s worst thugs by gunning them down.  A typical SCAR operation involves setting up a fake adult bookstore just so they can ambush a group of men who come in to rob the place.

Even for someone as trigger happy as John Trace, being a member of SCAR proves to be too much.  When the SCAR team murders a group of gangsters who were having a party in a mansion, Trace is disgusted when two prostitutes are blown away as well.  When he discovers a third prostitute, Candy (Tia Carrere), hiding in an upstairs bedroom, Trace helps her escape.  With both the police and the mob now after them, Trace and Candy try to escape the city.

For some reason, Stephen Baldwin appeared in a lot of direct-to-video action films in the 90s.  I guess it was because he had appeared in The Usual Suspects and, at the time, he was also the cheapest Baldwin brother available.  (The Baldwins were hot commodity in the 90s.  Today, you could probably put William, Daniel, and Stephen all in the same film and still have enough money left over to hire a halfway decent cinematographer.)  Stephen has such a goofy screen presence that it was always strange to see him playing either tough cops or hardened criminals.  In Scarred City, he does that thing where he closes his eyes while delivering his lines and he looks even more awkward handling a gun than usual.

However, for a direct-to-video Stephen Baldwin action film, Scarred City isn’t that bad.  The script is surprisingly witty and even the bad guys get their share of good one-liners.  “Pretty fucking dead, sir,” one of the cops yells to their lieutenant when he asks how one of their partners is handling having been shot.  (Later, the same cop looks at her partner’s dead body and says, “Thanks to his dead ass, we’re going to have a parade.”)  Tia Carrere and Chazz Palmentiri both bring a lot of life to their otherwise underdeveloped roles and the action scenes are violent, exciting, and well-shot, which is good since the last half of the movie is a nonstop chase.  Scarred City may just be a B-movie but it’s a good one.

The Swiss Conspiracy (1976, directed by Jack Arnold)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In The Swiss Conspiracy, David Janssen growls his way through another international crime thriller.

Janssen plays David Christopher, a former Treasury agent who is now living in Geneva.  When a Swiss bank is contacted by blackmailers who threaten to reveal the secret account numbers of some of its most prominent and unsavory clients, the bank’s president, Johann Hurtill (Ray Milland), hires Christopher to find out who is behind the plot.  Unfortunately, one of the account holders is a U.S. gangster named Robert Hayes (John Saxon, naturally) and he’s not happy about having to work with a former fed.

With The Swiss Conspiracy, you know what you’re getting into the minute that the film opens with a narrator giving a lengthy explanation about how Swiss bank accounts work.  This is one of those 70s thriller where the budget is low, the plot is often nonsense, and the entire cast seems to be more interested in hitting the slopes than actually making a convincing movie.  The cast is full of familiar actors who, at the time of filming, had seen better days.  Along with Ray Milland, John Ireland, Anton Diffring, and Elke Sommer all have small roles while “German screen sensation” Senta Berger is cast as the woman who might be in love with David Christopher.  Martin Landau is not in this movie but it certainly feels like he should have been.

David Janssen made a lot of movies like this in the 70s.  Janssen was a good actor and he was especially skilled at playing grizzled tough guys but in The Swiss Conspiracy, he seems to be more interested in checking out the sights than in anything else.  You can’t really blame him because the film was shot on location in Zurich and the local scenery is always more interesting than anything else that’s happening on screen.

The Swiss Conspiracy was directed by Jack Arnold, a veteran B-movie director who was also did The Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man.  His direction in The Swiss Conspiracy is workmanlike and undistinguished but he does make great use of the locations.  The Swiss Conspiracy may not be a great movie but I’ll damned if I don’t want to hop on the next plane and head to Switzerland for the week.

Birds of Prey (dir. by Cathy Yan)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Once upon a time, there was this comic book company called DC. DC was fortunate enough to be owned by Warner Bros. back in 1968. I’ve always thought of this as a good thing, despite not being the best of fans. It meant that any tv show or movie would have the full backing of Warner Bros., and DC would never need to shop around for production and/or distribution  rights for their work. So, when Superman finally happened in 1978, it was a watershed moment in the history of Comic Book films. It would take more than a decade for the WB to finally make a film about a second DC Hero with Tim Burton’s Batman.

