Jason Reitman

Jason R. Reitman is a Canadian and American filmmaker and the son of director Ivan Reitman, a fact his early filmography states plainly: he shows up as a kid in his father's pictures, a grandson in Twins (1988), a boy in a brownstone in Ghostbusters II (1989), the wrong kid in an alley in Fathers' Day (1997). He has since collected four Academy Award nominations, two of them for Best Director, plus Golden Globe and Grammy recognition.

What he is unusually good at is comedy built on competence at something unattractive. Thank You for Smoking (2005) is carried by a tobacco lobbyist who is genuinely excellent at his job. Up in the Air (2009) follows a man whose profession is firing strangers, and treats his expertise with something close to admiration before it takes the floor out. Juno (2007), written by Diablo Cody, works the same trick in reverse: a teenager whose armour is being funnier than the situation. When that register slips, his films get sentimental fast, which is what separates the good ones from the misfires.

Young Adult (2011) is the meanest thing he has made and probably the best, a portrait of arrested adolescence that refuses to redeem anybody. The middle stretch went badly wrong with Labor Day (2013) and Men, Women & Children (2014), both of them earnest in a way his talent does not support. Tully (2018) put him back with Cody and back in form, The Front Runner (2018) followed the same year, and he then took over the family business with Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) before making Saturday Night (2024). He has a hand in the television comedy Casual (2015) as well. Gil Kenan and Cody remain his repeat collaborators.