The 50 Best Airplane Movies, Ranked

Christopher Nolan was insistent on Tenet playing in theaters at the height of COVID—even though major American cities like New York hadn’t lifted restrictions when the film premiered in September 2020. For Nolan, Tenet wasn’t just meant to preserve the theatrical experience in unprecedented times: It’s the kind of movie that’s meant to be seen on the biggest possible screen. But with apologies to Time Daddy, Tenet also works like gangbusters on a plane. The plot is nonsensical and features goofy concepts like inversion (essentially, time-travel) and temporal pincer movements (one team of fighters moving forward in time; the other backwards in time). Fortunately, being able to hear all the dialogue doesn’t make Tenet any more coherent. Now, onto the positives: Nolan can stage an action sequence as good as any filmmaker on the planet, and Ludwig Göransson’s score is what folks in the industry call a “banger.” When Tenet is clicking, it’s like a knockoff Michael Mann thriller; when it’s impossible to follow, check out what’s going on in the aisles. Besides, if there’s any tentpole worth seeing on a plane, it’s the movie that blew up a real 747.

You know those dreams where everyone you hate is in one place and you can’t get away from them, no matter how hard you try? That’s Death on the Nile. It’s populated by a who’s who of the most loathed actors Kenneth Branagh could drum up (plus a few we actually like!) chewing desert scenery. The gaudily bad CGI, murderers’ row of bad accents, risible line readings, unconvincing declarations of love, and Annette Bening’s godawful painting only add to its nightmarish qualities—this is not beautiful Egypt, but an uncanny Nile River Valley you have to get murdered in to escape. But luckily, you don’t have to die to get out of this bad dream. Death on the Nile is the perfect airplane movie for a long flight—it’ll put you right to sleep so you don’t have to watch it anymore.

I refuse to believe that there are 47 better ways to get through a flight than Venom, which is less a movie than the perfect antidote to a few hours in a middle seat. Just turn off your mind, relax, and give yourself over to the symbiote. Sure, the plot is nonsensical. All the better to drift in and out of a mid-flight nap; you just snoozed for 20 minutes and didn’t miss a beat, save for a riff or two between Tom Hardy and his alien copilot. It just doesn’t much matter who is going where and why when the whole movie rides on Hardy’s inexplicable mannerisms and slapstick charisma—both of which play perfectly on a tiny airplane screen. Venom is just the right kind of ridiculous. A higher-minded adaptation would have lost the antic quality that turned a movie about a Spider-Man villain with no Spider-Man into a box office smash. More ambitious comic book movies might work well for a weekend marathon at home, but up in the air you don’t always have the window for a bloated runtime. Watch a bit, skip the end—it’s just not that serious, and that’s the point.

Few experiences illustrate wealth disparities as starkly as trudging from the front of a plane to the back. If you’re sitting in steerage, how can you not resent those posh passengers reclining in their fancy, first-class cabin, with their dedicated carry-on-space, their pre-takeoff beverages, and their favorable bathroom-to-traveler ratio? When the curtain closes, cutting off coach’s unwashed masses, do those high rollers wrinkle their noses like Mr. Park from Parasite and complain about poorer fliers’ subway smell? And do some of those late boarders, banished to the back, dream of infiltrating the front? Snowpiercer might be the Bong Joon-ho film most applicable to the plight of sitting in 42B, but Parasite is a close second. Talk about economic immobility: Squeezing into a middle seat with little legroom on a tin can that flies through the sky viscerally simulates squatting in the film’s secret underground bunker, which will make you feel for the equally cramped Ki-taek. But hey, if you have to ride with the rest of the hoi polloi, at least you can show your fellow plebs in economy class how cultured you are by screening a thought-provoking Best Picture—one with subtitles, to boot.

Even a few tiny bottles of liquor deep, anyone can keep up with three characters. And there truly are only three characters in Challengers. Would you benefit from watching the final scene of Challengers (POV: tennis ball) on a screen larger than your hand? Sure. But the shenanigans of this film are so boldly immoral, so willfully psychosexual that you don’t actually need to be able to keep up with the tennis semantics to keep up with the story. Plus, the bone structure of Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor, and Zendaya could literally come through on an Apple Watch.

No, a small screen embedded in the seat-back in front of you isn’t the ideal digital canvas on which to display the work of a distinctive cinematic stylist. And yes, when you watch a Wes Anderson production on a plane, you will miss some of the detail that the director stuffs into each frame of his films. But it’s not as if you need an IMAX theater with a bitchin’ sound system to appreciate tweeness, and the pastel symmetry of Anderson’s mise-en-scène can be calming in a way that eases the stress of travel. Plus, as the title suggests, Grand Budapest Hotel revolves around a hotel, and if you’re flying, you may be on your way to one. I especially recommend watching this movie if you’re on a Boeing 747 or an Airbus A380, both because being on a big plane probably means you have lots of time to kill, and because the idea would delight the director. As Anderson said a decade ago while promoting Budapest, “The idea of a two-story airplane is, like a little village or an ocean liner, quite striking to me.” He’s made a wonderful film set on (and under) the sea; when will he make one set in the sky?

