Up in the Air (2009)

Director: Jason Reitman
Writers: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner; based on Water Kirn's book

Cast:
Ryan Bingham- George Clooney
Natalie Keener- Anna Kendrick
Alex Goran- Vera Farmiga
Craig Gregory (oh yeah, never trust a dude with two first names)- Jason Bateman
Ryan's sister, Kara- Amy Morton
Ryan's sister, Julie- Melanie Lynskey
Jim, Julie's fiancé- Danny McBride

Awards and Nominations:
nomination-OSCAR- Best Picture (lost to The Hurt Locker)
nomination-OSCAR- Best Supporting Actress- Anna Kendrick
nomination-OSCAR- Best Supporting Actress- Vera Farmiga (lost to Mo'Nique- Precious)
nomination-OSCAR- Best Actor- George Clooney (lost to Jeff Bridges- Crazy Heart)
nomination-OSCAR- Best Director- Jason Reitman (lost to Kathryn Bigelow- Hurt Locker)
nomination-OSCAR- Best Adapted Screenplay (lost to Precious)
Golden Globe- Best Screenplay
nomination- Golden Globe-Best Supporting Actress- Anna Kendrick
nomination- Golden Globe- Best Supporting Actress- Vera Farmiga (see above)
nomination- Golden Globe- Best Actor- George Clooney (see above)
nomination- Golden Globe- Best Picture- drama (Avatar took them to the cleaners! ...oh yeah, that was the year RDJ won for Sherlock Holmes)
nomination- Golden Globe- Best Director- Jason Reitman (lost to James Cameron)

...
some mild spoilers ahead...
...

First off, I’d been meaning to do this post for a while. The motivation has always been the same and I’ve meant to do it around this time but I’d always run out of time or another project caught my attention. But currently going through traffic coming home from the shore house (riding shotgun so you don’t get the idea I’m typing and driving) I’m making time to do it finally.

Have you ever had a movie where you completely see yourself in it, saying “this character is living my life”? While it isn’t a perfect 100% DNA match, my dad loves this movie because George Clooney spends as much of his life on the road as he does. And he can relate to the business of flying so many days out of the year, being efficient about packing luggage, getting through security in a timely manner and, of course, racking up as many frequent flyer miles as possible. It’s all about the miles. While my dad goes internationally (mainly Asia with the occasional sidebar to Europe- not on the same trip, of course) to sell product as part of the metalworking industry, Clooney racks up his miles domestically in a completely different business- firing people.

Watching the movie this latest time, I didn’t even realize that it was inspired by the unemployment crisis that kicked off in 2008 when the housing market collapsed... it's been 10 years now and now that I’ve been working consistently for a couple years now that it’s easy to forget the past. But now recognizing that Clooney’s line of work in this movie is connected to that and I think some of the people in it that were fired weren’t actors but people who’d gone through this rough transition period, it gives me a little more appreciation for it. (According to IMDb, the real people were people that didn't have dialogue with the main actors in the movie).

So this business flies people around the country to various corporations where they fire employees for said corporations (to paraphrase what Clooney says in the narrative) because they are too cowardly to do the firing themselves and leaves them with a packet and words of wisdom like “anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now and it's because they sat there that they were able to do it” (I had to double check I had this quote exactly right because it's important).

The movie starts to kick into its plot because of Anna Kendrick. She plays a college graduate who has the idea to revolutionize this business- using video conferencing to fire people rather than flying people around the country. Of course Clooney hates this idea because it threatens his way of life. He has family that he isn’t particularly close with and is a confirmed bachelor and he travels to avoid having any serious human connection. He also does motivational speeches about avoiding commitment where you stuff all of the things in your life into a backpack, feel how heavy it is and that alone is reason enough not to have any attachment to anything. Moving is living. One speech involves things/objects and the other involves people in your life starting with casual acquaintances and working up to spouses and children. And one involves you setting the backpack on fire and realizing how invigorating that is- don’t worry, he does clarify this.
So he has Anna Kendrick along for the ride and shows her what they do. While she’s working on an algorithm to simplify the process, as brilliant as it sounds in theory, dealing with people in person isn’t as easy as one would think. Along the way, Clooney also meets Alex (played by Vera Farmiga in the first role we all saw her in) who seems to lead the same life he is.

