Life in Flight (2010)

This was a particular demographic that you don't always see in a New York-based film.I don't think any of these people are native to the city. They are white, educated, and urban, but no one in the group of friends is Jewish, Italian, identifiably Irish, Gay, or over-the-top Liberal. This is in contrast to the Sydney Pollack, Woody Allen, Ed Burns type of N.Y. based relationship picture.Also, they don't fit the "yuppie" stereotype entirely, because they are architects and radio station personnel, as opposed to lawyers,doctors, stock brokers, fashion editors, and art gallery owners.The difference being that architects actually create something of lasting value, rather than fix, sell, or trade something. Radio guys are non-traditional professionals, by virtue of the underdog nature of their medium.You see a view of N.Y. devoid of urban squalor, violence, dirty snow, rude people, profanity, sirens, homeless, and dilapidated housing. These characters live in neighborhoods with upscale brownstones and funky gentrified apartments. They frequent rooftop coffee hangouts, and homey diners with lovable old waitresses.Our main character takes cabs, and doesn't have to sit on some dingy subway. The female lead enters a subway staircase, but we don't see the grim reality of her ride. So you come away thinking that you can live in New York and be oblivious to thugs, foreigners, crime, etc. Maybe some can.Waking up with morning breath, a stressed wife, and loads of responsibility isn't too sexy, as we see clearly in the opening scene. Being a grown up can be a real drag.I love the male lead. He's trying so earnestly to hold it all together, and you get the sense that he really cares about the work. He's a stoic Anglo who is good with technical stuff and short on expression, but he gets things done. We need those types. (not the type you normally associate with N.Y. either.) I love his facial expressions as we see him contemplating new concepts.Introducing a blissfully compatible designer couple was a beautiful way to show our character what it can be like to have a lover who shares your outlook and interests. You can tell that he's taking it in and admiring them. Nicely played small roles for that couple. Bravo. Very natural. I totally believed them.There's an old 70s song that goes: "Oh it's sad to belong to someone else, when the right one comes along." Hey, I support people toughing-it-out when marriage hits a rocky point. I agree with the other reviewers on this point, but sometimes people have irreconcilable differences.My favorite scene is where the female lead finally breaks down and shares her true sadness. Remember, we hear early on that she had a wrenching breakup just a year ago, and at 30 or so, she is starting to feel fragile. I loved the emotional honesty of this scene. Well played, lady.This script also gave supporting characters a chance to shine and add some real flavor, even though the picture centered on two refined people. The guy's best friend was spunky and caring. The girl's brother was funky and deadpan.I didn't think the birds-in-flight metaphor was trite. I loved it. Or maybe you simply see it as a way to show that this woman appreciated nature and the subtle pleasures of life, and had the ability to wake up this very busy man. Watch his face when she first tells him about the birds, and then later when he watches them the first and second times.Stop assuming that they are going to sleep together while he is separated. Maybe not. Just because they went out for a drink, does not mean that they were going to go overboard before a divorce. You cynics are expecting the worst, but there's no reason to believe that either of these people are the type to take adultery or divorce lightly.This movie does not slam you over the head with any points. "Wall Street" did and Devil Wears Prada played on New York stereotypes.It's a simple portrayal of real people, real problems, subtle moments, and the often confusing moral, social, and strategic dilemmas we all face. Beautiful photography.

Life in Flight is truly full of badly written characters and horrific messages. Great- end a marriage and FAMILY because he's a bad communicator, and he's "unhappy". He can't communicate with his son because his wife bullies him away from it?? Come on... So then he turns away from both of them. He even admits that he "pretended" to want the career advancement that his wife is fighting, on their behalf, for. Why lie in the first place? And then run off with a woman that can't tell pigeons from sparrows, who obsesses with him on the basis of a few conversations. Heads up, lady, if he does this to his wife and son, he'll do it to you, too. How can this be an "Inspiring family drama?" If you have the least sense of moral responsibility, don't waste your time.

I once read a comment from Jim Shooter, the former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, that it was okay to tell a "day in the life" story as long as it was about the day you discovered penicillin or saved the world from an alien invasion. There's some truth to that. Heaven knows a lot of storytellers love to wallow in the mundane, keeping it real or getting all meta or something. Every so often, though, it's nice to experience a film that isn't about people getting killed or boy getting plot-hammered together with girl while a joke goes off every 20 seconds. At less than 80 minutes long, Life in Flight manages to satisfy that craving without overstaying its welcome.Will Sargent (Patrick Wilson) is a New York City architect with a constantly aggravating construction project on one hand and a constantly striving wife (Amy Smart) on the other. Will is on track to merge his company with a larger, ritzier firm. His wife is happy about that. Will…not so much. He has mostly consigned himself to it, until he meets Kate (Lynn Collins). She's a designer herself and the two of them click from almost the first words they speak to each other. While Will and his wife are living in different emotional hemispheres, it's like he and Kate are next door neighbors. Kate thinks there's something going on between them while Will tries not to admit that to himself. Then she finds out he's married and the day comes when he has to sign the merger papers and both of them are forced to stop living their lives the way other people want them to.Patrick Wilson and Lynn Collins are both elegantly normal. Yes, the drama of their characters isn't like they're living in a war zone or trying to escape from a horde of zombies, but they let us see it's as important to Will and Kate as all our dramas are to us. Nobody else except Amy Smart really has more than an extended cameo in the movie, so the whole shebang rests of Wilson and Collins making us care about Will and Kate. They succeed by diving into the somewhat shallow waters of two people who are unhappy without having much cause to be and making the viewer feel the commonplace depth of his or her own life.Now, I wouldn't say everything works here. Kate invests a whole lot of emotion into a guy she barely flirts with. You also can't escape the realization at the end of Life in Flight that you've watched the world's most sympathetic view of a guy going through a midlife crisis where the film ends just as he's about to start cheating on his wife. I'm not sure if it was intentional but it made me stop and reevaluate how I felt about the whole thing. And while Amy Smart plays a bitch whose bitchiness is beautifully calibrated to a inch before something Will would feel entitled to object to, the two of them are so out of sync it's hard to believe they would have ever had a second date, let alone got married and had a child.If you're looking for a distraction, this probably isn't it. It you'd like a mirror to help you see your own life a bit more clearly, take a look at Life in Flight.

Seriously one of the worst, most clichéd, extremely boring and annoying movies I've seen in a long long time. The movie ran only 78 minutes and felt like five hours. The script was just awful. The acting not much better. Who let this vanity project get out to the public? All involved should be ashamed and the screening committee at Tribeca should hang their heads low for letting this into the festival. It really tarnishes Tribeca's reputation. You would not want to know or associate with any of the characters in this movie, if they came anywhere near, you would run really fast the other way. They are stupid, vapid and walking clichés, with not an interesting thought or aspect to their beings. The ones that are supposed to be better are even stupider and more empty. While watching the film one can perfectly understand and sympathize with whomever came up withe the slogan "die yuppie scum" . The movie takes place in New York City and uses many familiar locations, the only entertainment value I found as a New Yorker was trying to identify where each shot was filmed . But let me tell you that lasted split seconds so don't even think of going for that reason. It is an insult to New York, New Yorkers and the Tribeca Festival. I really don't like being this harsh on a film because I know no one sets out to make a bad film and everyone works extremely hard to make it all happen. But I felt really ripped off of $15 x3. Why, after seeing the final product would anyone so carelessly and arrogantly consider unveiling it to the public and having them pay for it to boot, while so many good Independent films never get this kind of exposure or even get made.