One of the great joys of browsing an in-flight entertainment selection is stumbling upon a movie from approximately two presidents ago and going, “Oh yeah, that movie!” The Shallows is a prime example: a 2016 mid-budget shark attack thriller that’s pretty memory-holed yet perfectly watchable. If you can handle a little gore (in one scene, Blake Lively’s character gives herself stitches with one of those long cuff earrings that were popular in the 2010s—yeesh) while enduring some turbulence, then there are much worse things you could tune into than a great white chewing Lively’s leg off the bone under the orange tinge of the Mexico filter. Throw in some family trauma, impromptu medical procedures, and bystanders getting turned into chum and you’ve got yourself a solid airplane movie. It’s got more than enough suspense and gnarly fight scenes to keep one entertained for its sub-90 minute runtime. Plus, you can take solace in the fact that you’re flying thousands of feet above any ocean predators. The comforts of human flight!

In the air or on the ground, Jackie Chan’s films may be some of the most visually entertaining projects on the market, and 1998’s Rush Hour is no exception. Chan’s movies are never heavy on story, and the first film in the Rush Hour trilogy lays out a plot that’s simple to understand: A child is kidnapped, and Jackie Chan will stop at nothing to get her home safe, even if that means working with Chris Tucker in Los Angeles. It’s a movie built on the bond between these two, as a natural culture clash leads to hilarity but also hard-earned camaraderie. Rush Hour combines Tucker's super-animated comedic style with sharp dialogue—and thanks to the chemistry he has with Chan, Rush Hour on any flight is a layup.

Sometimes the perfect plane movie is a decades-old, comfort-food classic. Maybe you’ve seen it a zillion times and just need a soothing soundtrack while you try to sleep sitting up, tune out a nearby baby, or ignore nasty turbulence. Or maybe you’ve missed it somehow, and the forced confinement of air travel is your impetus to rectify the oversight. Either way, When Harry Met Sally is there for you—and it’s over in 90-ish minutes, which is perfect when you don’t quite have two hours left before you get to the gate. In male-female friendships, Harry insists, “the sex part gets in the way.” Fortunately, it doesn’t get in the way when you’re watching When Harry Met Sally on a screen your seatmates can see. There’s no nudity in this building block of the rom-com canon, which makes it one of the most plane-appropriate R-rated movies imaginable. And because it predates sexting, it even avoids the Daddio problem that Qantas encountered this year. If I’m on a plane and see someone watching When Harry Met Sally, I’ll have what they’re having. And I’ll spend the rest of my trip hoping Hollywood comes up with better comeback vehicles for Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan than Before and What Happens Later.

Pacific Rim is my platonic ideal of a summer blockbuster. First there’s the gloriously stupid premise: Kaijus are attacking our planet through interdimensional ocean portals, and humanity has decided to stop this existential threat by pulling all of its resources toward building giant robots that punch them in the face. (Truly, no notes.) Then there’s the fact that Pacific Rim has Guillermo del Toro at the helm, a generationally gifted auteur who’s never shied away from silly genre projects (see also: the Hellboy movies, Blade II, and Cronos). From the comfort of your airplane seat, enjoy a rock 'em sock 'em showdown between monster and machine that has no right to look as good as it does. Idris Elba delivers arguably the best motivational movie speech since Independence Day. Charlie Hunnam is actually kind of intelligible. A robot uses a cargo ship like a baseball bat: 

A film like this is what plane-watching was invented for. But let’s all just pretend Pacific Rim: Uprising never happened; that sequel’s so bad it’s not even plane worthy.

The quintessential cat-and-mouse ’90s tale, The Fugitive is the kind of smart adult action thriller they just don’t make anymore. Come for the riveting Harrison Ford performance and the mechanics of the whodunit, stay for a career-best Tommy Lee Jones. But chances are that if you’re firing this one up, you’ve likely seen it a few dozen times on TNT (and perhaps listened to a Rewatchables episode or two acknowledging that fact). The Fugitive is pure in-flight comfort food, one that you probably know every second of. That’s doubly true for its most famous scene, the Richard Kimble dam jump—a moment that will not only have you glued to your small screen, but also wondering how he survived that without inflating his floatation device.

It feels almost sacrilegious to include a classic film like Fellowship of the Ring on this list, but your likely familiarity with it is also what makes it a solid airplane watch—especially on a long flight. Out of all the LOTR movies, Fellowship is the best—and perhaps only one—suited for this unique situation where you have time to pass and nowhere to go. It doesn’t have one of the trilogy’s epic battles, like Helm’s Deep or Pelennor Fields. Nor does it carry the emotional weight of The Return of the King, so you won’t have to worry about quietly sobbing next to some middle-aged man during that 10-minute goodbye between the Big Four Hobbits or that moment when Aragorn tells them, “You bow to no one.” (Just me?)

There’s something uniquely nostalgic about returning to the Shire at the onset of our heroes’ journey, before Frodo Baggins had been corrupted by the ring, when Gandalf was still grey and Samwise Gamgee’s most daunting task was working up the courage to talk to Rose Cotton. It’s a good movie to tune in and out of as you attempt to drown out the noise of the baby crying two rows behind you, or as you try to ignore the loss of sensation in your legs as they jam into the seat in front of you. But chances are, you’ll end up getting sucked back into the start of one of cinema’s greatest trilogies, wishing desperately that there was a bigger screen to witness Gandalf yell “you shall not pass” for the 100th time.

