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High flying comedy from Clooney
Screen's Mr Smooth hits turbulance with bittersweet rom com.
SHARP and stylish comedy UP IN THE AIR (15: Paramount) sees George Clooney using his matinee-idol image to maximum effect.
He's at the top of his game as sophisticated 'downsizing executive' Ryan Bingham, a smooth-talking hired gun who fires people for a living.
Bingham spends much of his life in hotels and aircraft cabins, racking up air miles and loyalty cards yet growing ever more detached from his dysfunctional but loving family.
Then his rarefied lifestyle comes under threat when new colleague Natalie (Anna Kendrick) dreams up a business plan that will literally ground him.
So smooth-talking Bingham takes her along on his next tour of duty in an attempt to persuade her of the advantages of face to face contact.
He also intends to hook up with his on/off lover, the flighty and equally rootless Alex (Vera Farmiga).
Although the film strains credibility at times, it manages to stay clear of genre cliches and offers an enjoyable hybrid of '50s glamour, '70s realism and 21st Century attitude.
> I haven't a clue why Sandra Bullock, who proved she can be a great actress with her Oscar-winning turn in The Blind Side, agreed to play a nerdy crossword compiler in ALL ABOUT STEVE (12: Twentieth Century Fox).
You'll be puzzled by her excruciatingly kooky performance as chatterbox stalker Mary Horowitz in this ill-conceived romantic road movie.
Mary's parents arrange for her to go on a blind date with handsome TV cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) and she's convinced he's "the one".
A published crossword called 'All About Steve' gets her sacked from the local paper, but unemployment only leaves her free to follow her beloved across America in an insane effort to prove her intentions.
As a result, Steve and reporter Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church) bungle their assignments as they try to give besotted Mary the slip.
Bullock's over-the-top wackiness is jarring and the only cast member to make some impression in a film that settles for cheap laughs is Ken Jeong (who was with Cooper in The Hangover) as a luckless travelling TV producer.
> A picture that did win the hearts of the Oscar judges was PRECIOUS (15: Icon), a film that's difficult not to fall in love with.
Mo'Nique picked up the Best Supporting Actress prize playing the mother of Claireece 'Precious' Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a 16-year-old black girl growing up in Harlem, whose life reads like a litany of horrors.
Precious is illiterate and obese, has been raped and impregnated twice by her father and is systematically abused by her mother.
But into this nightmare comes a glimmer of hope when pregnant Precious starts attending a specialist school and gradually comes to realise her own worth.
Director Lee Daniels mixes gritty urban realism with hyper-stylised fantasy sequences and doesn't dwell on Precious's suffering, even managing to offer some much-needed moments of humour.
He also draws an impressive performance from a dressed-down Mariah Carey as a social worker, although the film's real strength is its two leads. Sidibe expresses so much with just a slight smile or a single tear, while Mo'Nique is superb in a role that could have been cartoonishly monstrous.
> Nicolas Winding Refn first came to my attention when he directed Bronson, the excellent movie about notorious Luton born and bred jailbird Charles Bronson.
The director's latest, VALHALLA RISING (15: Momentum), is an atmospheric action movie that's a far cry from Hollywood's Viking epics.
He presents man as just one evolutionary grunt away from the beasts, with Mads Mikkelsen (the villain in Casino Royale) playing a mute slave who is kept chained and caged and is used by his captors for gladiatorial contests.
It's hard to follow the narrative at times, with only the accents and a passing reference to Sutherland revealing the initial setting as Scotland, in a story that sees Mikkelsen join a boatload of warriors bound for the Holy Land.
The film's tone is impressive and despite the small cast and slow pace everything emphasises the primitive essence of it all from the graphic violence (Mikkelsen rips out guts with his hands) to landscapes that seem as if they are still to discover colour.
> Top ten: 1 Avatar; 2 2012; 3 Law Abiding Citizen; 4 The Box; 5 It's Complicated; 6 The Men Who Stare At Goats; 7 Twilight Saga: New Moon; 8 Harry Brown; 9 Paranormal Activity; 10 Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Chart from Blockbuster.
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Weather for Leighton Buzzard
Thursday 09 February 2012
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