There’s more than ‘Avatar’ to see

Turner Classic Movies has been screening a festival of classic Sherlock Holmes movies, starring the late, great Basil Rathbone. They’re fun to watch, though in a far different way than the new Guy Ritchie adaptation that stars Robert Downey Jr. as Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective.

Rathbone’s Holmes is a campy character, straight man who seeks out the villains on the foggy moors of Scotland or the sordid streets of London. The comedy happens around him, either through Nigel Bruce’s Dr. Watson or many of the secondary players.

Ritchie, though, puts both Downey and Jude Law (as a far more effectual Watson) at the heart of the comedy. Behind Downey’s quip-heavy lines, delivered with a believable English accent and boasting precise comic timing, Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” comes off as one of the more entertaining Holmes films ever made.

No, it doesn’t have the seriousness that Doyle favored. But it does fit the tenor of these irony-burdened times, when everyone from John Adams to Tony Stark is undergoing serious deconstruction and ultimate revisionism.

By contrast, “Up in the Air” is a small study of contemporary life, focusing as it does on a man who avoids commitment and connection while working as a hired-gun reduction specialist. Which is another way of saying that he’s hired to do the job that normal managers hate, namely firing workers.

George Clooney plays our protagonist, embodying the character with his typical aging hipster attitudes. He’s a guy happy with his lot in life and desiring only one thing: to become a member of his airlines’ 10-million-mile club. He’s never more at home than when he’s sucking down a scotch at 37,000 feet, avoiding his lonely Omaha apartment or picking up the occasional traveler (Vera Farmiga) in an airport bar.

This is a movie, directed by Jason Reitman, that could easily have sunk under the weight of its own slight gags. But as he did with both “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking,” Reitman fills his film with serious moments that underscore his protagonist’s essential self. He’s a decent guy who has learned, sadly enough, that connections are about as easy to accomplish as they are to maintain.

Overall, though, the movie belongs to the people he fires, many of whom we see in short sequences, talking about the pain that comes with losing a job that seemed to mean everything to them. And to his credit, even given his natural sense of cynicism, he does understand what they are going through - and he does his best to be gentle as he pushes them out of the financial boat.

All the long lines are still at the doors of “Avatar.” But that James Cameron film clearly isn’t the only thing worth seeing out there. Downey and Ritchie, Reitman and Clooney have made sure of that.

Below : Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.