Movie 183: The September Issue

The September Issue (2009) by RJ Cutler
starring Anna Wintour & Grace Coddington

In a nutshell: Yet another high quality documentary that makes me wonder why I even bother wasting time on fiction.

Quick synopsis: Anna Wintour, one of the most important - and most feared people in the high-stakes world of high fashion puts together the allegedly famous September issue of her magazine, Vogue, which is apparently to women and gay men what the SI swimsuit issue is to us straight guys.

Content: The September Issue offers the uninitiated a glimpse into the often bizarre world of high-end fashion. Even if you have no prior understanding of what this world is like (like me), the film is still very accessible. It focuses on Anna Wintour, who is often labelled as the basis for hellish boss Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, and her often contentious relationship with her number 2, Grace Coddington.

The symbiotic relationship between the two women is the focal point of the documentary. Grace never stops complaining about Anna, but is not a natural leader and would likely be lost without her. Meanwhile Anna, who is feared by almost everyone she interacts with including some of the most famous designers in the world, relies on Grace to keep her honest since Grace is pretty much the only person willing to push back. However it's not this simple. The relationship has layers upon layers formed by decades of collaboration. But you'll have to watch to get the full effect.

Despite the fact that many men will not care about fashion at all (some women too), I would still recommend The September Issue to them. I find that the most fascinating documentaries are not on topics I already know well, but on worlds I am experiencing for the first time. The September Issue fit this description to a T. So, whether you shop at Old Navy and "don't get" fashion, or are a Project Runway die-hard who hangs on Heidi's every auf wiedersehen, there's something to enjoy in The September Issue.

Rolling rankings:
1. Up in the Air (#182)
2. Avatar (#176)
3. Sherlock Holmes (#178)
4. Big Fan (#180)
5. The Cove (#177)
6. The September Issue (#183)
7. Julie and Julia (#175)
8. Kids (#179)
9. Extract (#181)
10. Angels & Demons (#174)

Movie 182: Up in the Air

Although I've said this before, I'm going to once again try to start keeping my reviews shorter so I can keep up more easily.

Up in the Air (2009) by Jason Reitman
starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga & Anna Kendrick



In a nuthsell: Loved it. Great acting, great directing, great character progression and an interesting ending. Jason Reitman has a bright future as a director.

Quick synopsis: Ryan Bingham lives his life on the road and despises the 43 days per year he has to spend at home. He thinks it's a life surrounded by people, but his family thinks that it's a life alone. A romance he strikes up leads him to reconsider his priorities.

Content: Although I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, I would not have had a problem with Up in the Air taking home either the Best Picture or Best Director Oscar. It's extremely well-crafted visually, and has a good story and very good characters to match. I also loved the interludes that featured aerial shots of various cities or snippets of people being fired. This was director Jason Reitman's 3rd movie (following Thank You For Smoking and Juno) and each one has gotten progressively better. Although he probably had a few advantages being the son of a successful director (Ivan Retiman - Ghostbusters, Stripes, etc.), his work speaks for itself and will probably continue to improve despite the fact that there isn't much room left to top Up in the Air.

Clooney is a tough nut to crack. When he tries comedy, it can go seriously awry (Leatherheads, Burn After Reading), but few people play "cool" better than him. In Up in the Air, Clooney uses the "cool" template, a la Danny Ocean, and layers on subtle insecurities beneath the polished exterior. Not too far from the character he played in Michael Clayton. Well done. His character is essentially a professional traveller, whose career whisks him from one city to the next in order to fire poor schmoes whose bosses don't have the balls to do the dirty deed themselves. He is a mercenary. Along the way he encounters 2 women, played by Vera Farmiga (The Departed) and Anna Kendrick (never heard of her before). The former is a kindred spirit - an experienced traveller with the same fondness for demonstrating her cool and aversion to displaying emotion. The latter's character is the complete opposite - a naive 23 year-old rookie whose ambitions and outspoken ideas get ahead of her maturity and preparedness to negatively influence people's lives the way Bingham does.

Both women were excellent and one of the best scene in the film was when they finally meet each other. By that time, we know both characters well, but watching them try to figure each other out gives us new insight that was impossible to glean from their interactions with Bingham. Bingham meanwhile sits back and soaks it all in, seeing sides of his two acquaintances he has not seen before, just as we are.

Up in the air explores themes of relationships and different lifestyles, but does a good job of not passing judgment. It simply lays out the different viewpoints of different characters and then lets them consider what is best for themselves. For a while it looks like it is taking a side by having one character drift slowly towards the other. But then, out of the blue (for me at least...friends have claimed they saw it coming), something happens that makes the audience reconsider what they think is best for that character. Perhaps this person was better off before being pushed towards a "better" lifestyle being the pushing was done under false pretenses and because this person truly loved how things were going.

