Philippines Trip 2018 – Day 9: Return Trip Movie Marathon

The return trip from the Philippines is so much fun for me. I get another movie marathon!

I can easily watch 7-8 movies on the 17-hour trip, and with the time change (gaining 12 hours), you land as if you just flew cross-country within the US. We left early morning on a Tuesday and arrived early afternoon on the same day!

I watched another eclectic mix of movies, and I even dipped into the Classics menu because I had seen too many of the first-run films. (That’s when you know you’ve spent too much time watching movies.)

I preferred my eight-movie marathon on the outbound flight but it makes sense since I picked the movies I was most excited about to start the trip.

1. Coco – my 16-year old daughter was really on me to see Coco, and since I’m a musician with a big, close family, I can see why. Sweet, charming movie. I preferred Inside/Out myself, which was the cartoon of choice for the start of the trip, but I can see why people went loco for Coco.
2. Crazy Heart – I didn’t think I could be a bigger fan of Colin Farrell, but now he sings? I didn’t even know he was in the movie so it was a treat to see him featured in the end. This is a 2009 movie that had been on my list for a while because I love good acting and films about music. I had heard raves for Jeff Bridges’ performance (he does his own singing too). The movie is a bit slower paced than I like but still worth seeing.
3. Everest – I liked the Who’s Who aspect of the movie given all the star power packed into numerous small roles in the movie. Keira Knightley; Emily Watson; Robin Wright; Josh Brolin; Jake Gyllenhaal; even Sam Worthington, who I only recognized when the credits were running (he was the guy on the satellite phone talking to the doomed guide). Many of the roles are almost blink-and-you-miss-them. I had read “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer so I already knew the sad story of the climb that claimed 8 lives in 1996, but it didn’t take away the sting of watching the retelling.
4. Justice League – I didn’t just see sad movies like Everest, but also threw in some popcorn favorites like Justice League. I am not a big fan of the superhero genre, and this one didn’t change my mind. It was fun to hear Ben Affleck’s ridiculous voicing of the Batman character again and always great to see Wonder Woman, but I would skip this one unless you’re a diehard superhero fan.
5. Kingsman: The Secret Service – I couldn’t help but wonder if Colin Firth agreed to make this movie because he owed some back taxes or fell behind on his mortgage. Perhaps, he just wanted a movie to show his grandkids he could do action flicks. It was sort of fun seeing Firth being outnumbered by a much younger and bigger gang in an English pub and still come out on top without wrinkling his suit (of course, he’s impeccably dressed throughout the film). A big bonus is getting to see Samuel L. Jackson hamming it up again, this time as an Internet billionaire (think Elon Musk as Darth Vader). But I’ve quickly forgotten the rest of the movie.
6. Suburbicon – You can definitely skip this one despite another reliable acting turn from Julianne Moore. It’s a halfway interesting murder-the-spouse mystery, but uses the racial tensions of 1950’s suburban America as a backdrop in the movie, playing it like a prop, which comes off just as tacky as it sounds. It reminded me of Colossal, a 2016 creature feature with Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis destroying Seoul from halfway around the world. It was an interesting premise (regular people somehow become monsters from the old creature features), except for the wholesale destruction of a major city and the deaths of thousands of people as a sidebar.
7. Taxi Driver – I had never seen this movie but, of course, had seen many times the now infamous, “You talkin’ to me” clips with Robert DeNiro. I wanted to see firsthand what all the fuss was about – it’s preserved in the National Film Registry! I guess I just watch movies to be entertained because I completely missed the value in this one. Yes, it’s gritty and I’ll leave it at that.

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It wasn’t a strong movie marathon but still a fun cap off to the great food, good will, and of course, real estate scouting of a week in the Philippines.