Up In the Air

George Clooney is not his usual charming, humourous self in the 2009 film Up in the Air. He plays a corporate road warrior, whose job is to lay people off and whose goal is to get to ten million frequent flyer miles without having any meaningful human contact. Things get weird when his company decides to start doing its work by teleconference, he meets a woman in a hotel bar who he begins to care about and his life starts to change. But at the end, nothing has changed, and he's sadder for it. It's a thoughtful story, even if it doesn't end well. Walter Kirn’s novel, interestingly, tells an rather different, and perhaps deeper, story, in which our point of view character's flaws are more visible, though it doesn't make him more likeable.