{"id":713634,"date":"2026-07-27T13:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713634\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:42:10","slug":"the-plane-movie-ill-watch-anytime-why-up-in-the-air-is-my-feelgood-movie-up-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713634\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The plane movie I\u2019ll watch anytime\u2019: why Up in the Air is my feelgood movie | Up In The Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Airports have always been my happy place. From shiny citadels jutting out of the desert to shoddier European hubs located 120 miles outside the city they\u2019re designated to serve; I love them all. With so many stories to be told, all those connections and people colliding, it\u2019s a first-class seat to life itself. Which should go some way to explaining why I hold such a deep admiration for 2009\u2019s comedy-drama Up in the Air<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Directed by Jason Reitman and based on the book of the same name by Walter Kirn, it stars an Oscar-nominated George Clooney<\/a> as Ryan Bingham, a US corporate downsizer who spends 322 days a year flying state to state doing the job cowardly employers prefer to outsource, leaving him with \u201c43 miserable days at home\u201d. That is until graduate Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) enters the firm with a cost-saving idea of firing people by video call, and hits the road with her older colleague, who is suddenly forced to grapple with the future of his own industry while re-evaluating his nomadic lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Clooney\u2019s hatchet man is closing in on 10m frequent flier miles \u2013 a feat he gleefully reveals has been achieved by fewer people than have set foot on the moon \u2013 and has managed to get air travel down to an exact science: flexing his airline Concierge Key like Patrick Bateman might a business card, and rolling his (perfectly sized) suitcase through the minefield of departures with panache, this is a traveller who stacks security trays with conviction. It\u2019s infectious to watch, truly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In my early 20s (around the time of the film\u2019s release) I would often travel to far-flung places on somebody else\u2019s dime, preferring lonely barstools, a buzzy career and fleeting relationships abroad over any real adult responsibility that lay back home in London\u2019s tricky rental market. Though I was two decades younger than its central character, Up in the Air connected with me in such a way that I would watch the movie near religiously during those trips, screening it on any device possible for that extra hit of wanderlust. It remains the plane movie I\u2019ll watch anytime, anywhere.<\/p>\n

What keeps me coming back to this movie isn\u2019t some inner desire to travel \u2013 it\u2019s the heart. For all his commitment issues, Bingham is pretty empathetic when he\u2019s on the clock. Fortune 500\u2019s answer to Freddy Krueger at least does his best to connect with the staffers he\u2019s letting go, cutting the bullshit when necessary and reminding Kendrick\u2019s eager bee that in this line of work they\u2019re meeting people on the worst day of their lives. Firing people from thousands of miles away, he tells her, is morally wrong on every level (this from a guy she accuses of living in \u201ca cocoon of self-banishment\u201d, no less) but most of all it lacks a real duty of care \u2013 and as we hurtle ever closer towards workplaces being ruled by big AI, I find this message more prescient than ever.<\/p>\n

Another plotline that yanks at the heartstrings is Bingham\u2019s romance with a similarly well-travelled businesswoman, played by Vera Farmiga. Kindred spirits? Not quite. Late in the movie, he makes a surprise dash to her home only to realise that their love story has been about as transactional as room service when he sees signs of a husband and kids through the door frame. Clooney\u2019s wide-eyed expression as he backs away into the snowy Chicago night never fails to floor me.<\/p>\n

And there is a happy ending \u2013 just not for the reasons you might think. By far the biggest masterstroke of this movie is Reitman\u2019s decision to cast real people who had recently been fired, instructing them to talk to the camera crew as they would their ex-employer, providing an unfiltered snapshot of the casualties on the frontline of a recession. The director found these talking heads by pretending to cast for a documentary \u2013 and it really shows, feeling part-HBO doc and part-episode of NBC\u2019s The Office as real faces (and tears) are intermingled alongside stellar performances from the likes of JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis, as employees who bite the dust.<\/p>\n

Throughout the runtime these genuine voices turn from collective anger to dumbfoundment and even optimism, reminding us just how unbreakable the human spirit can be. In fact, by the movie\u2019s finale you\u2019ll find it so uplifting that you may have the urge to put a tray table up.<\/p>\n

Up in the Air is available on Kanopy or Hoopla, to rent digitally in the US, on YouTube, to rent digitally in the UK and to rent digitally in Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airports have always been my happy place. From shiny citadels jutting out of the desert to shoddier European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-713634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}