The art of plane binge-watching

1/27/16 4:24pm

It was a 13-hour flight from Houston to Taipei. The constant repretzeling of legs, headsets that bite into your skin and bad breath were the all-too-familiar baggage that came with my actual baggage. And yet there is an unparalleled experience that is unique to the skies — a movie marathon that is more than just binge-watching Netflix. I give you a review of what happens when the Wright brothers meet the Lumiere brothers.

Elapsed time: one hour. Akin to attending a film festival, strategy is key: I had a limited number of hours and an even more limited attention span. First I browsed through the entire catalog. I tried to avoid the action adventures, as the small screens rarely do justice to the massive set pieces and choreography involved in these films. I also timed my least prioritized films for the middle of my flight when I most expect to fall asleep. After considerable deliberation, I decided on “Mr. Holmes.”

Elapsed time: three hours. I was feeling great, and my legs had not cramped up yet. Ian McKellen completely sold me on his portrayal of a septuagenarian Sherlock Holmes, an image that disturbed me because of how such an assured character could become so fragile. Unlike other stories of the famous detective, the mystery in “Mr. Holmes” is not in some criminal mastermind but rather in the mysteries of human minds. The film untangles the clockwork within Sherlock as he comes to terms with his mortal coil. 

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Elapsed time: five hours. After rearranging my legs, I watched “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.” I’m not sure if it was the low resolution of the screen or just Tom Cruise’s immortality, but the 53-year-old actor looked incredibly ageless. With much of the dazzle of the action removed by the constraints of the screen, I found myself noticing and appreciating the much-needed humor in “Rogue Nation” in this post-“Dark Knight” era. 

Elapsed time: seven hours. My biological clock was registering 4 a.m. when I started watching “Trainwreck.” The laughs kept me entertained and awake — Amy Schumer’s persona was pitch perfect in that she managed to breathe likability into a self-deprecating character. The plot fell slightly flat for me but avoided the tropes of romantic comedies enough to keep me positively interested.

Elapsed time: 11 hours. I woke up to the end credits of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” I faintly remember the comic-book noir look of the film, Henry Cavill’s and Armie Hammer’s gruff voices and a Cold War-era backdrop.

Elapsed time: 13 hours. Feeling restored, I watched the last film on my list, “Ricki and the Flash.” This film encapsulates perhaps the most ideal airplane movie, which is to say a film that I have mild interest in but probably would have forgotten about until it popped up in Netflix. Meryl Streep’s character is the lead in a rock-and-roll pub band and finds herself estranged from her children. The strength of the film lies in Streep’s authentic delivery of lines and lyrics, complemented further by her amazing hairdo, of course. Although many of the expected plot points were hit with a beat-by-beat predictability, “Ricki” reverses conventional midlife crisis structures by dealing with the social expectations of a woman, which I found pleasantly refreshing. 

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