Sure, a 9-inch screen on a crowded plane may not be the best environment for movie critique- but then, being on a crowded plane isn’t the best environment for movie critics. So here’s how I spent a pleasant 8 hours on a recent trip.

Captive Audience reviews feature movies I’ve seen on in-flight entertainment systems. This means that they may have been modified from their original versions- sometimes not noticeably, but sometimes those changes cause irreparable damage. So I don’t treat these as ‘full’ movie reviews.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
(M15, Crude humour, comedic violence, drug use)

Fans of “Weird” Al Yankovic will have already hunted this down, but I saved my pennies for the flight rather than spending them on whatever streaming service finally picked it up. (In Australia’s case, it’s Paramount Plus.) It’s Al’s life story, in exquisite detail, except for all the bits that are complete fabrications for the purposes of the film. Which is all of it.

From Al’s early days, discovering clandestine polka parties and hiding his accordion habit from his abusive parents, to being challenged by Queen’s John Deacon to make up a parody song at a pool party while Andy Warhol and Alice Cooper look on, to his torrid mid-1980s love affair with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) and his battles with drugs and alcohol… it’s all here, and it’s all utter nonsense.

The entire film is filled to bursting with in-jokes, cameos (including Yankovic himself fairly on in the film) and stuff that didn’t happen. Did I mention that part? Oh yeah, and Daniel Radcliffe having a whale of a time as Al. And an entirely new song in the credits.

Weird dares to be stupid and is an absolute triumph that entirely justifies the $1,000 airfare on its own. Sure, I could have just spent $6 on iTunes or something, but that doesn’t seem quite silly enough. Go hard or go home.

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre
(M15, frequent action violence, coarse language, sexual references)

Guy Ritchie’s throwaway heist (reverse-heist?) movie screams “Pilot Episode”- it seems to primarily exist to launch a new franchise like the Mission: Impossible films, where a secret-ish government-ish team (in this case, led by Nathan, played by Cary Elwes) recruits a mostly-interchangable crew so you can slot in the hot new stars of the day while still keeping the same tone.

Here, Nathan recruits Orson Fortune (Jason Statham), hacker Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) and backup muscle J.J. (Bugzy Malone) to track down the Macguffin of the day, known only as The Handle. Fortune is a ‘spy’ in the James Bond blunt-instrument sense- that is, not in the least bit secretive or subtle. In other words, it’s Jason Statham playing a Jason Statham character.

The pursuit of the Handle leads the team to arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant); to get to Simmonds, the team forcibly recruits his favourite actor, Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), who provides the comic relief as the fish-out-of-water. And that’s about all the character development and backstory you get- character is introduced as “the muscle” or “the hacker” or “the Ukrainian” (yes, really), and on with the plot.

The twist- and the reason the movie seems to work as a possible pilot- is that there are multiple teams of agents trying to track down the Handle, with different motives and different financial backers, and they keep crossing paths. This could make for an interesting ongoing gimmick, playing off rival spy agencies against each other. Heck, you could even do that M:I crossover, assuming you could sort out the licensing nightmare with Paramount.

That said, if you believe the box-office returns that have been quoted by Box Office Mojo, I may be the only person who’s interested; OF:RdG is yet to make back its initial budget for Miramax.

Black Adam
(M15, fantasy themes, violence and coarse language)

If there’s one word that describes the DC Comics Extended Universe, it’s ‘inconsistent’. Even within its own run time, Black Adam continues that theme; it heads down a dark, contemplative path at times, but then adds a wacky Guardians of the Galaxy-style soundtrack to its fight scenes. Multiple times.

“I was born a slave, now no power on Earth can stop me.” (“Paint It Black” plays while Dwayne Johnson vaporises a platoon of mercenaries)

Teth-Adam (Johnson) was a slave in the ancient city of Kahndaq, given powers by ancient wizards (the exact ones from Shazam!, as this is a related story) and entombed after defeating a tyrannical king. Five thousand years later, Kahndaq is occupied by a crime syndicate called Intergang (not to be confused with Der Untergang). An archaeologist hunting for a powerful artifact (Adrianna, played by Sarah Shahi) awakens Teth-Adam, who goes to town on the mercs; but his powers attract the attention of the off-brand Aldi version of the Justice League, who then proceed to send Hawkman, a retired guy and two work-experience kids to bring Adam in.

The trailers establish that Teth-Adam is effectively unstoppable, and so with no real threat appearing until the third act, any conflict boils down to whether he can be persuaded to use his powers as Kahndaq’s guardian, or whether he will just run amok in a revenge spree. It doesn’t start well when the heroes arrive; Adam and Adrianna at least point out that the so-called “Justice Society” only showed up in Kahndaq when a 5000-year-old Sealed Badass In A Can appeared, and not when, you know, the city was overrun by a crime syndicate. But can they work together when push comes to shove?

For a movie where the antagonists pose no serious threat for most of the runtime, there are a lot of fight scenes. Or at least, there are a few fight scenes which all result in Teth-Adam murdering everyone except the Justice Temp Agency, and are dragged out by extensive use of slow-motion shots in an attempt to build some sort of drama. Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) spends the entire run time getting clowned by Adam while trying to convince him to join forces, Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) is just kind of there, and I’m not sure Quintessa Swindell’s Cyclone actually does anything to contribute and the movie could have excluded her entirely. Maybe it was keeping a CGI artist employed for a bit. (Or maybe I was just sleep-deprived at this stage of the flight.)

Oh, and Dr Fate (Pierce Brosnan) is in it as well. The Justice Society is a bit of a reward for the die-hard DC faithful, but little else. And given Black Adam and the related Shazam sequel didn’t do fantastically well at the box office- or at least, not well enough for the newly money-hungry Warner Bros Discovery- that may be all they get.

As for Black Adam on its own merits? Like Justice League before it, it’s alright, not spectacular, and has an eminently forgettable final confrontation with weird, floaty, outdated CGI. As the old joke goes, “what’s it about? It’s about two hours long.” And not much else.