But over the last 30 years, we’ve had:

  • 7 Superman Films (5 Original, plus the Singer reboot, the Snyder Reboot and a sequel with Batman v. Superman)
  • 4 Batman Films (4 Original, plus the Nolan Reboot and Snyder sneak-in on Batman v. Superman
  • Green Lantern 
  • Wonder Woman
  • Aquaman
  • Suicide Squad
  • Shazam!

That’s not counting films like Steel, but generally, outside of 2011’s Green Lantern, the support for DC’s character base outside of what they needed for Justice League really wasn’t strong, in my opinion. So getting a movie that stands outside of the usual top tier is worth trying, even if it stutter steps the way Suicide Squad did.

So, Birds of Prey, fully known as Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn) isn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it and give me a bit of hope for what comes next from DC/WB. The film focuses on Harleen Quinzel (Margot Robbie, reprising her role from Suicide Squad), who suffers a bad break up from The Joker. To cope, she gets herself a new place and a new pet hyena (a good throwback to the Paul Dini / Bruce Timm Batman: The Animated Series version of the character). When she runs into mobster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, Doctor Sleep), he gives her a mission to recover a precious diamond from Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Bosco), a young pickpocket. Also thrown into the hunt for the diamond is Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell, True Blood), who works for Sionis. Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez, Do the Right Thing) is looking to take down Sionis and The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Death Proof), who has her own reasons.

The performances are nice, and it seems like everyone enjoyed themselves. No one really phones in their roles – both McGregor and Robbie excel with their parts, and there’s nothing really wrong with anyone’s work here. I haven’t much to say on that.

The story for Birds of Prey, written by Bumblebee‘s Christina Hodson, is a bit unsteady at first. It makes sense, given Harley’s madness, and makes for some fun exposition in the same way Suicide Squad did. Of particular note are the fight scenes, which feels a lot like what you’d find in John Wick. Birds of Prey has its own particular style.  My only real problem with the film was the change over in Cassandra Cain’s character from the comic, who is pretty dangerous. Bosco’s Cain isn’t really written that way, but her pickpocket abilities does make up for it, somewhat. It’s not a terrible thing, but if you’re expecting the Batgirl you’ve read about, it’s not happening. Additionally, Moviegoers expecting to see either Jared Leto or Ben Affleck will probably be a little disappointed. Birds of Prey works with the inclusion of the two DC majors, but I enjoyed that.

Overall, Birds of Prey is a fun popcorn flick that may not be as strong as Shazam!, but offers quite a bit in the way of humor and action. I’m happy that DC’s taking these chances, and hope they continue to do so going forward.

At least it’s not another Batman film.

New Jersey Drive (1995, directed by Nick Gomez)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

New Jersey Drive takes place in Newark, New Jersey or, as it was known in the 90s, “the car theft capital of the world.”

Jason Petty (Sharron Corley) and Midget (Gabriel Casseus) are teenagers in Newark.  Neither one of them is dumb but, as young African-American males living in the inner city, neither one feels that they have much to look forward to in the future.  They can’t even walk down the street, without getting hassled by the police.  So, they live for the present and that means stealing cars.  At first, stealing cars is just something that they do for fun.  It’s the challenge that attracts them.  However, one night, a cop’s car gets stolen.  That cop is a corrupt racist named Roscoe (Saul Stein) and he is soon going out of his way to make Jason and Midget’s life miserable.

New Jersey Drive may sound like an early version of one of the Fast and Furious films (the first F&F came out six years after New Jersey Drive) but, at heart, New Jersey Drive is less about stealing cars and more about a generation of young men who, because they have nothing to look forward to in the future, have no problem taking dangerous and sometimes stupid risks in the present.  While Midget is the one who truly loves cars and Jason is the one who is mostly just along for the ride, both characters seem to be aware that it’s only a matter of time before they either get caught or get killed for stealing the wrong car.  Today, we would say that Midget and Jason have no respect for authority but can you blame them when the only authority figures that they ever see are racists like Roscoe?  The police in New Jersey Drive come across like an invading army, a sea of white faces driving up and down black neighborhoods and searching for people to arrest.  For all the cars that Jason and Midget steal, they’re just as likely to get in trouble just for walking down the street.