One of the all-time great airport bookstore purchases, The Big Short is just as captivating on the seat-back screen. Adam McKay’s deliberately hectic 2015 film adaptation of the landmark Michael Lewis book explores the causes of, and the fallout from, the mid-’00s subprime mortgage crisis—with a little help from didactic fourth-wall-breaking friends like Anthony Bourdain and Margot Robbie in a bubble bath. And they're just the fleeting cameos: There’s also Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell and Christian Bale! 

The movie pairs particularly nicely with a window seat view: it’s hard not to gaze down from on high over miles and miles of American culdesacs and McMansions and exurban sprawl and not be reminded of that scene in the movie where the fellas visit Florida. And if you have a long flight, The Big Short lends itself well to follow-up rabbit-holing. You could peruse the Wikipedia page for the eccentric Michael Burry (played by Bale in the film); enjoy this extremely pure eight-year-old interview with Hamish Linklater and Jeremy Strong; or just put on the rad score, composed by the guy behind the Succession music (sample track titles: “Mouseclick Symphony Mvmt 1” and “Restricting Withdrawals”) and take an extremely tense nap.

OK, let’s be honest: This is a perfect, decades-spanning love story, but cueing up Before Midnight on a plane should get you put on some kind of list. Nobody needs that sort of emotional violence at 40,000 feet, least of all the people sitting in your row when it turns you into a blubbering mess. But there has never in human history been a bad time to watch Before Sunrise or Before Sunset, both utterly magnetic films in their own particular ways. For years, they worked as a sort of a personality test. Are you the hopeless romantic dodging eye contact in the listening booth? Or the jaded 30-something lamenting missed connections on the Seine? The same exercise can work in miniature on the way to your final destination: Are you taking a Sunrise trip or a Sunset trip? It’s almost aspirational. Your in-flight movie isn’t just entertainment, after all—it’s a whole vibe. So just set the tone and let Jesse and Céline do the rest, walking and talking their way through some of the most beautiful cities in the world. The time will absolutely fly, and let me tell you from experience: “Baby, you’re gonna miss that plane!” just hits different when you’re already soaring.

Bright and biting, 1995’s Clueless captivates you from the start. This ultra-’90s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma is truly Alicia Silverstone’s playground. She was known at the time from a trio of Aerosmith videos (“Cryin’,” “Amazing,” and “Crazy”), but her work in this film may be her best. It’s a story that you’ve seen play out before—entitled person tries to make a newcomer conform and ends up learning about herself in the process—but it’s the visual display that truly wins you over. From Cher’s ’fits and Donald Faison stealing every scene he appears in to the fact that Clueless also features a 26-year-old Paul Rudd looking every bit the college student he was portraying, there are a lot of amazing little pieces that turn Clueless into a total Betty.

Adam Sandler’s first big blockbuster is as sweet as a Ring Pop. It’s silly, occasionally corny, rarely dirty, and full of big needle drops and references from the ’80s. (The Table #9 bit is the closest it comes to Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore.) In other words, the movie is just fun. You can turn it on at any point to help tune out the little kid sitting one seat over watching Bluey on an iPad without headphones. There’s no shame in napping a bit during this one, though I’d recommend trying to stay awake for the party scenes. Every time the Sandman starts belting out songs, it’s magical.

The perfect airplane movie is one in which the characters, like you, are on a trip. Few journeys this side of Mordor have surpassed that of Almost Famous’s teenaged William, who manages to hitch a ride on the tour of a just-about-to-make-it-big 1970s rock band that is definitely not Led Zeppelin, all while filing reports to a heyday Rolling Stone and undertaking a spiritual baptism in the finer points of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There’s not a rock fan alive who doesn’t dream of a time machine to take them back to witness those heady days of literal rockstars burning the house down with their first colossal hits, and all the sordid and seedy stuff that came with it: the groupies and all-nighters and trashed hotel rooms and contraband. Almost Famous isn’t, alas, a time machine, but for two hours, it’ll take you there.

Is there anything better than watching a plane scene in a movie—well, a plane scene in a movie with 0 percent peril—while you’re actually on a plane? Pretend that you’re accidentally high as a kite and “readyyyy to paaaartaaaaay” instead of, in fact, readyyyy to screeeeam while wedged between a snorer and an infrequent showerer. And as you laugh along to Melissa McCarthy and Kristin Wiig, just remember: There’s much more sense of community in coach!

Like I was saying: the platonic ideal of an airplane movie is one centered on its characters’ own journey to faraway lands. Granted, the one undertaken by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, in which Farrell’s hitman character is sent to cool his heels while he waits for a verdict after a job gone horribly wrong, is not one you’d like to find yourself on. Still, other than that minor note of violence, it seems like a pretty great trip: the medieval towers and romantic canals of a jewel box Belgian city, the softy falling snowflakes, the boozing and rabble-rousing of a trained gun with zero interest in the niceties of continental tourism, the camaraderie of a grumpy Gleeson—sign me up. Just maybe leave out the guns.

