When you see two movies in one day, which I love to do, and when the movies you see reflect your taste, then there are certain correspondences that reveal themselves in the time after the movies are over. The combination of the two movies influences your opinion. (As a side note, I wonder if movie critics see more than one movie a day. ) So Crazy Heart and Up in the Air are cooking in my head. They are very similar movies: sober and somber and redemptive. Or at least about redemption of men by women. What a surprise. Both men - Jeff Bridges and George Clooney (talk about your A list) - are isolated in a lonely world. Both meet women who save them and leave them. Both movies end with the men in better shape - although the Bad Blake character is in fantasy better shape. Ryan Bingham ends on a more ambivalent note.
Up in the Air reflects our time more accurately. Both main characters have no financial worries, but Ryan Bingham's job is to fire people. The progression of talking heads is heart breaking, all the more so because they are real people, who really got fired (in Detroit, natch). The snowy, but definitely not picturesque, landscape of the parts of the movie is bleak.
Jeff Bridge's portrayal of a bad boy country singer is without vanity. We see his broad belly and his slack chin. We also see the fantastic body of a much younger woman who falls into bed with him. We can gaze, apparently without harm, on the overweight body of a 60 year old man, but can see only leggy, slim young women. Most movies are made by men, after all. It's their fantasy.
I would recommend both movies, but do not go see Up in the Air expecting a comedy. It's witty and has amusing parts, but it is ultimately a reflection of where we are as 2009 morphs into 2010.