This was one of the most relaxing
trans-Atlantic flights I've ever been on. The Lufthansa flight to
Berlin may still beat it, but that's mostly because the stewardesses
gave me a beer every time the drinks cart went by on that one, so I
was feeling pretty good the whole time. This flight on BA, Mike and I
were randomly upgraded to the Economy Plus class. We're guessing it's
because the economy cabin was oversold (it sure looked packed) so we
gut bumped up a class.
In my current impoverished state of
grad student-ness, I don't think I could convince myself to cough up
an extra $200 on a $1200 flight to get a seat that's a tiny bit wider
and a significant whack of leg room. Once I'm working a real person
job, though, I'm thinking a hell to the yeah. I have an outlet. For
my laptop. And a foot rest. And a giant TV screen for movies. You'd
be amazed how these little comforts add up on a 9 hour flight (or
maybe you wouldn't).
Speaking of movies. These long flights
are normally my chance to catch up on movies I wanted to see but
didn't have the time for (often the case this year) or movies that I
thought looked amusing but would be damned if I'd pay full price for.
Premium Rush
- This was a fun little movie with bike messengers as the heroes
trying to keep a delivery from a crooked, malevolent, yet wonderfully
inept cop. The movie is not nearly so serious as the preview would
have liked you to believe, which I think is for the best. It was just
fun and I enjoyed it
from the perspective of a cyclist who would never in a million years
be that insane. Though I do appreciate that through it all the main
characters were wearing their helmets - thanks guys. Also, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt has the most adorable little evil giggle, which he uses
every time he skunks either the crooked cop or the world's most
unlucky bike cop, and it's impossible to not giggle along with him. I
think my older brother would appreciate the fact that the main
character (who is apparently the best bike messenger ever or
something) rides a steel-frame single speed. Though he doesn't have
brakes on his, which is a sure sign of insanity if the mischievous
giggle didn't tip you off already. The music for the movie was
excellent by the way - it begins and ends with Baba
O'Reiley, and I feel like it
earns that honor.
Lawless
- I have some very uncertain feelings about this one. It was either
good, or boring as shit, five minutes at a time. I loved Tom Hardy
(Forest) in all his understated, casual menace, and his way of liking
the Woman With a Past without ever changing his facial expression or
tone; it was all body language and looks. Not so sure about Shia
LeBouf, but he did a better job in this than in any other movie he's
ever been in I've seen, which if I'm to be honest is not saying a
whole lot. I swear I tried to go into this with an open mind, but
there was nothing about his performance that convinced me, let alone
grabbed me. The special agent from Chicago was appropriately creepy,
and the Woman With a Past was a perfect match for Forest, where it
was a love affair all in looks. Now, I did appreciate the way
violence was handled. Someone got punched hard, they went down, and
they bled. Someone got nailed in the side of the head with a shovel?
Down and stayed down. Not the usual thing that you see in more action
oriented movies. I liked about half the movie in those five minute
chunks, the other half I wrote things like this during because it
just didn't have my attention. A lot of those five minutes were the
ones where Shia LeBouf was romancing his girl.
Snow White and the Huntsman
- I actually had wanted to see this when it came out, but I was just
too busy because grad school blah blah whine whine my life is so
hard. Anyway, I ended up liking this far, far more than I thought I
would. I'm still not entirely convinced by Kristen Stewart as an
actress, but there was a fairly minimal number of times where she
appeared visibly incoherent and she had some very good scenes. The
movie was also just so goddamn pretty.
I knew it would be pretty, but I didn't expect it to be that visually
arresting. Charlize Theron just stole the entire show, though. I love
Chris Hemsworth, but it was her I ended up watching the movie for.
(Poor Chris Hemsworth, getting his thunder [hahaha] stolen by the
villain again.) Every moment she was on screen she just had me by the
throat, she was so angry and menacing even when she appeared entirely
calm. Charlize Theron's speech about men using women right before she
kills the king? She turned it up to eleven there and kept going for
the entire movie. I think what amazed me the most about the character
- and Theron's performance, since she sold it mightily - was that
there was so much raw pain still in her, a ragged internal wound that
she has obviously kept carefully open and bleeding, yet you never had
any doubt for one second that this woman was evil.
If I were less of a pathetic Tom Hiddleston fangirl, Loki might have
some serious competition for my favorite villain ever.
[Obligatory
Loki fangirling shut up I know I have a problem.]
Speaking
of Loki, I think the reason I like both him and Ravenna so much as
characters is because they each have such a clear internal framework
of pain and perceived wrong-doing on the part of the world at large
that their villainy makes sense.
They're not being evil because nyahahaha evil is fun, they're evil
because they believe
bone deep that they have been wronged at the world deserves
whatever it is they do. And because they are both played by such good
actors, for a few seconds at a time they can even convince you to
feel that raw internal wound even as you're appalled by what they
then use it to justify. From the outside moral perspective there is
no justification for their horrible acts, but it gives them a very
human emotional core that makes them wonderfully complex as
characters and so much more than boring one-note villains.
Really,
I think Ravenna is where Loki will soon mentally end up once he's
finished completely divorcing himself from reality as we know it.
He's almost there, except for those few flashes of hesitation we so
in The Avengers. Which
does give me hope that he could still find redemption, which was
plainly impossible for Ravenna since she was invested in her own
narrative twenty life-times worth.
I
think I just blew my own fangirl mind.
[/Obligatory
Loki fangirling]
Favorite
movie for the flight was definitely Snow White and the
Huntsman. If the movie list
doesn't change on the way back, I'm thinking I'll catch Ruby
Sparks (I was super disappointed
to miss that one in theaters) and then two out of the three of Men
in Black III, The
Campaign, and The
Watch. If I'm not entirely done
with comedies by that point.
Mike,
I will note, watched Battleship,
and then Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.
He actually liked the former better, which shocked me. Though it
sounds like it wasn't gleefully bad in the same way. I don't think
I'm curious enough to make myself watch it though.
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