How much does your life weight?
How much does your life weight? With that question Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) starts his motivational speeches in Up in the air, a movie by Jason Reitman which you might know from Juno. Ryan is not a motivational speaker, he’s a professional traveler. Mostly hired to fire people, from time to give his talks.
It’s an easygoing movie, about a guy chasing the wrong goals in live. All he cares about is air miles. Naturally, this will change towards the end.
It’s one of these movies my wife would call dull, but I’d disagree. Partly because my movie tolerance is much higher, but mainly because the movie has a certain flair. I never gave it much thought, but I have the feeling a lot of the movie projects Clooney is involved in lately, seem to have this Coen brothers touch. Must be some kind of typecasting, or maybe Clooneys influence, because they were not involved at al. Not in this flick, not in The men who stare at goats, .. but obviously they were in Burn after reading. 3 movies that feel the same, are all ok (not great), and a perfect companion for an evening on the couch. I like the Coen brothers (as I stated here in the past, many times), and I like most of the things that reminds me of them. No copycats though, just a style definition, like Vinterberg did for Dogme 95.
