"Up in the Air" *** (out of four): Based on the novel by Walter Kim, "Up In the Air" manages to succeed at different altitudes, addressing the absurdity and poignancy of human connections.

Ryan Bingham flies across the country firing other companies' employees, as a kind of outsourced pink slip specialist (imagine filling out that Customs form). He spends most of his days "up in the air," and director/co-writer Jason Reitman ("Thank You for Smoking", "Juno") gets a lot of metaphorical mileage out of the expression.

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