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Storyline
Ryan Bingham's job is to fire people from theirs. The anguish, hostility, and despair of his "clients" has left him falsely compassionate, living out of a suitcase, and loving every second of it. When his boss hires arrogant young Natalie, she develops a method of video conferencing that will allow termination without ever leaving the office - essentially threatening the existence Ryan so cherishes. Determined to show the naive girl the error of her logic, Ryan takes her on one of his cross country firing expeditions, but as she starts to realize the disheartening realities of her profession, he begins to see the downfalls to his way of life. |
Backdrops
The Director
Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman (born October 19, 1977) is a Canadian/American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), and Up in the Air (2009). As of February 2, 2010, he has received five Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director. Reitman is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Jason Reitman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
User Reviews
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London Film Festival 2009 - Filmaster Awards
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The 53rd London Film Festival is over. As an accredited Filmaster reviewer for the festival I watched 14 movies and so far wrote 4 reviews of the films + short impressions on the other 10. I'll be writing more reviews soon, but in this post I'd like to share a few highlights of the festival from my point of view.
The official winners
It makes sense to mention the winners first. The best film award went to French A Prophet. Ajami was awarded the The Sutherland Trophy. Screenwriter Jack Thorne took the Best British Newcomer Award for The Scouting Book For Boys and eventually the Grierson Award for documentary movies was handed to the producers of Defamation.
I only watched the Sutherland Trophy winner, Ajami, and I was a bit disappointed. The script just seems so much better than the execution, perhaps partly because of very low budget. The way of telling multiple interwining stories reminded my of Amores Perros, although Ajami is much smarter but inferior technically. Worth watching mostly to get a feel of living under constant stress and terror in Israel and Palestine.
I'm going to try to see A Prophet soon. Hopefully it will be distributed in Britain.
Best film
I would have had a big problem naming the best movie of the festival if I had missed the last day. Fortunately I haven't so I've seen Herzog's ...
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reviewed by michuk (Filmaster.com) on the 30th of October 2009
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7.5.
It's a bitter sweet comedy like there's not too many. I really like the mix even if there was the slight feeling that the authors weren't sure on the ending.
Clooney is doing Clooney-on-the-rock... Too cool for school. The man oozes charisma and the movie takes full advantage of the fact.
Vera Farmiga who I already thought was damn hot and sexy in 'The Departed' is just great. She deserves her Oscar.
J. Bateman and A. kendrick are well cast.
What can I say? A really good flick.