Up in the Air

Impressions before seeing it
I didn't really know much about the plot beforehand, which I like because it makes the movie more enjoyable. But the commercials made it look interesting and I wanted to see it because it might be an Oscar movie.

How was it?
This movie could have just as easily been called Swipe! with all of the card swiping action involved. But the cards represent Ryan's elite status and his "backpack" that he talks about. The cards are his money, his food, his home, his job, his transportation, and even his friends and lovers, because they literally grant him access to all of those things. But I think the message Up in the Air tries to convey is that a card is not a substitute for these things. It's a piece of plastic, and in this day and age, "plastic" is pretty much a synonym for "fake".

But at the end of the movie, (spoiler alert), he does discover that sometimes real life is just as fake. I mean his job in the first place certainly had a falseness to it (firing people for the ones who can't be real enough to do it themselves and then apathetically consoling them) but at the end of the movie Ryan himself is on the other side of it as he kind of gets fired from his relationship with Alex when he finds out she is married and their lovemaking was fake (at least on an emotional level). However the one thing about his job that was real is that he fired the people face to face. When it later became an internet thing, his job and his life swapped places, and he was settling down in one spot, getting an apartment and enjoying this woman he loved. But again, both ended up being too fake for him. His apartment didn't even look furnished when he was living there, it was incredibly bland. So it made sense that he went back to the old method of traveling to terminate in person. At least that one part of his life could still be real.

Recommendation
It was an enjoyable and intelligent movie with good performances. My analysis may make it sound preachy, but I don't think it is. Check it out, it's a good watch.