Airplane Movie Reviews Part 1

So I’m sitting here at the Shanghai Pudong Airport, waiting for my flight back home. I’ll be traveling over 20 hours, with a stopover at Seoul, where I’ll grab lunch and check out the city with Cliff, my roommate at Cal fall semester.

Whenever I travel internationally, I have a tradition of watching as many movies as I can during the flight. This usually means 4-5 movies, plus some time left over for food, music, and reading.

On my flight over, I watched 4 movies, which I want to quickly review. I’ll have part 2 up after I get back to LA.

From Paris With Love – typical partner action movie, involving Asian gangsters and/or Middle Eastern terrorists. Very predictable plot, typical gun fight/action scenes, average acting, and a bald and fat John Travolta. Makes me wish I’d watched Pulp Fiction instead. 1/5

How To Train Your Dragon – an animated movie about Vikings and dragons. Original and interesting story, awesome dragon designs, and well-done dragon fight scenes. Now I want my very own Night Fury. 5/5

Invictus – a movie about post-apartheid South Africa, centering around President Mandela and his support of the rugby team during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. This movie had a lot of potential, with a meaningful subject matter and great acting by Morgan Freeman. However, I thought the film tried to do too much at once, and it was hard for me to relate to the events because of my unfamiliarity with apartheid and South Africa. But it has definitely piqued my interest in the subject matter. 3/5

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – Heath Ledger’s final film, released posthumously with supporting roles from Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. A fantasy film about a traveling theater troupe, this movie was interesting, a bit confusing, and very trippy. Stellar acting as usual from Ledger and the rest. 4/5

My plane’s a-callin’ at randomtidbitsofthought.wordpress.com.