'Up in the Air': Why This George Clooney Film Is the Perfect Comfort Watch

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The latest in our series of writers’ most pleasurable comfort films is a journey through US airports with George Clooney

Airports have always been my happy place. From shiny citadels jutting out of the desert to shoddier European hubs located 120 miles outside the city they’re designated to serve; I love them all. With so many stories to be told, all those connections and people colliding, it’s a first-class seat to life itself. Which should go some way to explaining why I hold such a deep admiration for 2009’s comedy-drama Up in the Air .

Directed by Jason Reitman and based on the book of the same name by Walter Kirn, it stars an Oscar-nominated George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a US corporate downsizer who spends 322 days a year flying state to state doing the job cowardly employers prefer to outsource, leaving him with “43 miserable days at home”. That is until graduate Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) enters the firm with a cost-saving idea of firing people by video call, and hits the road with her older colleague, who is suddenly forced to grapple with the future of his own industry while re-evaluating his nomadic lifestyle.

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