Ratatouille is appropriate to watch in nearly every scenario, but especially on an airplane. It’s familiar. It’s Pixar. It’s funny (but not so funny that you burst into laughter and end up being that guy.) It’s surprisingly complex, like Remy’s palette. But overall, it’s comfort food at its finest—go ahead and fire this up as your main course and start fantasizing about all the delicious meals you’ll eat in the exotic locale you’re traveling to. And unlike some of the other films on this list, Ratatouille has precisely 0 percent chance of offending any nearby children or the elderly couple in the row behind you. Bonus points if you’re on the way to Paris—then this movie arguably becomes mandatory viewing.

An actual classic. Ever dreamed of what it would have been like to spend the perfect day playing hooky in high school? Too scared to admit to your peers that you haven’t taken in this almost 40-year-old speedrun through the life of the most shifty teen to ever hit a school system? While almost two hours long, Ferris Bueller moves rapidly from beat to beat, always providing some amazing spectacle (like Ferris leading a whole street parade in a performance of the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout”) or some brilliant act of deceit (like how Ferris finesses the table at a five-star restaurant); it’s a real dope example of ’80s comedy done right, with a satisfying ending for any character you’re following. It’s the perfect distraction film, and when you’re done, you can play “What day did Ferris Bueller actually take off?” with the other folks in your row.

Every year a handful of movies come out that really oughta be seen, but in your mind just don’t justify the cost of a theater ticket—or even that rental fee on Google Play. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a shining example of this. This is a deeply affecting film with perhaps the most slept-on performance of 2023 (Rachel McAdams, who plays a mother navigating the challenges of raising a preteen girl while being estranged from her own parents). It’s for this reason that Are You There God? makes perfect sense to watch on your next flight—you’re strapped in with nowhere else to go, and this time it’s free. Sit back and commit to one of the more underrated gems in recent memory. After all, who doesn’t love a good Judy Blume story?

I owe Logan Lucky an apology: I wasn’t really familiar with its game. (Turns out I was conflating this movie with a TV show called Lucky Louie for years.) So you can imagine my surprise and intrigue when I came across Logan Lucky on a flight and learned that it’s actually the film of my dreams. A bleach-tipped Daniel Craig doing a joyously absurd southern accent years before the release of Knives Out and Jack Quaid playing a character named “Fish Bang”? An Ocean’s Eleven-inspired heist plot involving concessions at a NASCAR race in lieu of the Bellagio vault? Adam Driver and Channing Tatum? DIRECTED BY STEVEN SODERBERGH? Sometimes the friendly skies provideth, and when they do, I just sit back with my Biscoff cookies and SunChips and watch.

Finally, a movie you can watch even if your AirPods are dead. A Quiet Place is, of course, based on the importance of remaining silent. But it’s also a movie you can successfully half pay attention to. As my colleague Ben Lindbergh wrote recently, the franchise’s monsters are basically loreless creations with unclear motivations. You won’t find yourself getting lost in details or wondering what the hell you just missed when the flight attendant tried offering you peanuts. So while the original Quiet Place comes close to violating one of the main rules of airplane movies—nothing exceedingly violent—it’s also the perfect film to zone out to. One drawback, however: It probably won’t help you drown out your talkative neighbor in the middle seat.

In 2017, former Ringer writer K. Austin Collins reviewed Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game, and perfectly captured how the film is representative of the legendary screenwriter’s particular storytelling tendencies. “[Sorkin’s] projects don’t seem like trash because his characters, like the scripts they’re trapped in, are so eager to hold us, and each other, hostage to their smarts,” Collins wrote. “But binge-worthy trash—not high art—is Sorkin’s speciality, whatever his ambitions. And his ridiculous but addictively watchable new movie Molly’s Game, starring Jessica Chastain, is the latest case in point.”

“Ridiculous but addictively watchable” is Molly’s Game in a nutshell, a film that lures you in with one of Sorkin’s trademark monologues—as Chastain’s Molly Bloom begins her story by recounting the day that her Olympic skiing dreams ended—and never loses momentum. Based on a true story, Molly’s Game follows Bloom as she builds an underground poker empire and earns the tabloid title of “Poker Princess” before running afoul of the FBI. Chastain delivers a captivating performance to lead a starry cast befitting Bloom’s high-profile, high-stakes poker games, which featured the likes of Hollywood celebrities, superstar athletes, billionaire businessmen, and the Russian mob.

As much as Sorkin’s fast-talking dialogue and relentless voiceovers can get a little exhausting over the film’s 141-minute runtime, it’s all part of what amounts to an energetic, engrossing watch that will have you itching to play some in-flight poker by the time the end credits roll.

The only problem with watching Office Space on an airplane is that you’ll inevitably laugh a little too loud than you should in public. But hey, it’s worth it. Every scene in the movie—it’s only 89 minutes long—has laugh-out-loud jokes, many of which are, admittedly, inappropriate for any nearby kids. But if it’s a bumpy ride, or if you’re hungover from three airport beers, or if you’re not looking forward to spending the holidays sleeping in your childhood bedroom, I’d suggest throwing this on as a salve. It’s the most cathartic comedy of the last 25 years.