Sometimes, New Jersey Drive is predictable.  In the years immediately following the release of Boyz ‘N the Hood, there were a lot of films about young men growing up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and having to deal with a combination of racist cops and dangerous gangs.  New Jersey Drive‘s story hits a lot of the expected beats but there were also some scenes that took me by surprise.  When one of the two main car thieve is arrested and incarcerated, the film went off in a different direction than what I was expecting.  At first, Jason and Midget seem like stereotypes.  Midget is the wild and crazy friend while Jason is the smart one who is always hanging out with the “wrong crowd.”  By the end of the film, though, both Midget and Jason have shown some unexpected complexity and they both feel like real people instead of just plot devices in a movie.

Nick Gomez, who has done a lot of television work since the release of this film, does a good job directing New Jersey Drive.  The film captures the high that Jason and Midget feel when they successfully steal a car and Gomez also does a good job of capturing the feeling of the world closing in on the two of them as the story unfolds.  New Jersey Drive is an underrated piece of work that still has the power to inspire audiences to stay the Hell out of New Jersey.

 

 

Film Review: Gamera vs. Monster X (dir Noriaki Yuasa)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world’s favorite atomic turtle is back!

1970’s Gamera vs. Monster X (a.k.a. Gamera vs Jiger) once against finds humanity doing something stupid and nearly getting destroyed as a result.  This time, the trouble stats when a large statue is removed from an island and transported to Japan, where it will be the centerpiece of a gigantic expo.  Gamera, who is a giant turtle that can fly and breathe fire, tries to stop the humans from doing this but, of course, they ignore him.

(Seriously, this was the 6th movie featuring Gamera.  You would think that, by now, humanity would have learned to listen to the turtle’s concerns.)

Moving the statue awakens a dinosaur named either Jiger or Monster X, depending on which version of the film you’re watching.  Jiger is pissed off about the statue being moved so it sets out to destroy humanity.  Gamera tries to stop Jiger but Jiger stabs a quill into his chest and …, oh no!  Is Gamera dead!?

No, don’t worry.  Gamera may be incapacitated by he lives still.  It’s just that he’s got something inside of him now and …. well, basically, Jiger inserted an egg inside of Gamera.  And now, for some reason, a bunch of little children are going to have to navigate a minisub through Gamera’s blood stream so that they can get rid of the egg and the mini-Jiger waiting with within…..

What?

Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense but it’s a Gamera movie!  What you do expect?  I mean, this is a movie about a world where, because Godzilla doesn’t exist, it falls to a gigantic, radioactive turtle to serve as the world’s protector.  In order to watch a movie like this, you have to be able to accept the reality of a giant turtle.  Once you’ve accepted that, it’s much easier to accept the idea that the future of the world depends on not just a giant turtle but also three kids in a small submarine.

(One thing that we discover, while watching this film, is that Gamera is bigger on the inside than the outside.  Seriously, at one point, the kids get out of the sub and walk around inside of Gamera.  And I know that Gamera’s big but he never looked like he was that big.)

Anyway, the important thing is that Gamera must be saved so that he can defeat Jiger and the expo can go on as planned.  Because I don’t believe in spoilers, I won’t tell you how it ends but I will say that you should never lose faith in a giant turtle.

I was just looking over my notes and I discovered that, since 2017, I’ve actually watched Gamera vs. Monster X on three separate occasions.  Despite having seen it more than once, I still have to say that I really don’t have the slightest idea what the Hell’s going on in the majority of the film.  I guess it really doesn’t matter, though.  You don’t watch a Gamera movie for the plot.  You watch it for a giant turtle fighting other big monsters.  On that front, Gamera vs Monster X delivers.  It’s enjoyably incoherent.

