TIFF: Life During Wartime and Up in the Air

Final day of TIFF and two films on the schedule.

The first was Life During Wartime, the latest from director Todd Solondz is basically a sequel to 1998's Happiness cast with new actors. As you'd expect, it's pretty much dark and twisted. And if I'm being completely honest with you, the combination of a bad night's sleep and a comfortable seat meant that I dozed off a bit throughout the movie. There were some good scenes, and I love Allison Janney in pretty much everything she does but it wasn't enough to keep me completely engaged enough to stay awake.

I had no such issues for Up in the Air, my final film of the festival. Director and writer Jason Reitman officially has a perfect filmmaking record as far as I'm concerned (his two previous features, Thank you for Smoking and Juno also premiered at TIFF) and this one ended the festival on a high note for me.

George Clooney is perfectly cast as Ryan Bingham, a solitary man who's job is to come into companies and fire employees and who's only joy in life seems to come from racking up frequent flyer miles. He's joined on the road by an upstart go-getter played by Anna Kendrick (of the Twilight series, surprisingly very much holding her own sharing the screen with one of the biggest stars in the world) who he somewhat relectantly takes under his wing. Vera Farmiga plays a fellow traveler and she and Clooney, as basically two ships passing in the night, give us a tutorial on fantastic onscreen chemistry.

While there didn't seem to be a Slumdog Millionare this year in terms of 'the film that everyone is buzzing about', Up in the Air was consistently given high marks by everyone I heard from this week. And even on the last day of the festival, for it's third screening at one of the biggest venues, the Rush line was long and started filling in at least three hours before the start time. It's absolutely worth seeing when it opens up in December.