Fired up

Up in the Air
15, Nationwide

44 Inch Chest
18, Nationwide

Up in the Air is gorgeous and wondrous and intelligent and elegant and freshly funny and moving and exquisitely constructed and I beseech you to get off your sofa and go see it. I am so serious about this I will not only say it all over, I will say it all over in capitals followed by nine exclamation marks: GO SEE IT!!!!!!!!! Now, what more do you want me to do? Carry you to the cinema? Don’t be silly. But I will give you four more exclamation marks, a chevron and two pound signs: !!!!^££. More than this I cannot do.

Very briefly, because space, like cellulite, is always the enemy, Up in the Air is about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man whose job is to fire people when companies downsize and don’t have the heart to do it themselves. You may say he specialises in letting people go. He has two sisters but has never been involved in their lives. He has no home to speak of. He spends his life in hotels, on planes, in airports. His ambition is to rack up ten million air miles, ‘as only seven people have done that, less than have gone to the moon’. But he loves his life, sees no imperative to make personal ties, and understands every nuance of always being on the move. Never, for example, get caught behind old people at airport security because ‘they’re riddled with hidden metal’. Bingham should be a monster, I suppose, but this part was written for Clooney and only Clooney could make it happen sympathetically. You cannot help but love Clooney, whatever. He also does that adorable thing with the eyebrow.