So, I shall viciously double-post to actually present part II of my movies from my China trip!! I slept very long from Friday to Saturday and managed to stay awake for the entirety of both long-distance flights!!! I also figured out that I could start watching a movie long before take-off, I usually got half an hour into the first movie before we even got airborne. This is copied from what I told my mom back then.
Halloween - official "40 years later" sequel to the slasher classic from 1978. Rather predictable but decent fun, 7/10
Crazy Rich Asians - the famous romantic comedy that created such a huge impact last year. Very cute and funny, 8/10
The House with a Clock in its Walls - Jack Black and Cate Blanchett (wonderful!) as a warlock and witch living in a magical house with a hidden doomsday clock. Typical young adult stuff, 7/10
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween - more young adult magical slightly horror stuff, surprisingly fun movie, 8/10
Escape Room: Surprisingly good thriller/horror about six strangers who sign up to play an "escape room" - and of course it quickly becomes "dead serious". Bit of a bland ending made it an 8/10 for me.
These five during the nine-hour flight from Shanghai - I wrapped up the last one during taxiing in Dubai.
Turns out the movie selection on the Shanghai-Dubai leg is a lot more restricted. In the end, there were only three more movies in the "new movies" list I really wanted to see. Next to one I did watch later, I only missed Christopher Robin and The Old Man and the Gun.
Then four further movies on the second leg:
The Happytime Murders - a hilarious black R-rated comedy from none other than the Henson studio! It's a world where puppets exist as sentient beings, living next to humans. But they are treated in horribly racist ways. A former puppet cop has to tag-team with his human partner (Melissa McCarthy) to solve a puppet murder spree. Foulest language, tons of sexual innuendos and graphic violence (only against puppets). 8/10
Kin - this was a nice surprise. Takes place maybe mid-2000s (folding cell phones), and is generally a mix of crime movie and road trip. A young man has borrowed money from the wrong people (James Franco as a tough-as-nails criminal), things go south, the man's father gets killed and he has to flee with his younger (black, adopted) brother. But the really interesting aspect is that the kid has gotten access to a VERY powerful hypertechnological gun from some alien race, and now two of those creatures are following them too to get their weapon back. 8/10
The Kid Who Would Be King - a British movie, a retelling of Arthurian legend where Excalibur shows up in modern times, to be wielded by a nerdy 12-year old kid. This was also surprisingly fun, and had some nice creature effects. 8/10
And then I nearly missed the greatest of them all, as it was very near the end of the list. DOWNSIZING - Matt Damon movie in which a Norwegian (!) research institute creates the technology to shrink humans down to about 4 inches in height, in the hope to combat resource starvation and climate change. It did not have a deep, overarching plot but dealt wonderfully with the societal changes such technology would imply and in this sense reminded me of Äkta Människor (Real Humans).
10/10 hands down, this is one of the greatest SF movies I've ever seen, it could have been a book by Asimov or Neal Stephenson.
NINE movies in total! This must be a record for me.
In the end, there were still like five movies I wanted to see, two mentioned above, also Idiocracy and RBG. Next trip.