Tonight, if you’re looking something to watch other than the Oscars, Gamera vs. Monster X is available on YouTube.

Film Review: Zontar, The Thing From Venus (dir by Larry Buchanan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Look, I get it.  Not everyone is as crazy about watching the Oscars as I am.  Some of you have absolutely no interest in watching the Oscar tonights and right now, you’re saying, “If only there was something else to watch!”  I hear you and I’m here for you.

And fear not!

There is something else for you to watch!  Just go to YouTube and look up Zontar, The Thing From Venus!  You can watch the whole movie three times in a row while everyone else is watching the Oscars.  Don’t ever say that I didn’t do anything for you.

What is Zontar, The Thing From Venus?  It’s a film from 1966 and it was directed by Texas’s own Larry Buchanan!  It tells the story of what happens when a creepy scientist named Keith (Tony Huston) manages to contact a big, three-eyed bat named Zontar.  Zontar’s from Venus and it wants to rule the world.  Keith thinks that humanity could benefit from being conquered by a ruthless alien warlord.  So, Kieth arranges for Zontar to come to the Earth.  While Zontar hides out in a cave, it manages to shut down everyone’s electricity and, using a bunch of smaller, flying bats, it also possesses almost an entire town.  Keith thinks it’s great but that’s because Keith is an idiot with fascist tendencies.

You know who isn’t impressed by Zontar and all of his high-and-mighty rhetoric?  Another scientist named Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar).  Dr. Taylor knows that Zontar is up to no good but how can he stop him?  Well, he’s not going to do it by driving a car because Zontar’s knocked out America’s electrical systems.  So, instead, he rides a bike from location to location.  Seeing John Agar awkwardly trying to balance himself on a bike is more than worth the price of admission.

(Of course, since this is on YouTube, the price of admission is only your immortal soul and your internet privacy.)

Anyway, if all of this sounds familiar, that’s because Zontar is a remake of an earlier Roger Corman film called It Conquered The World.  For some reason, in the 60s, American International Pictures gave Larry Buchanan a handful of money and told him, “Go direct some crappy remakes of some of our best films.”  Zontar is probably the best known of Buchanan’s remakes and it’s also probably the most fun.

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  It’s nowhere near as good as It Conquered The World but, at the same time, it doesn’t have the slow spots that show up in most of Buchanan’s other films.  The story moves fairly briskly and Buchanan keeps the picture in focus and, considering some of Buchanan’s other movies, that’s a bit of a minor triumph.  Zontar is an impressive monster.  In fact, I’d say that batty Zontar is probably a more effective creation than the smiling crab that showed up in It Conquered The World.  Finally, you get to see John Agar trying to ride a bicycle and that’s always an entertaining sight.

Zontar is enjoyably dumb.  If you want to kill 80 minutes but you don’t want to have to do any thinking, watching Zontar is definitely one way to do it.

Black Gunn (1972, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A war has broken out in Los Angeles.

The Black Action Group (B.A.G.) has robbed a Mafia bookmaking operation.  The Mafia, led by used car dealer Russ Capelli (Martin Landau, in his slumming it years), is less concerned with the money as they are with the fact that one of the militants, a Vietnam vet named Scott Gunn (Herbert Jefferson, Jr.), has also stolen a set of ledgers that could reveal every detail of their organization.  Capelli sends the psychotic Ray Kriley (Bruce Glover, father of Crispin) on a mission to track down Scott and kill him.

What the Mafia didn’t count on is that Scott’s older brother, Gunn (Jim Brown), is the owner of Los Angeles’s hottest nightclub.  When Scott approaches his brother, Gun tells him that he doesn’t care about the B.A.G. or any of their politics.  Still, Gunn allows Scott to stash the ledgers at his club and to hide out at his place.  When Scott still ends up getting murdered by Kriley, Gunn sets out to get revenge.

