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review of Up in the Air

December 11, 2009  •  National Review Online

Pascal once observed that, in the absence of a framing purpose for human life, the best life was one with access to a host of diversions. Moving its denizens from one diversion to another, modern society would seem to have discovered the key to life in an essentially unsatisfying universe: perpetual motion. In his latest film, Up in the Air, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a character who lives on airplanes flying from one city to another and who thus embodies a life of perpetual motion. Bingham, in the film directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking and Juno), is a "career-transition counselor," whom businesses across the country hire to fire longtime employees. Charming, unmarried, and without any attachments to persons or places, Bingham is the perfect fit for his position. In a time of economic unrest, Bingham is very busy indeed. As his boss (Jason Bateman) observes, the "worst time for America" is the best time for their business.

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review of The Blind Side

November 25, 2009  •  National Review Online

The Blind Side is the true story of the high-school years of Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), who was born in a Memphis housing project with no father and a drug-addicted mother. Because of his athletic potential and despite his woeful academic performance, Mike gains admission to a Christian high school. His big break comes when the Tuohy family, at first unofficially and eventually legally, adopts him.

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review of The Twilight Saga: New Moon

November 20, 2009  •  National Review Online

If Elvis and Christopher Walken had a son, he would look like Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the dreamy-eyed vampire in Chris Weitz's film The Twilight Saga: New Moon. The much-anticipated film is a sequel to the hugely popular Twilight, based on the best-selling series of books by Stephenie Meyer, who has found a teeny-bopper formula for repackaging the classic Wagnerian theme of love-death. If the screeches from the audience during the screening I attended are any indication, then this film will, like its predecessor, satisfy the romantic longings of its target audience: twelve-year-old girls. For that group, the endless focus on star-crossed lovers hurts so good; for the rest us, it just hurts.

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Held by the Past

November 10, 2009  •  National Review Online

"So, who are you supposed to be?" a man asks Don Draper on Halloween night as he and his wife, Betty, take their children trick-or-treating. That of course is the abiding question of the critically acclaimed AMC series Mad Men, whose satisfying third-season finale aired on Sunday night. Featuring Jon Hamm as Don Draper, a brilliant ad man for the Madison Avenue firm Sterling Cooper, the series, set in the early 1960s, is renowned as much for its detailed and luxurious sense of period style as it is for its acting and plot lines. In the Halloween episode, the third-to-last episode of the season, Betty discovers what viewers have known since the end of the first season, namely, that Don has a secret past: He was adopted, raised in poverty, and subjected to physical and verbal abuse; as an adult, he stole the identity of a fellow soldier killed alongside him in the Korean War. That discovery, along with Betty's knowledge of Don's infidelities, plus her own adultery, would seem to spell doom for their marriage.

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review of Paris

October 2, 2009  •  National Review Online

Director Cedric Klapisch's new film, Paris, begins with young girls looking out over the City of Light and asking their mother, "Where is the universe?" She responds, "Everywhere." But for the city dwellers in this film, Paris is everywhere.

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Books by Thomas Hibbs