Up in the Air was my one hundredth film in the cinema this year, and as such already had an outsized degree of importance attached to it, and as I sit here trying to figure out what to tell you all about it (whoever you are, if you’re even there) I mostly just want to go see it again. And then possibly have a good cry. It felt very personal in a way I hadn’t expected.

Here’s what you want to know. It stars George Clooney. His character fires people for a living, and in doing so, he spends over 300 days a year traveling. Airports are home. His family are all strangers to him. His life goal is membership in an exclusive frequent flier club. But then a few things happen. His firm decides to go high tech & threatens take him off the road. He meets someone (the always-fabulous Vera Farmiga). His sister’s getting married. His airport cocoon is challenged, basically, and all against a background of things that are happening now in America.

It put me in mind of a line from “Wonderfalls”: “You have really managed to create a stressless, expectation-free zone for yourself.” There are expectations, but only professional, and nothing he can’t handle. People are okay and everything, but best not to let anyone get too close.

For about the first half of the movie, I was pretty irked by Anna Kendrick’s character (looks like she’s currently being wasted in the Twilight franchise), not through any fault of her own, but because I wasn’t really excited about seeing another young professional woman get schooled. And I was the only person in the theater to laugh out loud when she precluded remarks to Farmiga’s character with “I don’t want to sound anti-feminist, but”. And that she couldn’t grasp why someone wouldn’t want kids? Ridiculous. But she redeemed herself by the end, so okay.

It’s the third feature from Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno) & probably accessible to folks who didn’t like either of those. He manages a perfectly even tone, a challenge, considering the themes, and all the more artful for the apparent ease with which he carries it off. Clooney’s the unlikeable guy that you like, and if you’re me, the guy you identify with a little bit more than is comfortable.

Okay, before I even get started here, can anyone tell me if there is anywhere an actual case of someone recording a feature film on their cell phone and uploading it to the internet? Because seriously, people.

On one hand, at least at this screening they didn’t flat-out confiscate phones, but on the other they nearly took your head off if you checked the time on it in the half hour we waited for the movie to begin (not that I’m complaining about having that much time to kill — better inside than out). And for the first time ever (that I have witnessed) a theater staff member had to read off a legal document from the distributer letting us know exactly what the consequences would be if we were the first people in the history of the world to pirate a movie with a cell phone.

For the love. And it’s not like this was, I don’t know, Avatar or some blockbuster shit. It was a remake of a Danish film. What is the market for *that*?

Whatever. So, Brothers stars Tobey Maguire & Jake Gyllenhaal as (obvious from the title though not from looking at them) as brothers. Natalie Portman is Maguire’s wife, he gets shipped back to Afghanistan, and fresh-from-prison Jake grows a bit into the man of the house after they get the news (incorrect, as it turns out) of Tobey’s death.

Jim Sheridan has a way with directing children, and the kids here are as marvelous as the ones in In America. Carey Mulligan & Clifton Collins Jr are underused, and Maguire, back from the front, is scary as hell, but overall? I think I would rather have seen the original. Which may or may not have dealt better with the many issues of family, war, and the way we fail our soldiers when they return that this version skimmed over.

Guys, this is such a good year for allegedly children’s movies. We had Up, we had Wild Things, and now? The Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson’s stop motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel, which was so much better than I had even hoped. I am a little grumpy, to be honest, that it didn’t get the viral marketing blitz that Coraline did. Who, for example, knit the wee fox sweaters? Inquiring knitters want to know.

I have to say right out that I am a huge Wes Anderson fan, even though I did not enjoy The Life Aquatic & own The Darjeeling Limited mostly for the nearly-fetishized shots of Adrian Brody & his v long limbs. The Fantastic Mr Fox is visually unmistakable as Anderson, from the open-book opening to the cross-section dollhouse-esque shots to the neurotic perils of family life. I wanted to own the DVD immediately, to freeze-frame and admire the detail. With all the visual richness, though, it’s somehow less fussy than Anderson tends to be. It’s clever, but not irritatingly so, full of fox-sized adventure in a dangerous world, more true for being handmade. It’s fantastic.