While The Social Network is one of the best and most iconic films of the century, it left a decade-plus-long trail of largely mediocre, based-on-a-true-story knockoffs in its wake—think Dumb Money, The Big Short, and Jobs. By far the most successful of those imitators, though, is 2023’s BlackBerry, which chronicles the inception of the once-dominant line of smartphones (and notable Kardashian accessory) and its eventual downfall at the hands of Apple’s iPhone. Director Matt Johnson’s extremely Canadian film casts Jay Baruchel as Research in Motion CEO Mike Lazaridis, who was one of the primary developers of the BlackBerry phone. Glenn Howerton costars in the Justin Timberlake–Sean Parker role as investor Jim Balsillie, and Johnson himself stands out in a supporting Andrew Garfield–Eduardo Saverin part as RIM cofounder and Lazaridis’s best friend Doug Fregin. Friendships deteriorate, people get corrupted by capitalism, and the quality of technology declines beyond recognition. What’s not to love? Sure, it’s still no Social Network, but by not having the lofty ambitions of other copycats like The Big Short, BlackBerry avoids some of the prestige pitfalls and overstylization that can get in the way of the central story, focusing instead on presenting its familiar beats in a compelling way. And if that doesn’t sell you, then Baruchel’s fluorescent pompadour wig and Howerton’s bald head will at least keep you occupied for a couple hours.

Part of the beauty of the Mission: Impossible franchise is that you pretty much know exactly what you’re getting out of any of its seven (and counting) films: entertaining action sequences, nifty spy gadgets that include (but are not limited to) masks that are ripped off in dramatic fashion, a stacked ensemble cast of gorgeous actors, one impossible mission, and Tom Cruise attempting to outdo each successive movie with increasingly dangerous stunts. 

While the franchise’s remarkable set pieces often deserve to be seen on the big screen, the M:I films are light enough on plot that they still serve as ideal airplane viewing. Although it’s a little less true with the later entries, like 2018’s Fallout, you can jump into almost any M:I installment and not have to worry about missing any crucial story elements or character developments from a previous film. All you have to do is sit back, recline your chair just enough to get slightly more comfortable (and annoy the person sitting behind you), and enjoy as Ethan Hunt rides motorcycles off of mountains and scales the tallest building in the world.

A24’s pro wrestling masterpiece focuses on the tragic tale of the Von Erich family, and The Iron Claw may be one of the greatest examples of airplane viewing there is—though that might seem counterintuitive. No matter how great it is seeing Zac Efron or Jeremy Allen White running the ropes in their wrestling trunks, the pro wrestling of it all may have deterred some from seeing it when it was in theaters. But during a flight back home? That’s a fine time to get pulled into this tearjerker. And while Sean Durkin and Co. did a phenomenal job of bringing the many truths that lie within the squared circle to the silver screen, it’s the difficult family drama that will keep you tuned in, even if you have to keep asking the flight attendant for Kleenex.

Sometimes you need an easygoing rom-com to release the tension as you pass through a rough patch of turbulence. Look to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which may not be set on some Mediterranean coast as its title might suggest (just wintery Chicago, NBD), but is nonetheless a fantastic option. At only 95 minutes long, Greek Wedding is perfect for those awkward flight lengths on which even a two-hour movie risks cutting off in the third act. Best of all, Greek Wedding isn’t just empty calories like those ultra-thin pretzels the flight attendant handed out—it’s a genuinely delightful movie with substantive things to say about family and cultural identity. My Big Fat Greek Wedding may not take place in Santorini, but you’ll be inspired to book your next flight there to try some homecooked lamb. Don’t worry if you're vegetarian—like Aunt Voula said, it’s not “meat.”

What if an accountant, but guns? That’s what you’re getting yourself into when you press play on 2016’s The Accountant, and boy does it deliver on that premise. Plane movie king Ben Affleck stars as the titular accountant (but guns) Christian Wolff, a math genius with autism who “uncooks” financial records for criminal organizations. I’m still not totally sure what that means, but you don’t really need to—just sit back, relax, and get lost in the overly complicated plot and Affleck beating up some faceless henchman as side characters say stuff like, “I’ll handle this accountant myself.” If things get too hard to follow, don’t worry, there’s a scene in which J.K. Simmons explains the entire plot of the movie. And you know what, the man monologues his ass off. Convoluted reveals and borderline moronic twists abound, plus the movie’s got some genuinely fun performances from Simmons, Jon Bernthal, and John Lithgow. The Accountant is probably not a good movie, but it’s also maybe a great movie, and that’s pretty much exactly what you’re looking for when it comes to a plane flick.

What can one do with a rom-com so blond and beautiful, so absolutely chock-full of misunderstandings and near misses, except take in its predictable comforts and PG-13 thrills on a plane? Watch from a few rows back if you want—the star power of early-aughts Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey (pre-McConaissance!) and nostalgia for that iconic backless yellow gown moment will filter back juuuust fine.

I first watched Paddington 2 alone in my apartment during the pandemic—an experience not unlike watching it on a plane. Whether you’re waiting out a monthslong global health crisis or an hourslong international flight (to London, one hopes), Paddington 2 offers a retreat from interminably drab surroundings into a pastel pop-up book of impeccably decorated Windsor Gardens homes, fantastical roaming carnivals, and all the landmarks and hallmarks of London (even the Victorian-era prison seems homey). Beyond inspiring a London itinerary, Paddington 2 may also inspire some loving kindness for the dregs of humanity you might encounter on a flight. Aunt Lucy’s choice aphorisms—“If we’re kind and polite, the world will be right” and “If you look for the good in people, you’ll find it”—inspire Paddington’s vision of the world, and they may just inspire you, too, as you opt not to recline your seat and to give up your armrest to someone who may need it more.

