movies

Theron.

A Young Adult's Spinster Cycle

Another triumphant performance by Charlize Theron informs and enhances the otherwise uneven Young Adult, an edgy and sometimes disappointing drama about contemporary neuroses with comic undertones from director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, the team responsible for the surprise 2007 hit Juno. It’s not in the same league as Mr. Reitman’s hugely superior Up in the Air, but Ms. Theron, a true beauty and one of the screen’s most exquisite actors, keeps the film airborne even when it seems dangerously earthbound. She’s a one-woman emergency rescue squad. Read More

Walter Kirn Feels He Has Been Drilled

Although Walter Kirn’s novel Up in the Air was adapted into one of the year’s top Oscar contenders, Kirn received no tickets to the award ceremony. He has been reduced to tweeting his indignation.

“Caution to writers: Don’t expect that because you write a novel that becomes an Oscar-nominated film that you’ll be Read More

I’m Changing My Tune on Clooney!

Up in the Air
Written by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman

George Clooney’s performances are always variations on the same themes: tongue-in-cheek frat-house humor; a rampant ego that makes love to the camera when no girl is around; and the suave wit Read More

The Woman Who Takes Clooney To Task

“Think of me as you with a vagina,” Vera Farmiga’s character Alex says to George Clooney’s Ryan at one point in Up in the Air, the new film from Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking), opening in theaters Dec. 4. “It’s a killer line,” Ms. Farmiga said recently, drumming her fingers absently in a Read More

Where Are All the Oscar Movies?

Pop quiz, hotshot: can you successfully name the five 2008 movies nominated for Best Picture at the most recent Academy Awards without resorting to Google? We didn’t think so. And yet, if 2008 was a forgettable bore for Oscar movies what does that make 2009?

(For the record, the nominees were Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Read More