The core trio of cast members are all brilliant at their roles and earned Oscar nomination. While Clooney is cynical, the idealism of Anna Kendrick does get through to him later in the movie- for better and for worse. It does kinda help him develop and change as a character but for me, one aspect of the movie gets ruined in the final few minutes.
The spoiler is about Alex and the truth about her life that comes out when Clooney makes this grand gesture to see her at home to say how he feels. (Why does it always seem like these grand gestures always derail these movies?) To this day I still don’t understand it...
He goes to see her and find out that she’s married and has a family. She calls him up from a parking garage days later and has the nerve to tell him off, saying he could have screwed things up for her. Not once does she even mention this to him...seriously, why? And why doesn’t he say that he has nobody back home that he’s cheating on with her? It’s no wonder she got cast as Norma Bates because that’s totally something she would do.
With all that going on, he finally achieves a goal he’s been working towards, the business needs to reconsider Anna Kendrick’s idea when something tragic befalls one of the hundreds of people they fired, he’s at a bit of a crossroads at the end of the movie...but it offers a lot of interesting possibilities where you can fill in your own blanks- much like the people at the end that are collectively interviewed about their transitioning period.

18. Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Code-name: Vegas
[where else?]

Director: Stephen Soderbergh

[yeah,  as a long time fan of this movie, I can't believe it's the same dude who directed "Magic Mike" and "Behind the Candelbra," both of which I saw back to back the first and only time]

Type: dramedy, adventure, heist

Notable Award:
ALMA- Andy Garcia for Best Supporting Actor

[on a side note, I don't think Brad Pitt did this movie just because there could have been a Teen Choice award in it for him]

Cast:
Danny Ocean- George Clooney
Rusty- Brad Pitt
Reuben- Elliot Gould
Frank Catton- Bernie Mac [RIP 2008]
Virgil Malloy- Casey Affleck
Turk Malloy-Scott Caan
Livingston- Eddie Jemison
Basher- Don Cheadle
The Amazing Yen- Shaobe Qin
Saul- Carl Reiner
Linus- Matt Damon
Terry Benedict- Andy Garcia
Tess- Julia Roberts

Cameos at Rusty's poker game:
Topher Grace [That 70's show]
Barry Watson [7th Heaven]
Joshua Jackson [Dawson's Creek]
Shane West [Once and Again]
Holly Marie Combs [Charmed]

Write-up:

Opening Remarks

I actually managed to list all Ocean's 11 from memory, either by actor or by character (most of them, both), with the exception of Livingston.

For the record, I have not seen the original movie by the Rat Pack. And I'm not sure if I want to. With the whole original vs. remake scenario, I tend to lean towards the version I see first and as a result, the second one does not live up to the same expectations.

I don't know how this movie appeared on my radar, why I wanted to see it as much as I did. Whatever the reason, I think of it as one of my first truly mature movies. I grew up on cartoons and many of my first movies were comedies. Everything else, I just didn't have the patience for.Don't get me wrong, "Ocean's 11" does have its slow moments (as often is the case, in the third act), but it's not usually the type of movie I go for.

And all of these types of movies, large ensemble heists like "Tower Heist" and "The Italian Job"... even "Now you see me" fits into this genre, "Ocean's 11" is the best representation.

On the whole, what makes it, not just glimmer but, SHINE... of course, is the cast. Particularly the dynamic of Clooney and Pitt.

You could jokingly say that this is a movie full of big stars, and if they weren't stars yet, they would soon be. Seriously, if you weren't a big star before this movie, you were on your way up to the A-list.

The biggest, brightest example of this: Matt Damon.
Shortly after this movie became a hit, he became a big action star (opposed to smaller projects like "Good Will Hunting") with the Bourne series

Plot

Ample Spoilers along the way...

