Up in the Air (2009): review- 6.5/10

An executive, played by George Clooney, flies from US city to city sacking people. He is joined, and appalled, by a recent graduate who proposes using computer screens to rationalise the process. Along the way he meets a beautiful woman.

A strange, mainly enjoyable film about rootlessness and corporatism which is not without humour.

But Clooney's character is too crypic to offer any real insights into how to cope with life's exigiencies and the others tend towards caricature, so the film leaves one as much puzzled as satisfied.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009): review- 5.5/10

The relentlessly whimsical tone of the film is less amusing than it's makers' perhaps imagine. Essentially the same joke is repeated throughout: notably, the silliness of New Age belief practises as revealed in a combat context.