Six months into a pandemic that has grounded much of the world, I not only miss traveling, I miss the small rituals of flying. The plane movie, for instance.
The ideal plane movie is something easy and low-stakes that you probably won’t ever think about again. You wouldn’t go see it in a theater for one reason or another, but it’s entertaining enough to keep you occupied while gliding thousands of feet above the earth, in the liminal space from here to there. There’s a strong chance, as our very own Brett Martin pointed out on This American Life, that it will make you cry for some inexplicable reason. (As someone who once got teary during Ricki and the Flash mid-air, I believe it.) There’s an even stronger chance that it’s a Dad Movie.
Here, we’ve curated our own inflight entertainment menu to replicate the experience while stuck home—and bypass the endless streaming buffet. It’s cheaper, safer, and gives off fewer carbon emissions.
Inferno
A few weeks ago, overcome with the urge to watch a Plane Movie™, I knew exactly where to turn: having screened the previous two Dan Brown film adaptations mid-flight, I needed to complete the trilogy with Inferno. Tom Hanks stars as Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who is basically an audience proxy for dads who are waiting for the day someone shows up at their door and tells them, “You’re the only person who can save the world from a global catastrophe, based entirely on knowledge gleaned from watching the History Channel all day.” In Inferno, it’s a deadly pandemic, so, bonus points for relevance. Even though you know there’s no way this one has a dark ending, it’s captivatingly twisty all the same. (My fellow Borgen-heads will also be pleased to see our girl Sidse Babett Knudsen.) Watch it, love it, Google “is symbiologist a real job?,” then call your dad. — Gabriella Paiella
The Intern