Regarding this twist, I thought it was fantastic because I let the film lull me into a sense of security before it made its 180 degree turn. Yet the film did not cheat to do so. It let me trick myself because it seemed to be headed down some movie cliche paths. It let me make assumptions about what kind of story it was telling without really giving me any reason to do so. In other words, it let hundreds of cliched movies do the time-consuming setup work for it, while it spent its time much more wisely on developing the characters. Upon reflection, there were hints that the twist was coming, but the kind that you don't recognize until you already know where the story is headed.

The end is left unresolved, but I have rarely been so satisfied with an unresolved ending. This is probably because Up in the Air gave me enough to think about and was strongly enough rooted in reality that I could easily picture myself being into Bingham's shoes, which makes his decisions (or lack thereof, near the end) particularly captivating.

All in all, one of the best 2009 movies I have seen.

Rolling rankings:
1. Jackie Brown (#173)
2. Up in the Air (#182)
3. Avatar (#176)
4. Sherlock Holmes (#178)
5. Big Fan (#180)
6. The Cove (#177)
7. Julie and Julia (#175)
8. Kids (#179)
9. Extract (#181)
10. Angels & Demons (#174)

Movie 181: Extract

Extract (2009) by Mike Judge
starring Jason Bateman & Mila Kunis

In a nutshell: An odd little move with some good qualities, but that feels incomplete

Quick synopsis: Joel owns an extract company. Joel deals with a lot of BS at work and his marriage bores him. He attempts to have an affair with disastrous results.

Content: Mike Judge has done it all. He has created alternative pop-culture icons (Beavis & Butt-Head), successful long-running television shows (King of the Hill ran for 13 seasons!), beloved cult classics (Office Space), and criminally underrated box-office flops (Idiocracy). And he has done it all somewhat under the radar. He doesn't have the name recognition of TV mega-producers J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon despite comparable success. Although I didn't think Extract would be the breakthrough that cemented his place among Hollywood's power brokers, I am a big fan of both Office Space and Idiocracy and thus had high hopes which were summarily not lived up to.

Extract feels like an odd potpourri of styles. It was not immediately recognizable as having been created by the same hand as Judge's other work. It felt a little like some of the mediocre Coen Brothers comedies like Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading. Characters were being quirky just for the sake of being quirky. But it also has some horrible attempts at cheap laughs reminiscent of recent Adam Sandler movies. Along the same lines, it also had a horrible cameo by Gene Simmons, who felt completely and utterly out of place.

In another connection to a Coen movie, the plot starts down the same road as Fargo: a desperate husband initiates a stupid plot that seems destined for disaster from day one. But in Fargo, this results in bloodshed, death, arrests and a memorable woodchipper. In Extract, it results in more goofy characters and a happy little ending where everything works out.

Of course you may have noticed that I gave Extract a mixed review. So, what worked? Shockingly, Ben Affleck as Joel's stoner friend. Most of the characters, including him, were very likable. I even empathized with Joel (Bateman), who executes puts the despicable plot into motion, because I felt bad for him and he seemed like he was actually a nice guy (and because Jason Bateman was really good).

It was the writing that fell short though. The characters are pretty well developed, but the story never kicks into high gear. And just when I anticipated that it was about to, it ended. Sometimes when movies end leaving you wanting more of a conclusion, it is done to be thought provoking. But in Extract that was not the case. I think Judge intended for it to end in a natural place, but the "climax" was so low-key that I didn't even realize that it was supposed to be the climax, which left me feeling rather unfulfilled when the credits started rolling. This was largely because of Mila Kunis' character, Cindy, who I assumed was going to play a much bigger role in this thing. By opening the film with her, Judge gave me the idea that it was her story just as much as it was Joel's, and I held that belief until the very end. But it's not. It's just Joel's story and she was merely a plot device to get Joel to his conclusion. A missed opportunity if I ever saw one.

I wouldn't particularly say "keep away at all costs," because Extract has its charms and is considerably better than many comedies. But the humor isn't as sharp as Office Space and in many ways it feels like a rough draft of what could have been much better.

Rolling rankings:
1. Jackie Brown (#173)
2. Avatar (#176)
3. Sherlock Holmes (#178)
4. Anvil! The Story of Anvil (#172)
5. Big Fan (#180)
6. The Cove (#177)
7. Julie and Julia (#175)
8. Kids (#179)
9. Extract (#181)
10. Angels & Demons (#174)