With a screenplay by one of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby, I was a shoe-in to see An Education starring Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard. Yes, it’s a love story of sorts–judge me if you must–but a beautifully shot and well-told story. Mulligan is a young girl (16 going on 17, which might cause some sphincter-tightening here in the states) who believes she has to choose between an educated life in early 60s England that is boring, constricting, and dull and an uneducated life that comes full of adventure and culture, the latter coming courtesy of an older man. When she makes her choice, it goes horribly wrong. I loved it.
I used to make fun of George Clooney as always playing Dr. Doug from ER. But over the last several years, I haven’t formally changed my opinion, but I don’t say much either way. Any guy who is in nearly every Coen Brothers movie–even if always as an egocentric, overly talkative baffoon–can’t be terrible. All that to say, Clooney’s latest, Up in the Air, is great. Clooney is a road warrior, traveling nearly every day as a firing specialist. When his company considers engaging the technology age to fire people remotely, Clooney is faced with the prospect of having to find a real home complete with–perish the thought–relationships with actual people.
I’m starting to think that Gerard Butler is in every other film these days. Where did that guy come from? He’s in the latest Guy Ritchie film, RocknRolla, which is a complicated plot with several intersecting story lines. I’m too tired to try to untangle them here, but suffice it to say that this is standard Ritchie fare. But unlike previous Ritchie films, there isn’t a ton of action (and almost all of it backloaded), which makes the story go a little slower than I was expecting. Still decent.
And as an administrative announcement (anyone still reading?), this will serve as my last movie/book recap post. I can’t really remember why I started putting them up here, but it’s a lot of work when you read 50+ books and movies every year, and for no particular purpose as far as I can tell. I will, I’m sure, note movies and books that I see/read on twitter, so if you are dying to know what I think, you’ll have to 1) find out what twitter is, 2) get an account, and 3) actually keep up with it. Not counting on that happening for many of you.
