Jason Reitman’s Frequent Flier Miles
Author: Sterling Heltzel | Filed under: Uncategorized
Everyone knows I adore the hell out of Juno, and I don’t have to tell you any more about why. It’s more or less the best film of the last two years and it’s hard for me to deny any different, and it pains me to see how many people, both on the love and hate side of the sand, just don’t…”get it”. I liked Thank You For Smoking a lot too, yet I haven’t really been able to muster any excitement for Reitman’s next film, Up in the Air, which premiered yesterday at Telluride. Yet Alex Billington and Kris Tapley (take for what you will), who have been talking about the film constantly for the last two weeks, finally have seen it and think it’s just about the second coming of cinematic christ.
Billington: “I’ve just walked out of the first-ever screening of the film at the Telluride Film Festival, and I loved it,” he begins. “It’s everything I wanted it to be and everything I was expecting, even after reading Walter Kirn’s book that it’s based on.” “Not only is it Reitman’s most personal film to date, but it’s his most polished as well. I have so many things to mention about it that I just wanted to get down my thoughts before they fade away. It really hit with me on a personal level as well, which is why I loved it so much.”
Tapley: “The film is a triumph. It drips with Reitman’s passion, his love for his wife and child, his assessment of his own journey into adulthood. He just finished telling the audience at the Chuck Jones theater that it’s probably the most personal film he’ll ever make. One can certainly understand the sentiment.” “I’ll get into this more later, but I consider it a four-star knockout that couldn’t have hit the country and, to speak personally, me, at a more perfect time.”
What do they have in common? The comment that “this film is personallllllllllllllllllllllllll”, as Reitman apparently explicitly stated at the Q&A about how his flying obsession, his wife and child, etc. do influence the thing quite a bit, and I’m willing to believe it. Peter Sciretta at /film liked it a lot too, so now I’m excited only because it’s definitely going to stick around, but I’m going to probably always be in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” crowd, unlike films like Todd Solondz’ Life During Wartime and Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, which I’m just about sure I’m going to love and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Alex Billington, Bad Lieutenant, george clooney, Jason Reitman, Juno, Kris Tapley, Life During Wartime, Peter Sciretta, Telluride, Todd Solondz, Toronto, Up in the Air, Werner Herzog
Leave a Reply