Don’t Mince Words
Mr. Cortez
After reading thousands of words, I still have no idea “what’s wrong with Up in the Air.” You spent the first half of the column writing about every other 2000s movie. Then you give a smarmy and condescending plot synopsis. At no point in the article was there anything close to film criticism. So in 5000 words or less, please tell me what you didn’t like about the movie. The plot, the tone, the pacing, the cinematography, the acting, the directing? You know the stuff a movie critic usually writes about. Just tell me what you don’t like about the movie for the love of god.
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I too am a little confused; you make it sound like there’s something ethically wrong with making a movie about a termination specialist be a modern Cary Grant movie. Basically all I get is that you don’t like the film’s politics. Really, you could write the same exact review of North by Northwest (“life is easy when you have Eva Marie Saint cooing at you,” “the film condescends to the middle class when Cary steals the cab from that poor plebeian fellow in the opening scenes,” etc).
I see now that the headline, and my remark in the first paragraph, create an expectation that I’m going to locate some fatal flaw in Up in the Air that discredits it entirely. But as I state in the piece, I found it to be a perfectly entertaining movie. I just don’t think it’s that important, or that it says anything so profound about America or human nature that people should be hyperventilating about it being the movie of the year. Perhaps a more appropriate headline would have been “What’s So Great About Up in the Air?” Anyone want to take a crack at that one? Anyone think that, 40 years from now, when the recession is over, people are going to think Up in the Air is as important as Midnight Cowboy?
Hard-boiled awesome. Give us more Fletcher.
