The Best Of Emirates In-Flight Viewing
- Jayde Walker
- Sep 17, 2013
- 3 min read
I recently came back from a three-week sojourn around Morocco/Spain (#espanyolo) and had the delight of flying return Emirates. Economy wasn’t anything to get excited about; however, Emirates’ in-flight entertainment system definitely was. Like any good movie buff, I used my 200+ hours of sitting prone productively by churning through some choice picks:
Stoker I’d literally just read the Empire review of Stoker on-board before discovering it was on the system. Empire penned it as being one of the hottest scripts in development last year, secretly written by Prison Break star Wentworth Miller. Stoker is a quirky, romantically shot piece starring Aussies Nic Kidman and Mia Wasikowska as a mother/daughter combo mourning the death of husband/dad/DILF Dermot Mulroney. Arriving on India’s (Wasikowska) 16th birthday/wake for dad is her mysterious, good-looking and hypnotically charismatic uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). Lonely old Kidman falls for Charlie’s sociopathic romantic overtures; but Charlie seems to only have creepy incestuous eyes for budding beauty India. Beautifully shot with a slow, thrilling pace, Stoker is a good little number for your mainstream art-house enthusiasts. Keep an eye out for another fellow female Aussie Jacki Weaver and Beautiful Creatures heartthrob Alden Ehrenreich.
Mama I’d been wanting to see Mama for a while but never really got around to it. With arty scare director Guillermo del Toro on board as executive producer and Hollywood golden girl Jessica Chastain and – holy shit! – Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones starring, you know this shiz is gonna be goooood. The missing nieces of Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, aka Jaime) are found going feral in a spooky forest five years after a thwarted murder-suicide attempt by their father. Lucas and gf Annabel (Chastain) take in the orphans but find the girls come with supernatural baggage - a weirdly possessive ghost mum who has decided she wants the kids back with her. Jealous human-ghost maternal rivalry ensues. It’s actually a beautiful film with a nice plot, and very del Toro-esque cinematography. While the ending is poignantly lovely (and shows the difference in ‘healthy’ mother-daughter relationships), the climax is just…a bit weird and slow.
Jagten (The Hunt) I’d read about the Danish film The Hunt being a bit of a good watch - I only previously knew Mads Mikkelson as the faintly reptilian-looking actor who played the TV Hannibal Lector. In The Hunt, Mikkelson is exceptionally good as wronged teacher Lucas. After a bad divorce and facing an ensuing custody fight over his son, Lucas is good-naturedly struggling to right his life in a small Danish town. He’s a popular local kindergarten teacher, he’s got a good group of hunting mates and there’s even a hot bit of stuff interested in chalking one up on his blackboard (if you know what I mean). Things really go to shit when he is falsely accused of molesting a little Danish Glenn Close in the making and the town jumps to major, defamatory conclusions in their hysterics. The Hunt is absolutely fantastic and really chilling in its depiction of a town spiralling into moral outrage without really doing any due diligence, damning a man in the process. This is honestly every teacher’s worst nightmare; however, a really great film that looks at morals and attitudes from all angles without judgement. Powerful (although slightly fanciful in some aspects) ending as well.
Crush Ah, the old archetype of the woman scorned. Gotta love a crazy obsessive bitch – Allie in Single White Female, Acher’s mum in Play Misty For Me, Madison in Swimfan, Adrian in The Crush, and, of course, the grandmammy of them all, the ball-shrinking Alex in Fatal Attraction. Usually, the chick goes bonkers after the bloke has been a bit of a dick (ie cheating in Swimfan/Fatal Attraction, shitty one-night stand in Misty, just being too old in The Crush). Crush actually throws in a nice twist to the standard clichéd stalker plot. Scott is literally the world’s most perfect high school guy - good-looking, sensitive, nice, a champion soccer player AND a gifted artist. No woman is immune to his all-American charms, including alt-girl weirdo stalker Bess. Bess likes having candlelit baths that overrun and flood the bathroom; she also wears all black but isn’t from Melbourne so you just KNOW she’s a weirdo. Scott gets some anonymous love letters, which is a bit weird but you know, totally flattering…then shit starts REALLY getting physical in a nasty way. Good, easy teen thriller – slightly predictable but still packs a nice punchy twist (if you manage to stay away from the poster or DVD cover, which *SPOILER* pretty much spoils everything).
