Movies on Emirates

It may seem that I am only watching movies on the plane or on pirated DVDs... perhaps true. I did see Harry Potter 7 the other day. I was lost most of the time cus I had no idea what muggles was. Not recommended? (The question mark is intentional)

One thing Emirates got right: movies that can play once you board the flight! How has no airline done this before? You get on the plane, sit down, hit a few bottons (or touch the not-very-reliable screen), and start your movie! I can sit on the tarmac for hours watching a movie without getting jittery because we haven't taken off yet. Which is exactly what happened in Dubai when a passenger had a heart attack on the tarmac and the plane headed back to the terminal. I was watching The Expendables and never made a fuss... anyway, on to the movies:

The Expendables: Watching a bunch of macho old men run around killing people and dismantling buildings is fun. Not really... but if you want to see some ass kicking, I think this movie might do it for you. Okay, I'll admit, I've already forgotten what this movie was about except that there were some gun fires and sticky bombs and kung fu kicks. Not recommended.

Wall Street: The classic one. Now that I've seen the original, I wonder why didn't someone make the sequel to Charlie Sheen's character... like what happens to whistle blowers against high power folks. Anyway, Michael Douglas is masterful and the whole movie just nailed New York perfectly. Also loved the music and sound effects. Highly recommended.

Freakenomics: I remember reading on their blog that there was some documentary thing. Each section of the documentary deals with a chapter in Freakenomics and uses a different director. So you get several interpretations/illustrations of economic research plus a whole lot of background information. In fact, they deal with a lot more of the background than the actual analysis, which is good. I highly recommend the Sumo Wrestling and Incentives chapters. Recommended.

Knight and Day: I knew it was going to be bad. I just didn't know how bad. Cameron Diaz is too old to try to look beautiful. And Tom Cruise... is just old. He didn't even need make up this time to look like the Cruise in Vanilla Sky. Actually, that might be worth the price of admission to see his face - it barely twitches the whole movie and when it does it takes us back to Vanilla Sky Cruise. Good times. Not recommended.

Killers: You know, after watching Knight and Day, I had no choice to watch another "spy" movie... this time with Ashton Kutcher and Catherine Heigl, whom for all we know might easily morph into Cruise and Diaz when all is said and done. Anyway, here are the plot keywords courtesy of IMDB: marriage, neighbor, assassin, birthday, hired killer. They missed "atrocious" and "unbelievable... plot". Not recommended.

Triple Tap: Chinese movie that is a sequel to Double Tap. Decent movie overall but with some fatal flaws, one of which is to try to try to mix in the financial crisis into it. It does nothing for the movie. Can we stick with people with guns trying to outwit each other? Instead, it spirals into some psychological warfare that involves offfices and women. Not recommended.

Grown Ups: Feel good comedy with Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade. Individually, each of them have made some pretty funny stuff, and together they string together some funny lines for about an hour and a half. Slightly recommended.

Megamind: well, I didn't exactly watch it. but since it was on like 20 screens for like 50 hours (of flight time), I think I got the gist of it. In fact, this probably happened for Avatar, Inception, The American (presumably, to fall asleep), Toy Story 3... but I want to go see Megaman when I am back in Hong Kong.