[AKN #117] Return Of The Krapp And The Definitive Guide To Q4 2022 Plane Movies
Are You Not Entertained?
Sup homies?
After taking the last three weeks off of writing this so I can fully focus on my wedding and honeymoon…
To answer a few frequently asked questions:
How was the wedding?
The wedding was the best day of my life.
Everything from our vows to the wedding speeches to the DJ’s EDM mixes of My Chemical Romance to our officiant Jordan (btw you should totally subscribe to his podcast here) far exceeded my expectations.
Honestly it was just the perfect day.
I would love to share a picture of me and my gorgeous wife with you, however I also respect her privacy so I won’t post the pictures of both of us here.
Ergo, here is a selfie of me in my tuxedo.
Several people told me I looked like James Bond which you can be sure absolutely went directly to my head.
How was the honeymoon?
The honeymoon was amazing.
The Maldives are the most absurd place I have ever been. Seriously. This is the sunset I looked at for a week.
How is it being back?
Terrible! I had to go to work yesterday AND today…how gross is that?
Also it’s difficult to get back into writing this! Cause it’s a lot easier to just not, you know?
But thankfully I have a ton of content for you today.
You see, traveling to the Maldives required spending 40 hours on a plane in the last 2 weeks and you know what that means. That’s right. I am an expert on every movie the planes have to offer right now.
So in rare form, I am going to combine the LIVE, LAUGH, and LOVE sections into one post and spill a lot of ink on the definitive guide of what is worth your time to watch as you travel this holiday season.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE/LAUGH/LOVE: A Definitive Guide To Q4 2022 Plane Movies
As we enter the holiday season, a lot of you are going to start taking long plane rides to lackluster destinations in the name of appeasing your parents or your significant other’s parents.
Now I won’t sugarcoat this one.
That 4.5 hour flight to Des Moines in a middle seat in the back of the plane is not going to be great. You’re going to have terrible lumbar support, a crying child, and a stewardess who is going to be out of every snack you ask for.
But — thanks to the miracle of technology — all hope is not lost. You see, right there, buried in the headrest in front of you lies your salvation.
At the touch of your recently disinfected hand, this magical colorful box before you will serve you up a dizzying array of movies from the last 50 years.
So yes, you are 4.5 hours away, but worded differently, my friend, you are simply two movies away from forgetting this flight ever happened.
But there are so many options? Where should you start?
That’s where I come in (provided you are traveling in Q4 of 2022.)
Let’s start with the basics.
The Standards Are Different On A Plane
A plane movie is a different category than movie.
A great plane movie is by definition “a movie which is great to watch on a plane.”
This does not mean the movie is “good.”
Great movies can be bad plane movies.
Like Lawrence of Arabia is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made. However, LoA would be an absolutely TERRIBLE plane movie.
Why? Because yes it has good story telling, but it also has very underwhelming action scenes. If LoA wants to swim in the same pool of action movies as the Fast and the Furious franchise then it is going to have to put up a better action sequence than whatever the fuck this is.
Conversely, bad movies can be great plane movies.
Like Hobbs and Shaw is objectively an awful movie, but Dwayne The Rock Johnson is the GOAT of plane movies. He commands your attention and leaves you entertained.
For 136 minutes, you suspend disbelief and you watch from the edge of your seat as he pulls a motherfucking helicopter out of the sky.
Oscar bait? Absolutely not.
Entertaining? You’re god damn right.
So that is what we mean by “great plane movies.”
This Recommendation Will Be Meaningless In 2 Months
The next caveat is that the movies I am reviewing are available on a plane today.
Like the best plane ride of my life was when I flew to Hong Kong in first class and watched the John Wick trilogy one right after the other.
306 murders, 45 min of terrible sleep, a bottle of wine consumed in 8 individually ordered plastic cups, and one concerned stewardess asking a set of canned questions to ensure I was in a “reasonable” state to consume more alcohol later and I was in Hong Kong.