For the most part, Black Gunn is a standard blaxploitation movie with all of the usual elements, a cool nightclub, the mob, black militants,an anti-drug scene and a speech about why it’s important to not sell out to the man, and a hero played by an actor who may not have been able to show much emotion but who still radiated coolness.  Not surprisingly, Jim Brown is the main attraction here and he delivers everything that his fans have come to expect from him.  Blaxploitation regulars Bernie Case and Brenda Sykes also appear in the film.  Casey plays the head of B.A.G. while Sykes is wasted in a one-note role as Gunn’s girlfriend.  Among the villains, it’s fun to watch the glamorous Luciana Paluzzi plays a gangster’s niece and Bruce Glover is just weird enough to make Kriley interesting.  Though Martin Landau would end his career with a deserved reputation for being one of America’s greatest character actors, he spent most of the 70s sleepwalking through roles in low-budget action and horror films and his performance in Black Gunn is no different.  Having Capelli be both a car salesman and a gangster is a nice touch but otherwise, he’s just not that interesting of a character and Landau is only present to get a paycheck.

Black Gunn has some slow spots but the final shoot-out between the militants and the gangsters is exciting and so brutal that it will be probably take even the most jaded blaxploitation fan by surprise.  Black Gunn is hardly a classic but, like its hero, it gets the job done.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Up in the Air (dir by Jason Reitman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a lot of film bloggers out there who have a natural aversion to anything that Jason Reitman is associated with.

And listen, I understand.  The fact of the matter is that Jason Reitman probably does owe a lot of his success to the fact that people in the industry know and like his father.  And it’s also true that Jason Reitman does tend to specializes in making films that you’re either going to love or you’re going to hate.  His films mix drama and comedy and sentiment and snark and sometimes, his refusal to come down firmly on the side of either one can feel like a bit of a cop out.  There’s a quirkiness to many of his films and sometimes, it can come across as being a bit cutesy.  And I’ll even go as far as to agree with those who say that it’s been a while since Reitman’s made a really good film.  The most common complaint I hear about Reitman is that his first four films (Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up In The Air, and Young Adult) were okay and then he let his good reviews go to his head.  Of course, some people — okay, a lot of people — will tell you that, of those four films, Juno’s overrated.

I get all of that and I actually agree with some of those points.  Reitman is a director who sometimes seems to have lost his way after his early successes.  I think the closest that Reitman’s come to giving us a good film post-Young Adult was with Tully and even then, that felt more like a Diablo Cody film than a Jason Reitman film.

But, with all of that in mind, I still really like Jason Reitman’s early films and I think that he still has the potential to once again be an important and interesting filmmaker.  Thank You For Smoking and Juno are better than many give them credit for being.  Charlize Theron has never been better than she was in Young Adult.  Finally, this morning, I rewatched 2009’s Up In The Air for the first time in a long time and I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it holds up.

Up In The Air features George Clooney and Anna Kendrick.  Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, an obsessive traveler who boats about living a life without commitment.  Ryan works for a company that hires him out to fire people.  If your boss is too much of a pussy to tell you that you’ve been terminated to your face, he hires Ryan to do it for him.  Ryan specializes in trying to convince people that being fired is not a tragedy but an opportunity for a new beginning.  Ryan also has a side gig as a motivational speaker.  His speeches are largely about avoiding commitment and personal baggage.

Anna Kendrick plays Natalie Keener.  Natalie works for the same company as Ryan but, at the age of 23 and just out of college, she’s a lot less confident when it comes to destroying people’s livelihoods.  (“I’ve worked here for 17 years and I’m being fired by a 7th grader,” is one person’s response to being terminated by Natalie.)  Natalie has come up with a new plan where all firings will be done via Skype.  That way, the person doing the firing will never have to leave their office and won’t have to deal with the people they’ve fired one-on-one.  Ryan says he considers this proposal to be inhumane but mostly, he’s just worried that he’ll lose his traveling privileges if Natalie’s plan is instituted.