Sports movies make for great plane watches because they typically follow a comforting, predictable structure. Act I: Team is introduced, and we find out it has problems. Act II: New players, a new coach, or new circumstances force said team to combat those problems. Act III: Team comes together and either wins it all, or at least comes out better on the other side. Remember the Titans hits all of those marks—plus it stars Denzel Washington. What more could you ask for?

Seriously, though, exercise caution when watching Titans on a flight. It’s scientifically (or pseudo-scientifically) proven that we’re all more emotionally fragile in the air, and between the “left side”/“strong side” exchange, Gerry Bertier’s accident, the Gettysburg speech, and the chill-inducing “You make sure they remember forever the night they played the Titans” line, you’re virtually guaranteed to shed a few tears. And Coach Yoast won’t be there to give you a pep talk.

The plot of Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age classic doesn’t really matter. Shit, he once said it himself: “I want to capture the moment-to-moment reality and energy of being a teenager. … It will have a lot of characters and not a lot of plot but if I set it in the ’70s, everyone will at least think it’s ‘about’ something.” It takes place on the last day of school in Austin in 1976. That’s all you need to know. It’s a movie you can get lost in without having to think too much about what’s going on, which makes it the perfect distraction on a flight that’s three hours or less. (At barely 100 minutes, it’s not going to take up that much of a cross-country flight.) Just forget about the flight and imagine tossing your textbooks out the window of your GTO to the tune of “School’s Out.”

“Great moments are born from great opportunity.” If you got chills just reading that line, you’re not alone. That’s the start of the speech Herb Brooks (played in Miracle by a plaid-pants-wearing Kurt Russell) gives to Team USA ahead of its 1980 Winter Olympic battle with the Soviet Union. I would quote the whole thing here, but that wouldn’t do it justice. You need to watch it to really feel it—and I don’t just say that because Russell’s Minnesotan accent makes me feel at home.

There are a lot of sports movies that make for solid plane movies, but only one features Russell, a longstanding feud between Boston and Minnesota hockey players, the Soviet Union as a Big Bad (still relevant today!), and Al Michaels’s iconic “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” call. Plus, who wouldn’t want to watch a bunch of young, athletic dudes be forced to skate until they puke while you’re comfortably (or not-so-comfortably) ensconced in your seat, sipping on wine and not scheduled to move for another few hours? Sounds pretty perfect to me.

A film that violates one of the cardinal rules of this exercise: that a good airplane movie must not be too reliant on sound. But A Star Is Born introduces another, oft-ignored tenet of mile-high viewing: It’s fine for a movie to have a weak second half because the last thing you need while the plane is landing is something you can’t pull yourself away from. And while I’m not here to besmirch the 2018 version of ASIB—seriously, The Ringer makes you take an oath on a copy of the Blu-ray when you get hired—I’m here to say it’s a little, well, front-loaded. It’s a near-perfect film for about an hour, basically up until Ally signs her big deal: You get the early love blossoming between her and Jackson, you get the Diceman playing the most East Coast Italian American dad imaginable, you get “Shallow” and its litany of gorgeous, guttural nonwords. After that, it’s not bad, per se. It’s just, well … 

Let’s just say that this scene—and the rest of the back nine—could’ve been a little more tightly scripted. (Though Jackson is really wrong about one thing: the best part of the second half, “Why Did You Do That?,” a.k.a. the “Ass Like That” song.) But A Star Is Born remains a fantastic in-flight option: one good enough to dive into, but not so good that you’re worried about getting lost in the deep end.

When it comes to Good Bad Movies, Con Air is a masterpiece—and I mean that with the most sincere admiration. The 1997 action flick stars Nicolas Cage as Cameron Poe, an honorably discharged Army Ranger who gets convicted of manslaughter after he beats the hell out of three guys, killing one of them with his bare hands, for trying to jump him and his pregnant wife outside of a bar in the pouring rain. Poe goes to prison, serves his eight-year sentence, and comes out a better man. But on the day he’s meant to be released and return home via a converted JPATS aircraft, he finds himself in the middle of an airborne prison break that only he can stop.

Based on that premise alone, you should already know that Con Air is a special movie. Its cast is rounded out by John Cusack, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, and Dave Chappelle, the latter of whom has a thankless supporting role, and yet every moment he’s on screen it feels like the entire movie could be an elaborate, extended sketch on Chappelle’s Show. But the star of the show is, of course, Nic Cage, who thrives in absurd movies like these. Poe has a glorious mullet and the worst Southern accent you’ve ever heard, but he’s also capable of delivering a killer roundhouse kick and lines like “I’m gonna show you God does exist.” Although he desperately wants to see his wife and daughter, he turns down every opportunity to reunite with them so that he can save his diabetic friend or simply be the hero. There are a hundred plot holes you could point to at any given moment, but never mind that because Nic Cage also fights Malkovich in hand-to-hand combat on top of a moving firetruck while dodging explosions as he continues to find ways to not return to his wife and the daughter he’s never met. It’s a movie that has aged very poorly and is far from being politically correct, and yet it remains as enjoyable and strangely comforting to watch as ever. All of this is to say, Con Air is peak ’90s action cinema, and the perfect film to watch (or rewatch) on your next flight.