The three act structure is pretty solid here, one of many things that rock about this movie

I: meet the players
2: forming the plan
3: the heist

Danny Ocean's out on parole after serving some time in jail.
We don't get a lot of details outside of his testimony in front of the parole board:

"My wife left me, I was upset, I broke into a self-destructive pattern"

It can't be much worse than House driving his car into Cuddy's house after she broke up with him.

So naturally after spending time in jail, the very first thing you do is get together with your best buddy, leave for Las Vegas and plan a massive heist... to get back at the new guy your ex-wife is seeing.

That's all well and good. Unless of course the guy happens to be as powerful as Terry Benedict; the man in charge of the trifecta of Vegas casinos: MGM Grand, Mirage and Bellagio. The combined total of cold hard cash in their underground vault on a Fight Night, the night they plan to rob it: $160,000,000+

And with any good heist, you're going to need a team of men with a unique set of skills.

Luckily, this is taking place in a movie, so they've got a wide variety of personalities to go with those skills. If not for those personalities, this movie would have sucked :P

The Cast

By the time this movie was available at Blockbuster, I think I knew the name Matt Damon.
I never watched it, but I knew Bernie Mac had a TV series back then.

I also knew who Julia Roberts was even though this was couple years before I saw "Pretty Woman."

And of course, there was Clooney and Pitt.
Two of the biggest names and I had yet to see any of their acting. I mentioned in my "Spider Man" review that I didn't get the pin-up appeal of Brad Pitt. Most of this was due to the fact he always seemed to have long hair in his movies. Nowadays, I say "It depends on the guy," but I didn't get why the long hair made all the other girls adore him.

Clooney was another big name that I didn't really know, but he already had an outstanding reputation.
Who would have thought putting them together would turn into something so amazing?

As for everyone else... I don't think the little Chinese guy (that's an actual line from the movie, btw) went on to do anything else.

Casey Affleck never made it as big as his brother. It's funny I should mention "Tower Heist" because he was in that.
And I was going to spend this paragraph trying to explain how I get him and Dave Franco mixed up (Franco was in "Now You See Me"... yet another tie-in I didn't expect when I named-dropped that film... loved it)

The other of the Malloy "twins" (they look nothing alike but that's how Clooney and Pitt called them in the movies), Scott Caan, would later make it big on the reboot of "Hawaii 5-0."

[Amazing bit of trivia: the twins were originally gonna be the Wilsons but they were doing that "Tenenbaums" movie and had to drop out... I don't think the movie could have handled their star power in addition to the main guys, lol]

Other than Matt Damon, I think of Don Cheadle as the biggest break-out star this movie has. I found his character Basher charming in a quirky sort of way (had to be the accent!!) with a wicked sense of humor, in both good and bad situations.
His biggest gigs include the Showtime series "House of Lies" and, of course, some of the "Iron-Man" movies... for whatever reason, I still haven't warmed up to his version of Captain James Rhodes. (That discussion will continue in the next month or so, promise).

An older audience might recognize Carl Reiner from "All in the Family." I hadn't seen that series and probably should, but he brings his own wily sense of humor to this part.

When asked [again] about being up for his part in the 'grand scheme,' he has a comeback for Clooney so good, there was simply no comeback for it.

"If you ask me that question again, Daniel, you won't wake up the following morning"[pause]Clooney (whispers to Pitt): "He's ready..."

Had it come from anyone else, this joke wouldn't have worked.

Another great addition is Andy Garcia as the villainous Terry Benedict. This is my first encounter with him and he blew me away. The way he carries himself on screen, maybe it's just that mob-style mentality he brings to his other roles, can't help but be impressed by that.

Then of course Julia Roberts shines as the only big female role in this movie. No matter who it is, she doesn't let anyone push her around. An admirable quality for sure.

The Writing

The best parts of this movie for me are a tie between the acting and the writing. Naturally, without a good script, this wouldn't have worked as well.

As Rusty, Brad Pitt is the one member of the team able to keep Danny in check, especially when it appears his priorities are a bit scrambled. Spending more time trying to woo Tess than working on the plan.

