SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

Written by Michael Baccall and Edgar Wright

Directed by Edgar Wright

Starring Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick and Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Stacey Pilgrim: Are you legitimately moving on or are you just being insane?

Scott Pilgrim: Can I get back to you on that?

By the time you reach a certain age, if you’ve tried at all to make connections with other human beings, you are bound to bring a significant amount of baggage to any table you sit at.  One of the more challenging aspects of dating is figuring out how to keep your own issues in check while navigating the mysterious aspects of your partner’s past as it is slowly revealed to you.  Fortunately for the majority of us, this particular challenge does not usually entail fighting and vanquishing seven evil exes in order to be with the one we love.  Unfortunately for Scott Pilgrim is SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, it does. 

Scott Pilgrim is many things.  For one, he is a charming, misguided smooth talker who knows deep down that he isn’t fooling anyone really.  He is also the hero of a cult favorite graphic novel series by Ontario born cartoonist, Bryan Lee O’Malley.  Now, he is the subject of Edgar Wright’s third feature film, embodied by everyone’s favorite younger and clueless romantic, Michael Cera.  A little more than a year after his last relationship ended, 23-year-old Pilgrim has just started dating Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), a high school girl, of the clichéd uniformed variety.  His band, Sex Bo-Bomb, know what he’s up to; his sister (the underused Anna Kendrick) and best friend (the snide but supportive Kieran Culkin) know he’s avoiding.  In fact, Scott is pretty much the only one around who thinks everything is going just fine, until he meets Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), that is.  Ramona is a game changer.

Ramona has got her share of demons to deal with and has decided to leave her past where it belongs with a fresh start in Toronto, where the film is proudly shot and set.  She soon discovers that she can’t just run away from her problems, as much as you’d like to. No, sometimes you have to get your new boyfriend to take on each and everyone of your exes one at a time in order to move on.  I don’t know about you but I don’t usually like to talk about my exes with new people I meet until I’m almost sure they aren’t going anywhere so I feel awful bad for Ramona; her exes, going all the way back to grade school, have formed some sort of evil league of exes that follows her around and ensures that she never finds happiness.  That’s a whole lot of garbage for our boy Scott to take out but Ramona is worth it.  As much as Scott has to physically battle her past, Ramona is the new that could finally help Scott let go of his old.

“Fighter” is not likely the first word people would use to describe Cera’s composure.  (I believe that honour would have to go “awkward”.)  Still, given everything he has to take on in SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, he pulls it off despite his awkwardness and because of one other key factor, the hallucinatory direction of Wright (SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ).  The world Scott must take on, according to Wright, is one where neo-hipster apathy dictates every aspect of existence and the video game mentality that has permeated the thin skin of all its inhabitants not only dominates the fight sequences but operates on a symbolic level as well.  Anything worth having is worth fighting for and Scott hasn’t fought for anything in ages.  Yet, as he passes level after level, he sees that he’s not so bad at this game after all.  He just needed someone worth playing for and watching him step up his game is so much fun, you’ll be taking on your own world before you know it.  Consider yourselves warned, exes.

UP IN THE AIR

Written by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga and Jason Bateman


Ryan Bingham: To know me is to fly with me. This is where I live.

It isn’t as easy as you might think but writer/director, Jason Reitman has managed to make it into the mile high club on just his third attempt. Though the Oscar-nominated director is still a novice by most standard definitions of the word, his latest, UP IN THE AIR, soars with such grace and ease that you would think he has been piloting these birds for ages now. Sure he has the familial pedigree in his back pocket (Daddy’s name is Ivan, in case you didn’t know) but it is his personal track record that continues to impress. His debut, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was well, smoking; and his follow-up, JUNO, made him one of the most sought after directors of the day. He is taking a decidedly more adult flight path with his return and, though I appreciated the maturity he brought to the teenage world of JUNO, I am happy to see UP IN THE AIR is an adult-only flight.


Upon take-off, Reitman takes us straight to the skies. In fact, all you can hear is the serene sound of nothing but air as you glide above the clouds. When you look down, you see the states from above, accompanied by a funked out version of “This Land Is Your Land”. Looking down on the land, it looks so pristine and lustrous. The orderly lines that divide the grounds and the huddled masses of tall buildings look to provide a solid structure in which to foster those American dreams everyone is always talking about. But when the plane lands, it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that life on the ground is an illusion to those looking down on it. On the ground, America is crumbling. People are losing their jobs, their security and their hope. This is where “he” comes in …


A passenger on this flight and our humbled protagonist, is George Clooney, I mean, Ryan Bingham. I get them confused because they both seem to be aging players who have refused their entire lives to ever being weighed down by anything or anyone. Clooney of course is one of the most famous bachelors on the planet. Ryan may not be famous but he is famous to those who do know him for keeping himself up in the air, if you will, as often as he can. Ryan travels across the United States and fires people for a living. He shows up at an office and calls people he has never met in one by one to tell them that their position no longer exists because these companies don’t have the decency to do it themselves. When he isn’t telling people that they no longer have the means to support their families, he moonlights as a motivational speaker who insists that families are life’s biggest trap.


Ryan is still a likeable guy despite all these things. He doesn’t get off on firing people; it is just how he makes his living and it affords him the lifestyle that suits him best. Another reason he endears is because Clooney plays him so smoothly. You could say it isn’t much of a stretch for him but playing Ryan and going through everything he does means seeing a Clooney that is finally accepting his own mortality and questioning what kind of meaning his later years will hold for him. When his boss (Jason Bateman) informs him that his job may become locally executed, Ryan realizes that his grounding means that life will finally stop moving at 500 miles an hour. Meanwhile, the girl he is showing the professional ropes to (Anna Kendrick) reminds him of what it means to be young and how to believe in the possibilities people offer and the woman he is romantically roped up with (Vera Farmiga) suddenly seems like that possibility.


UP IN THE AIR may touch on some fairly contrived topics and set itself in an all too timely milieu but with Reitman in the captain’s chair, the flight is completely turbulence free. Reitman has crafted a poignant reflection on where America is right now, in terms of the economy and their value system, that is always insightful and never judgmental. He pulls performances from his cast that are so fine in their restraint and their candidness. He puts it all together with style and finesse and, by taking to the lofty skies, he cements himself as a great modern storyteller. Perhaps most importantly, in what is so often called the darkest period America has had to face in years, Reitman somehow pays homage to how trying it all is while reminding us that it is also perfectly acceptable to laugh.

Black Sheep Previews: UP IN THE AIR

You might have seen this already but I wanted to throw it up here as I had the chance to catch the whole thing at TIFF last week. Director, Jason Reitman, has only made three feature films to date - JUNO and THANK YOU FOR SMOKING before this - and his latest, UP IN THE AIR, proves that he is a director with a clear vision and a concise approach to storytelling. His pictures are always crisp and clean and, while that may turn off some looking for rougher edges, I find it only allows for the details and the subtleties to break through.

UP IN THE AIR stars George Clooney as a modern day nomad. He has a one-bedroom apartment in Omaha but he ordinarily spends less than 50 days a year there. His home lies somewhere between the airports he flies to and the hotels he stays in. Clooney brings his own life into the picture for this eternal bachelor character and the supporting cast - Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman - are all excellent characters unto themselves, hence redefining the term "supporting".

UP IN THE AIR will certainly generate a lot of buzz this coming awards season and rightfully so. Look for it in theatres this December.