Sure, yes: The discourse around Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow name-brand tech founders has darkened considerably since The Social Network’s 2010 release. But if anything, Zuck’s real-life glued-on personhood simulacrum and Facebook’s transformation into a loathsome disinformation machine for boomers has only made David Fincher’s film more enjoyable. Look at that twerp! Look what he’s doing now! Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg was never The Social Network’s hero, and that’s even more true now that his creation’s hideous tail—the content-farming trolls from shadowy parts unknown, the international violence, the turbocharged dissolution of any semblance of civil society, the mass layoffs at media companies bamboozled by falsified data—has been laid bare. The Social Network also bequeathed us with a rare and vital aviation tool: the perfect airport navigation soundtrack in the form of Trent Reznor’s slick stress parade of a score. Pop your headphones in when your cab meets the airport curb, bom-bombom your way through security to your gate, then board and flip The Social Network on. An immaculate air travel experience.

Let the ’70s ABBA melodies and liberal use of bronzer sweep you away into literal bliss. Mamma Mia! is a rollicking good time on land, but it’s also a perfect cotton candy distraction from anything stressful, and it works even better on a pre-party-vacation flight. You can have all the fun of watching a musical—the only challenge here is not singing along to “Dancing Queen,” and it is a challenge—with the added benefit that you’re not currently experiencing the anxiety of identifying which of the three hotties from your very fun youth is the father of your gorgeous soprano adult child who’s about to get married (I mean, probably, but if that is your specific circumstance, maybe just skip this one). Plus, if you're on a long flight, there’s a sequel-prequel with some uncanny-valley-level casting.

A Few Good Men is a pretty faithful adaptation of Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway play, which means most of the important scenes take place in one room. The movie is a series of self-contained exchanges between characters. If you’re bored on a long flight, you can drop in at any time and enjoy Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore sparring with each other. It’s the best kind of scenery-chewing. But if you doze off, just make sure to set your alarm for the climactic court battle. It never gets old, even if you’ve seen it 200 times.

Sure, there are airplane movies that put you to sleep, airplane movies you watch across the aisle, and airplane movies you put on while you scroll through your camera roll and reminisce about how hot you were in college. But the ideal airplane movie takes you out of the space-time of the skies altogether, erasing all thoughts of your back pain and how you’re probably going to miss that connection in Atlanta. If you need any convincing that Game Night is the rare, precious kind of film that can make you forget you’re on a plane, just watch this scene:

You’ll be rolling in your seat (and so will the guy who’s watching over your shoulder). Game Night keeps the jokes (and the delirious, delicious twists) rolling, never giving you a chance to catch your breath between its thrills (seriously, I wish more action movies had sequences this good) and its long-in-the-coming punch lines. This movie doesn’t let any good joke pass it by—and you shouldn’t let Game Night pass you by the next time you’re scrolling through the somehow never-ending and yet very limited viewing options on a flight. If you need more convincing, Game Night features Jesse Plemons in a plum role that squares the circle between Landry’s nerdiness and the menace of that guy from Civil War. This movie just doesn’t miss.

Time was when you’d haul an actual copy of Vogue on an airplane, along with one Real Simple and one Vanity Fair, please, each one a solid inch thick. But these days magazines just don’t hit the same, even at cruising altitude. Luckily, there’s the perfectly-preserved time capsule The Devil Wears Prada for all your pre-Great Recession publishing excess (and Gisele in glasses) needs.

Rich with fashion porn and aughties veiled-Condé Nast lore—you can practically feel the supple leather and the hunger pangs—the movie is part romp, part runway stomp. The clothes and performances (Meryl! Stanley! Annie! Emily Blunt’s breakout role!) are bold enough that you can enjoy them even if you’re watching the film with no sound over a stranger’s shoulder. The main risk to picking The Devil Wears Prada is that you may start sounding like Miranda Priestly in the event of a delay: “By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.” Getting screwed by United somehow never goes out of style.

Real ones know that John Woo is, if not the greatest action director of all time, certainly deserving of a place on Action Mount Rushmore. While Woo’s best movies were made in his native Hong Kong—if you haven’t seen it, add Hard Boiled to your watch list, ASAP—his greatest achievement in Hollywood will always be Face/Off. The film has a perfect premise: An FBI agent (played by John Travolta) undergoes an experimental facial transplant surgery to swap places with a terrorist (Nicolas Cage) to foil a bombing plot. Basically, as long as you remember that Travolta is trying to act like Cage—and vice versa—Face/Off is easy to follow. Most importantly, Woo is also the perfect plane auteur: his movies are defined by their kineticism, so much so that he recently directed a Christmas-themed revenge thriller without any dialogue. I guarantee Face/Off’s 139-minute running time will fly by (pun unintended). If Face/Off is available on your next flight, sit back, relax, and enjoy the doves.

Knives Out might be the coziest murder mystery of all time, and in the era of Only Murders in the Building, that’s saying something. Cable-knit sweaters; fall colors in the trees; Daniel Craig puffing on a cigar and doing the most overwrought Southern accent imaginable. The gang’s all here!