Their dynamic is amazing in that they know each other so well, they can finish each other's sentences. This is almost to the point of clairvoyance. They don't even have to say anything and the other knows exactly what their thinking.

My personal favorite: the one line that kept me coming back to the movie:

They'd just recruited Saul and Clooney is talking to Pitt:

"So Saul makes 10, 10 ought to do it, don't you think?... you think we need one more?... you think we need one more...... all right ,we'll get one more"

Absolutely priceless. Especially since Brad Pitt gives absolutely no indication he's dissatisfied with just 10 guys... it's just the aura he gives off as he's resting his chin on the counter.

Everyone works off each other so well. Even when plan A's have to give way to plan B's and C's, the improvisation often works out better than the original scenario.


Another thing that stood out to me about this movie when I was younger was that it had great balance between drama and comedy. There were enough light movements in between to break up the drama.


Other Lovable Details


It's one of those great movies my family and I like to watch together. As I do, my mom loves the Poker scene with Eric Forman from That 70's Show and other TV actors who have no idea what they're doing.


"Look, all reds!"


We also love poking fun at the fact that in almost every scene Brad Pitt is eating...
I got halfway through the movie and gave up counting how many scenes.


Apparently it was more than coincidence. Rumor is that everyone was so busy working on the movie that they barely had time to eat and Brad Pitt came up with the idea to give Rusty that unusual character trait.
And supposedly during one scene, they did so many takes that he wound up eating 40 shrimp.


My dad pointed out during our last viewing of this movie that the featured prison is Rahway Prison and on a recent customer call there, he drove by it.


One thing that also stood out to me was the second to last scene in front of the Bellagio fountain. "Clair du Lune" is playing in the background, all the guys are reflecting on the fact they got away with the money and they all go their separate ways one at a time.
When I was younger, I wasn't a fan of this scene. It was just so serious and kinda sucked the fun out of the movie for me. Or I just didn't fully grasp the genius or the beauty of it.


Combined with the fountain, the looks on everyone's faces, the swelling of the music, it's amazing to watch now that I understand it. I guess I just needed to mature a bit and it's great when you can appreciate more things from your favorite movies with age.


I only recently saw "Ocean's 12." It brought back a lot of the same players, which was nice, but unlike this movie, the great scheme didn't fully make sense. We saw the heist take place, but all wasn't fully explained until afterwards.


Coming Soon


Oh wow... got a really big one coming up next week...
I spent this past weekend looking back on some nostalgic things. Mostly music, both good and bad, and "High School Musical" (which remains as awesome as it was the first time I saw it).


Next week's movie is about as nostalgic as it gets.
Most likely my very first "favorite" movie.
I don't remember this, but supposedly I rented it so much from Blockbuster that one of my grandmas finally bought it for me.


And for anyone following my blog actively, they can probably piece together the fact that it's.... animated...

26. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

{in this exact clip, he actually says the film's title!}

Code-name: Whackbat



Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: (book) Roald Dahl, (screenplay) Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
Type: book-to-movie adaptation, animated, dramedy

Cast:
Mr. Fox- George Clooney
Felicity Fox- Meryl Streep
Ash- Jason Schwartzman
Kristofferson- Eric Anderson (Wes's brother)
Badger- Bill Murray
Kylie the Possum- Wally Wolodarksy
Coach Skip- Owen Wilson
Agnes- Juman Malouf
Rabbit- Mario Batali
Boggis- Robin Hurlstone
Bunce- Hugo Guinness
Bean- Michael Gambon
Rat- Williem Dafoe
Petey- Jarvis Cocker

Notable Nominations:
OSCAR- Best Animated Film
OSCAR- Best Original Score- Alexandre Desplat (another frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson's)
Golden Globe- Best Animated Film

Write-up:

INTRODUCTION

According to my other blog, I first saw this movie on Cinemax in October of 2010 and these were my first "in-a-nutshell" thoughts.

As for “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” George Clooney does not disappoint. The movie was not necessarily my cup of tea, but the edginess of it, including the animation won me over. It fascinates and captivates at the same time. The humor derives from some new jokes that haven’t been overclichéd and there are some old jokes in there that have been heard in other movies. In a word, I say its charming.