It was electric. But alas the John Wick Trilogy is not available on flights today.
I’d love to tell you the all time best movies to watch on a plane, but how useful would that be to you in Q4 2022?
Perhaps that is a post for another day, but as of today we will focus on the now.
So with that we can start my definitive guide.
Welcome Aboard.
The guide is divided into four buckets.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
The Despicable Me Cinematic Universe (DMCU)
The Tom Cruise Cinematic Universe (TCCU)
Movies That Sounded Interesting After I Read The Description
1. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
✈️ 🎥 Rating: It Depends.
I would love to say every movie in the MCU is worth your time. But it’s just not true so I will go through the three that I watched separately.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
✈️ 🎥 Rating: A Great Time
This was the 29th piece of content produced by the MCU so I came in thinking this movie would be complete dogshit.
Like what are the odds that they are going to create a brand new world that doesn’t sound exactly like another Marvel character?
Can they really make another likable character that I want to root for?
Yes. Yes they can. I was straight up stoked on this movie.
It did a great job of building a new world inside of the already crowded Marvel Universe and they weaved together the characters speaking Mandarin throughout parts of the movie really well.
Little touches which nod to the culture like that are a very tasteful way to honor the fact that this is an Asian main character in an Asian oriented world…though to be honest I was a bit caught off guard when the first 10 minutes were all in Mandarin.
I sat there slightly frustrated and confused like “uhhh, is this entire movie in Chinese??? I didn’t sign up for a fucking reading assignment, bro!” But eventually they started speaking English and I was left to enjoy the rest of movie whilst pondering what an entitled jingoistic asshole I am.
Also the film begins in San Francisco which got some “go hometown team” type vibes from me.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
✈️ 🎥 Rating: 🐶 💩
DO NOT waste your time with this one.
This is a bad movie with a bad plot, no character growth, an unappealing villain story, and mediocre conflict resolution at best.
It’s cardinal sin is what every bad movie has in common: there is no compelling story.
You can tell that rather than focus on character development or a strong storyline, they chose instead to:
Go all in on the nerd porn that is the “multiverse” so that the Reddit forums out there could get wet about the many ways to traverse parallel universes
Splash in some new characters to check the representation box so they could get claps on Medium
Both of these feel like cheap heavy handed tricks to capitalize on the cultural zeitgeist instead of writing a good story.
Seriously. It’s a lot. Like the new lead female protagonist they introduced was a hispanic teenage woman named America Chavez, she has two moms, and the secret to unlocking her power was believing in herself. The only way that could be more in your face is if she lost her parents during the Jan 6 insurrection.
Now the “multiverse” concept really can be done well (like look no further than Spider-Man: No Way Home), but this Doctor Strange movie just executes everything about this so poorly…which is a shame since he’s the main character responsible for helping people travel into different parallel universes.
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
✈️ 🎥 Rating: 🐶 💩
Listen. I love the Thor series. Like Thor: Ragnarok is a VERY fun movie and I would highly recommend that movie to anyone.
But this newest Thor movie is bad. Like real bad.
What it lacks in plot, it also lacks in everything else. The only redeeming parts of this movie are Natalie Portman’s arms and that scene where Chris Hemsworth is naked.
Seriously. Fitness goals for real.
Outside of the aesthetic appeal of the lead actors, I struggle to find anything positive to say about this movie. (Though tbh it does have some of that classic Thor humor which made me giggle once or twice.)
Even “inspirational” scenes fell flat. Like at one point in the film, there is a fight scene where the children of Asgard are standing up and fighting for themselves. This appears to be an attempt to instill faith in the viewer about the future. However, I assure you, this scene simply makes you lose faith in present day humanity.
Awful movie. It is the type of Marvel movie where I am still watching only because I want to see the secret credit scenes.
But — and again, I cannot stress this enough — Natalie Portman is so fucking jacked and she might be worth the watch.
