AMELIA AND UP IN THE AIR

Gentle Readers,

I recommend Amelia, which didn't get very good reviews.

Although the movie is kind of choppy at the beginning, it is a lushly filmed biopic, cinematographically beautiful. The love story between Amelia Earhart and her husband, George Putnam, is quite moving, maybe all the more so because Amelia didn't exactly have traditional views of marriage or a woman's role in life. I don't know if she really had an affair with Eugene Vidal, father of Gore, who adored her.

But I do know that the last twenty minutes of the movie are absolutely gripping, even though we know Earhart and her navigator are not going to find Howland Island. I also learned some interesting details about those last minutes, which I will not include here because I don't want to be a spoiler.

But instead of thinking of the crash that was to come but is not depicted on screen, since nobody really knows what happened, I'll think of Amelia as remaining Up In The Air, the second movie I watched recently. Actually, I couldn't sleep last night and I finished watching it at 3 a.m.

George Clooney is great as Ryan Bingham, as are Vera Farmiga as Alex and Anna Kendrick as Natalie, whose attempt to become a much smaller and younger female version of George's character is very amusing. Melanie Lynskey, who is so charming and engaging as Ginger Whitacre in The Informant, also has a small part.

Ryan Bingham lives up in the air, except when he's in an airport making a connection with his next flight. It's when he finally makes a human connection that his life and the movie depart from what I thought was going to be a sophisticated romantic comedy. One of my criteria for an especially interesting movie is one that doesn't follow convention.

Although convention is turned on its ear (I didn't see what was coming even though I usually know who the murderer is within ten pages of reading a mystery), Ryan Bingham is changed by his experiences. And I felt changed too.

I got down on my knees (I'm usually not a knee pray-er) and asked God to show me what I'm supposed to do with my life. I don't know yet, but I certainly feel a great sense of peace today.

I will learn in time.

Love,

Lola