Charming and incredibly quirky.

I've come into other Wes Anderson movies expecting the same thing. So far, only "The Grand Budapest Hotel" delivered on that. As I might have stated previously, if there was any humor in "The Royal Tenenbaums," it was lost on me... and "Moonrise Kingdom" could have been better if it wasn't taken so seriously with the "Romeo & Juliet"-esque storyline.

Is it silly to expect the same thing in every movie an actor or director does?
Yes, but that's just how I roll.

When I first became aware of this movie, I didn't know what to think. It seemed so different on the animation alone, but since it got good reviews, I had to check it out.

Anyone who read my reviews for "She's out of my league" and "Easy A" knows how I saw lots of movies in 2010 and my favorites were the ones with the most unique writing.
It might have gotten to a point with me where I'd seen so many movies that I was getting sick of their predictability. Luckily, I came across gems like this one that kept me engaged in this medium.

PLOT

Back in the day, Mr. Fox was all about the danger of being a wild animal, stealing various fowl from farmers. But when he and his wife find themselves in a fox trap, he obeys her wish to give up this life for a less hazardous one.

Fast-forward 2 years (12 fox years) later:
He writes a newspaper column, she paints thunderstorm-laden landscapes for a hobby and their son Ash aspires to be an athlete.

Mr. Fox moves his family to a large oak tree at, in his view, an ideal location. It happens to have easy access to three notorious farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean.
Just for the heck of it, he and his new partner-in-crime Kylie break into the farms night after night to steal chickens, ducks, geese and squab ("whatever they are"). Ultimately, this gives way to some pretty dramatic consequences for the Foxes and the other animals.

The animals struggle to survive. Mr. Fox's marriage gets rocky. Ash deals with some growing pains including dealing with the arrival of his "perfect" yet humble cousin Kristofferson. And the animals give the farmers their comeuppance.

All the while, despite all the drama, hilarity ensues whenever the cracks allow. Which is pretty often ;)

CHARACTERS and ACTORS

We're talking an all-star cast here. Not surprisingly, Wes Anderson has his favorites. Bill Murray obviously. At least one Wilson brother (Owen Wilson is practically a cameo but it's a great one). Jason Schwartzman, who first worked with Wes Anderson in "Rushmore" (another film I gotta see for him and the writer/director).

Willem Dafoe played the psychotic rat that guards Mr. Bean's alcoholic "tastes like melted gold" cider, making a pretty good secondary villain. But I'm not sure anyone caught onto the fact it was him doing the voice. I certainly didn't and I was thinking during "The Grand Budapest Hotel" that it was his first time working with Wes Anderson. Plays a really good villain in that too ;)

Then there're the big guns of Clooney and Streep and Gambon.

In the right context, I love Meryl Streep. But I'm not the biggest fan when it comes to awards season and when she's cast because moviemakers believe they need a name as big as hers to give their project credibility. (Trust me, when "The Giver" comes out, I will be vocal about casting her... among several other things because it's my favorite book).

Michael Gambon plays "possibly the scariest man currently living" Mr. Bean, which is an interesting contrast to the role I will forever associate him with... Professor Dumbledore.
Sure, on looks alone, Richard Harris will always be the Dumbledore I picture when I re-read the books, but you see one actor play the same role over a decade... that stuff sticks with you :-P

Of course, last but not least is George Clooney.
I could care less that he plays the same character in every movie (particularly ones like this, "Ocean's 11" and "The Monuments Men" where he leads heist operations), he's always so pleasant to watch. He's the only actor I can confidently consider a "movie star" because he's a class act and a really nice guy.

Nobody else could play the incorrigible Mr. Fox as good as him. Not in a million years :-P

THE ATHLETE

All of these characters have their faults. Second only to the Fantastic Mr. Fox himself is his son, Ash.

My memory has faded over the years that've passed, but I'm convinced that I stuck through this movie because I'm very partial to that name. My first love, who first inspired me to write, had that name.