2. The Despicable Me Universe
✈️ 🎥 Rating: Absolutely Watch These
Both the Minions movie and Minions: Rise of Gru are on flights and they are absolutely worth your time.
The Minions movie has almost no intelligible dialogue and it is still a rip roaring good time.
Long live King Bob.
3. The Tom Cruise Cinematic Universe
✈️ 🎥 Rating: Watch Anything With Tom Cruise In It
Dwayne The Rock Johnson is the plane movie GOAT, but Tom Cruise gives him a run for his money.
I’ve yet to find a Tom Cruise movie which is a bad plane movie and here is my field report on the three of them I watched recently.
Original Top Gun And New Top Gun
Original Top gun is a fun, classic movie and was a good refresher to watch before I jumped into the new one.
New Top Gun has a better story and is arguably a better movie. It is very clear from the beginning why you should care about the characters. They are training for a specific mission. And it has all these fun nostalgic call backs to the original movie.
It is also arguably the more American of the two movies. Not because one is more patriotic than the other, but because of how they dealt with the casting of the roles.
New Top Gun features a new love interest from Old Top Gun. So naturally I thought to myself “oh I bet the old actress died how sad.”
Well that’s actually wrong. She didn’t die. She was just deemed to be too ugly to come on and be Tom Cruise’s love interest for the newest movie.
Nothing more American than that, baby.
Oblivion
This was a really fun one which had a bit of a twist at several points in the movie.
A nice little “oh I think I figured it out!” Just to realize you never really knew anything the entire time.
4. Movies That Sounded Interesting After I Read The Description
Father Stu
✈️ 🎥 Rating: Good Movie, But Heavy. Need To Be In Right Mood.
Mark Wahlberg plays a boxer who becomes an actor who becomes a priest and let’s just say this one really goes on an emotional roller coaster (EmoRoCo). Even more brutal when you find out it is based on a true story.
I caught this one at the end of my 12 hour flight and I was too emotionally depleted for it. I could appreciate it was a good movie, but I was just not ready for it. I wouldn’t watch this one again on a plane, but would definitely watch it again on my couch.
Black Klansman
✈️ 🎥 Rating: Good Movie, But Heavy. Need To Be In Right Mood.
I got the feeling this was a good, powerful movie. But it was honestly just terrible for the plane.
There are a lot of very emotionally charged moments which are hard to process on a plane when you are 4 glasses of red wine deep.
Then there is the added complexity of watching this movie with closed captions on. After like the 5th time they used the n-word and it spelled it out across the screen, I got so self conscious that I turned it off lol.
Nope
✈️ 🎥 Rating: Nope
I don’t know much about this movie even after watching the entire thing. But what I will tell you is that Nope is a very horse forward movie.
More horses than you would expect for what I believe is a two hour commentary on race and social class.
Seriously. Very very horse centric film.
Overall it was very hard to follow. I had to rewind several times just to get back to the point where I was and find I still had no idea what was happening.
I seriously don’t know what this movie was. It was brainy. I think? There was a metaphor. I think? I don’t know.
King Richard
✈️ 🎥 Rating: GREAT movie. Highly recommend a watch
I never knew the entire story of the Williams sisters. Crazy to put into context the environment they grew up in and how far the odds were that they would get out of their neighborhood let alone go on to be two of the best tennis players of all time.
On top of that, it was wild to watch the story from their dad’s perspective. The vision he had for them from the moment they were born is shockingly clear and ended up coming to fruition.
The whole story is made even more unbelievable when you find out that he didn’t grow up a tennis player himself. He was just so determined to make them so good at the sport that he was collecting magazine clippings of how to play tennis and showing up to tennis clubs to try and sell people on the idea of coaching his daughters for free. Just so crazy.
The only issue I had with the movie was I really felt they did their brother dirty. Like they completely wrote him out! But the truth is the Williams sisters would be nothing without their brother, Sherwin Williams. Without Sherwin, how do we even get the lines painted on the court?
CLOSING TIME
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Enjoy The Show,
K.Rapp