I took a vacation for two weeks in New Zealand which involved flying over the Pacific Ocean-there and back again.  I usually enjoy plane rides long or short since I can finish off a book, sleep most of the way, or pass the time with free movies.  Virgin Airlines usually has a great choice of movies to watch for free.  My flight over I didn’t watch that many since I wanted to get myself on the proper sleep schedule.  Coming back I had the unfortunate middle seat along with people seated directly behind and in front of me who made it their mission to keep me from sleeping at all, so all I did was watch film after film.  Anyway, here is what I watched and what I thought about them.

• Frozen – 4/5
  • Yes, I know I’m late to this party. I thought Frozen was a great Disney movie. Fun plot, funny characters, good sing-a-long songs, and a happy ending. Tangled was better.
• Monsters University – 3.5/5
  • I’ll be honest, I only watched this for Nathan Fillion, and he was awesome! A nifty prequel with your typical underdog plot.
• Despicable Me – 5/5
  • Somehow, I missed this when it came out and never got around to watching it. Well, I’m really glad I caught it on the flight back because I was blown away. The animation was brilliant, the acting was top notch, and I was not expecting to have my emotions pulled out at 30,000 miles in the air!  After it was over, I just sat there feeling so happy for Gru.
• Fifth Estate – 4/5
  • A cyber thriller telling the debated story of Wikileaks and its creator Julian Assange, comes with a healthy dose of Benedict Cumberbatch. If you like journalistic, uncover the truth, race against authority thrillers then you’ll probably enjoy this. The film is probably more of a 3/5, it lagged for me at times. But I’ve always found the whole Wikileaks story very interesting and could follow along with my own knowledge, so that might have made it more enjoyable for me.
• Now You See Me – 3.5/5
  • A band of magicians start to rob banks during their live performances and the FBI is after them. Super fun to see the magic get executed, FBI outsmarted, and watch the plot twist and turn further.
• Act of Valor – ?/5
  • I more or less collapsed in my seat from exhaustion halfway through this one, finally thwarting the sleep barons surrounding me. I am assuming this is probably a 2/5 at best if I had to predict what the score would be. It felt like they came up with the idea, “Hey let’s use real a real Navy SEAL team as the action stars” and didn’t take it much further.