I don't know why I find Ash such a compelling character. Maybe it's all about Jason Schwartzman's voice, how he was so perfect as this character. This was my first encounter with him. I've been known to follow actors around like a lost puppy when I fall in love with their voices (Haley Joel Osment is the biggest example of that for me). Oddly enough, so far the movies I've found him in (Scott Pilgrim, The Grand Budapest Hotel) were purely coincidental 8-)

Either way, yeah, he's rude, but I loved his insistence of his athletic status when all but one final scene showed otherwise. (The final scene was the best pay-off this movie has, at least in my book).

Also love this set of dialogue and how he ends it.

Felicity: we all know what it's like to be... different
Ash: but I'm not different. Am I?
Felicity: we all are. Him especially (points to Mr. Fox) but there's something fantastic about that, isn't there? (leaves)
Ash: hmm, not to me, I prefer to be an athlete

(when the situation calls for it, I always love quoting that final line... yeah, I am a total nerd)

On the other hand, we have Kristofferson. He's staying with the Foxes because his father (Felicity's brother) is suffering from double pneumonia. In a short time, Ash takes a strong disliking to him. Particularly when he unassumingly captures the affections of Agnes, another fox at their school, but most notably when he shows him up in gym class;

WHACK-BAT

This is my favorite scene in this movie.
1) because it stars Owen Wilson as the school coach
2) it has great dialogue ("that's the first time that kid has ever swung a whack bat?")
3) the sport itself

Throughout our trip to Sydney, Australia, which was a couple months after I saw this movie, I couldn't help but think of "whack bat" whenever we were trying to discern the mystery of cricket. One dude we met at a pub tried to explain it to us, but his speech was unintelligible after all the drinks he had.

I still don't get whack-bat, but I find it so intriguing. This is the only dialogue we have to go on:
"Basically, there's three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine."

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

If it's not random quotes, its entire scenes that make me geek-out when I watch this movie because I find them oddly compelling.
The greatest example is when Mr. Fox is delegating tasks to the other animals, calling them by their Latin names. So many random answers. Like Badger says he's a demolitions' expert. And how he enthusiastically shakes weasel, rattles off his Latin name while he responds "Stop yelling!"

There are a dozen great scenes that are just full of laughs, varying from ha-ha funny to slow-burn laughs you have to think about.

Or just running gags.

Like every now and then, Kylie gets the "psycho" look in his eyes where his pupils are the shape of spirals :-P it's even funnier when Mr. Fox gets it after running away from a beagle suffering from Rabies in one of the latter scenes.
Or the ransom notes (where the letters are cut out from magazines to "hide" identities of the letter writers) where the characters break the fourth wall just to get us to laugh.
Or when Mr. Fox has his trademark click and whistle and Kylie asks about it during the final mission to rescue Kristofferson and get back at the farmers. Then later on tries to establish his own trademark and kinda fails at it, lol
Or how they use the word "cuss" whenever they're spewing profanities because it keeps the movie PG. Every now and then, I will use the word "cuss" in my writing for that reason alone. My favorite "cuss" scene is where Mr. Fox and the Badger go at it after Badger says "the cuss you are" and Mr. Fox responds "The cuss am I?"

One oddly cool moment is where Mr. Fox confronts his phobia of wolves (which he brings up a couple times before hand) when he comes across one. There's no dialogue exchanged (at least not by the wolf), but both of them raise their hands in the air out of respect for one another.

It's all about the quirky details and subtle moments with this movie. The way I see it, you either go crazy for it or you just don't get it. But if you're open to something different, this is definitely a good movie to get into.

COMING SOON

Don't know how many people read my previous entry, but forgetting my place in my countdown, I gave away I had another Downey film coming up.

Not just because this particular movie is great in its own right and not just because he actually won something for it (yep, I just gave it away right there, lol), but because the impact it had on me was pretty substantial.

All the more reason to one day aspire to do a "6 degrees of Downey" entry (take that, Kevin Bacon!) where I go into the amazing people and things that might not have been on my radar had it not been for his involvement.