Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody sure have grown up since making the indie smash “Juno.”

The duo re-team for “Young Adult,” and while it’s only been four years since “Juno” struck sleeper movie gold, it’s clear the filmmakers used that time wisely.

“Young Adult” lacks the preciousness that nearly derailed “Juno,” and the movie spotlights a lead character you’d rather slug than give a tender embrace. That smacks of both confidence and daring, but Reitman and Cody can’t deliver a third act worthy of their otherwise biting dark comedy.

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Charlize Theron is that rare big-screen beauty who’s willing to subvert her looks in order to fully inhabit a difficult character. She did it to play a grotesque real-life killer in the 2003 “Monster” (for which she won an Oscar), and she does it again, in a different way, in “Young Adult,” portraying a woman whose ugliness is all on the inside.

Mavis Gary is a mess, a one-time high-school hottie now going to seed at 37. She’s a best-selling author, sort of (she ghost-writes a series of popular Young Adult novels), but her Minneapolis apartment is a pit, she has a serious bourbon problem, and she chugs Coke for breakfast after waking up next to whichever random lug she happened to bring home the night before.

One day Mavis gets a blast email announcing the birth of a baby, adorable photo attached. It’s from Buddy Slade, her old high school boyfriend. High school was 20 years ago, but Mavis remembers it—and Buddy—fondly: She wasn’t a mess then. Giving the matter some self-centered thought, she decides that Buddy is the guy she was meant to be with. He’s still living in their corny hometown, married now, and with the baby, it’s true; but why should that stand in the way of her winning him back?

In “Young Adult,” director Jason Reitman and his “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody attempt something tricky. Cody’s story is a deconstruction of that Hollywood staple, the romantic comedy hooked on an idiotic premise. These are the kind of pictures in which a woman desperate for a child has herself artificially inseminated and then discovers that the requisite fluid has been anonymously donated by her adoring best friend. Or two girlfriends discover that their long-planned weddings have been accidentally scheduled at the Plaza Hotel on the very same day. The trailer for “Young Adult” might seem to promise exactly that sort of disposable chuckle fest. But the movie is actually much darker, and more daring.

Read the full review at Reason.com

The 2007 smash ‘Juno’ left movie goers irrevocably divided. Either you loved Ellen Page as a wiseacre trying to give her new baby a good home, or you balked at the hamburger phone, quirky songs and other precious elements lined up for our pleasure.

Now, ‘Juno’ director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody are back with ‘Young Adult,’ an upcoming dramedy dropped into the schedule for maximum Oscar consideration – Dec. 9.

The trailer offers a far different vibe than ‘Juno,’ but there’s a snarkiness that unites the two projects. Charlize Theron stars as a former high school princess who returns home and decides to win back and old flame (Patrick Wilson). But said flame is already married and has a child on the way.

“We can beat this thing together,” she tells him in the trailer’s kiss-off line.

Cody earned an Oscar for her ‘Juno’ script, but she’s still an unpredictable force in the film industry. Her attempt at wink-wink horror, 2009’s ‘Jennifer’s Body,’ showed a serious lack of understanding for an admittedly tricky genre. She had better luck as a driving force behind Showtime’s ‘The United States of Tara.’

But Reitman may be the surest bet in Hollywood these days. His first three movies – ‘Thank You for Smoking,’ ‘Juno’ and ‘Up in the Air’ – reveal a gifted filmmaker with a penchant for quality material. His presence alone is enough to make ‘Young Adult’ one of the year’s must-see movies.

Biases up front:

For many of the same reasons most of us don’t care for leftist movie stars, I don’t like George Clooney, but after he publicly made fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s, that was something altogether different. Unforgivable. An uncommonly cruel thing to do – even for a Hollywoodist — and it offered a disturbing glimpse into the mercenary assholery of a man willing to say anything for a place at the Hollywood Cool Kids’ Table. Clooney’s other problem is that unlike Jane Fonda and Sean Penn, he simply doesn’t possess the acting chops to transcend what a classless act he really is behind that Cary Grant-lite façade. Sure, Hollywood and the entertainment media adore him, but that’s because he’s the kind of guy who would make fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s.

I do, however, like director Jason Reitman — quite a bit, in fact. “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno” proved him to be a genuine talent, superb with actors and able to bring genuine warmth to the kind of stories lesser directors would distance us from with “quirk.” And as we saw with the subtle anti- abortion message in “Juno,” Reitman’s the rare filmmaker today who puts the quality of his story above the clichéd politically correct demands that bring down so many others … like, say, the wretched “Avatar.” (more…)

All your life, you’ve heard about the American Dream: find a wife or husband, pop out some kids, buy a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after in the cozy embrace of suburbia.

But what if that cozy embrace wasn’t there anymore? Take a look around you at the news and official statistics, and it’s clear that America and its attendant “Dream” is in a heap of trouble. What if you did all that hard work, only to see it swept away by a devastating layoff? How would you handle it?

In his new film “Up in the Air,” George Clooney delivers perhaps the most well-rounded performance of his career while finding rays of hope and humor in the economic darkness of our present times. As Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing specialist, he flies around the country helping administer mass layoffs for companies too scared to handle such situations themselves.

Ryan has the patter of a concerned friend down to a T, calmly guiding people through the devastating moments of hearing they’ve lost their job by discussing their severance packages, giving them a pep talk and then providing them their final proverbial shove out the door with a kind smile and perhaps a pat on the back thrown in for effect. But his own personal life is nearly bereft of such touches, or connections of any kind – he’s on the fly over 300 days a year and wishes he could make it 365. If a woman’s around to seduce from time to time, Ryan will engage in some fun but meaningless sport sex and move on. (more…)