Ryan and Natalie travel the country.  Ryan teaches Natalie how to fire people and Natalie discovers that it’s not as easy to destroy someone’s life as she thought.  Everywhere they go, they deal with people who are facing economic uncertainty.  Ryan meets another frequent flyer, Alex (Vera Farmiga) and, after Alex reveals that she’s even less interested in commitment than Ryan, they begin an affair.  Ryan starts to fall in love with Alex and even invited her to attend his sister’s wedding with him.  However, Alex has a secret of her own.

One thing that I really like about Up in the Air is that Ryan and Natalie never end up sleeping together.  I remember, when I first saw the movie, I was convinced that it was going to happen.  After all, Ryan is handsome and charming and Natalie is attractive and, after her boyfriend dumps her, vulnerable.  I was cringing at the knowledge that there would eventually be some contrived scene where Natalie and Ryan end up getting drunk and then end up waking up in bed together and the end result would be Natalie going from being a well-rounded, multi-dimensional character to just being a plot device in Ryan’s journey to becoming a better man.  Well, there is a scene where Natalie and Ryan get drunk at the same time but it doesn’t lead to Natalie and Ryan becoming lovers and I respected Up in the Air for having enough respect for its characters to not do the convenient thing.

The other thing I liked about Up In The Air is that it’s one of the few films to make proper use of George Clooney’s deceptively smooth screen presence.  We all know that Clooney is handsome and charming but what makes him an appealing actor is that there’s always been hints that there’s a lot dorkiness and insecurity hiding underneath the suave facade.  Ryan may seem like he’s got it all together but, as the film progresses, you come to realize that he’s a lot more insecure and neurotic than he lets on.  All of his snarky comments have more to do with his own fear of failure than anything else.  Much as how the real life Clooney still sometimes seems as if he hasn’t fully gotten over being dismissed as just being another pretty face in the early days of his career, Ryan has never gotten over his dysfunctional childhood.  Instead of taking a risk on love, he instead obsesses on getting frequent flyer miles.  (At one point, Sam Elliott pops up out of nowhere and, in a scene that you could really only expect to find in a Jason Reitman film, gives Ryan a pep talk.)  There’s a sadness to Ryan, one that seems to come from deep inside of his soul.  Clooney does an excellent job of bringing that sadness to the surface while still giving a likable and compelling performance.

Up In The Air was released at a time when America was stuck in what seemed like a never-ending recession.  Despite the fact that the news media and the politicians were insisting that things were on the verge of getting better (or, at the very least, boasting that unemployed actors were no longer “job-locked,” whatever the Hell that meant), many people believed that their best days were officially behind them.  A lot of the contemporary reviews of the film focused on what it had to say about living in a time of economic uncertainty.  That was ten years ago and we’re now living in a strong economy but, even so, Up In The Air still resonates.  Reitman includes scenes in which people talk about what it was like to be fired.  The majority of these people were not actors but were instead people recruited from the local unemployment office and they were speaking about their own experiences.  The pain and resentment on their faces and in their voices is so palpable that it’s actually a bit jarring when J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis show up, playing employees who are “terminated” by Ryan.  I guess I should admit that I’ve never actually been fired from a job but, after watching Up In The Air, it’s not something that I would ever want to experience.

Up In The Air holds up well.  Reitman’s direction is quirky but effective and he does a good job of mixing comedy in with the drama.  (Wisely, whenever he has to make a choice, he emphasizes the drama over the comedy, instead of trying to maintain some sort of mythical 50/50 balance between them.)  This film features one of George Clooney’s best performances and he has a really likable chemistry with Vera Farmiga.  Anna Kendrick also does a great job with a character who could have become a stereotype in less skilled hands.  Finally, along with Juno and The Gift, this film is one of the reasons why I always have a hard time watching Jason Bateman in any film or show where he’s cast as hero.  Bateman plays Ryan’s boss and the character is so smarmy (and Bateman does such a good job of playing him) that he’ll make your skin crawl.

It’s been a while since Up In The Air was first released and Jason Reitman’s career has had its ups and downs.  Still, regardless of whatever film Reitman makes next, Up In The Air remains a classic of the aughts.