No, really, the gang is all here, introduced to us via a clever interrogation sequence that both explains the intricate Thrombey family dynamics and lets the film’s squad of A-list actors cook. Jamie Lee Curtis is the statuesque, gracious eldest daughter—until she loses it; Michael Shannon is the bookish heir to the Thrombey publishing house—who uses a cane and provides cover for his Nazi son; and Toni Collette, I mean, just, holy shit. When do we get the Joni spinoff? And all that happens before we get to the arrival of Chris Evans’s Ransom (“CSI … KFC?”), the reading of the will, the sight of Ana de Armas’s regurgitated lunch, and the unraveling of the mystery. This movie will make you think, it’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you glad you’re not near your family—and it’s therefore perfect for the plane. (Unless you’re flying to a reunion; I can’t help you there.)

What better film to watch on an airplane than one that follows a fraudulent, wannabe airline pilot? How reassuring! Twenty-two years after its release, Catch Me If You Can still holds up as the platonic ideal of aircraft cinema: light enough to only semi-pay attention to as the snack cart comes past, serious enough to engage with and feel absolutely chuffed when you realize two and half hours have—that’s right—flown by without you even noticing. The real-life subject of the movie may have pulled off his greatest scam of all by convincing us that all that stuff in the movie really happened, but no matter: Catch Me If You Can is still a great time on the in-flight entertainment system. Long live Pan Am Airways, and try not to ugly cry too hard when Leo’s character shows up to his mother’s house on Christmas Eve.

You missed out if you didn’t see Top Gun: Maverick in all its propulsive glory on an IMAX screen, but there’s still plenty to admire about the movie from an airplane seat. Maverick checks all the boxes of a worthy legacy sequel, combining ’80s nostalgia with some modern touches, including some of the best aerial combat sequences ever filmed. (The new “Danger Zone” opening almost convinced me to enlist.) And don’t worry if you miss out on some of Maverick’s dialogue: The characters discuss the specifics of a Death Star trench run mission in the mountains of Not Iran many times, and the rules of dogfight football make zero sense to begin with. (We’re all here for Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast pulling actual G’s in fighter jets, anyway.) For the full Maverick 4DX experience, hit play while your plane’s flying through severe turbulence and fast-forward to the dogfighting scenes.

A brief warning from me to you: The very same qualities that make Crazy Rich Asians so perfect to watch on an airplane—ritzy escapism; fairy-tale romance; conspicuous consumption; beautiful bodies in glittering getups dancing and kissing and gossiping and seething and buybuybuying in scene after scene—also have the potential to cause one hell of a comedown for viewers when the movie is over. Ask me how I know! One minute, I was clapping at a climactic mahjong scene and bopping along with the characters at an impromptu soiree on top of Marina Bay Sands. And then the next minute, as the credits rolled, I was jolted back to my old drab self again: just another broke schlub with a ticket in Economy Minus and Auntie Anne’s pretzel grease on my lap. 

“I can’t believe this airport has a butterfly garden and a movie theater,” the main character of Crazy Rich Asians explains at one point, as she sees how the other half lives. “JFK is just salmonella and despair!” It’s a line that nicely captures what it’s like to view this movie on a flight. Luxuriate in its world for long enough and you’ll wind up utterly intoxicated.

One of the great ironies of traveling is that the best airport books don’t often make for the basis of the best airplane movies. All due respect to Malcolm Gladwell—or, for that matter, Dan Brown—but rarely do we see the Hudson Book bestsellers section translate into cinematic greatness, whether on the big screen or the seat back. Bennett Miller’s Moneyball is one glaring exception to this axiom, even though it has no real right to be. It’s the story of a team of ragtag losers who never won anything but who ultimately pull it together in spite of their cheap owner. But this ain’t exactly Major League. For one, nobody wants to see Stephen Schott stripped down. Also: Moneyball is mostly told through numbers on a balance sheet, statistics that you won’t find on the back of a baseball card, and econ concepts like “market inefficiency.” That ought to be enough to help you conk out while flying coach. But there’s an alchemy to the Moneyball adaptation that will have you rooting for an ultimately meaningless winning streak like it’s the World Series. A story about numbers and data becomes so much more, even if the stakes here remain relatively contained. Credit it to Jonah Hill or Brad Pitt, or perhaps to one of the finest scripts of Aaron Sorkin’s long career. But whatever the reasons, put it on during your next long flight. (So long as that flight isn’t to the East Bay.) You may even find yourself asking: How can you not be romantic about air travel?

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it or how long it’s been: Ocean’s Eleven never, ever disappoints. So what if you already know every twist and turn? Vibes are forever. This is a perfectly pitched hangout movie stuffed inside an airtight heist story, which doesn’t leave room for a single dull moment. It’s endlessly quotable. Almost impossibly charming. Just the absolute picture of rewatchability, guaranteed to go down smooth. There’s nothing cool about being stuffed into an economy seat, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt are powerful enough to make you forget yourself and your circumstances. By the time they actually get the team together, you’ll be building one of your own: The woman sitting next to you was trying to sleep but keeps looking over whenever Matt Damon is on screen, and the guy back in 14C bailed on Five Nights at Freddy’s to fully commit to watching over your shoulder. You think we need one more? You think we need one more. Good thing there’s an entire row behind you stealing glances in between the seats, because who among us could possibly resist? Catch any bit of Ocean’s and you’ll be taken along for the ride.