10 Best Movies To Watch On A Plane

Whether you're reading this during the holiday season or gearing up for a summertime vacation, people travel a lot throughout the year, and you know what that means: you might get to watch a movie on a tiny screen while you're trapped inside a big metal tube sharing compressed air with a bunch of strangers. In all seriousness, watching movies while flying is high-key one of the best parts of the experience, whether you're on a long-haul flight with a seat-back TV or on a shorter trip with a fully loaded tablet. (Yes, of course you can read a book, but nothing passes the time quite like a great film.)

So what movies should you watch on these planes? That's actually a decently complicated question. First, you want to, perhaps, try to avoid anything particularly risqué; while Leonardo DiCaprio's movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" will eat up a lot of your travel time, it's also filled with nudity that might unsettle your fellow passengers (especially if they're younger). Second, about that, you do want something that might make a dent in said travel time, whether it's a 10-hour flight or a 3-hour flight; ideally, whatever you're watching will immerse you so much that you'll be surprised when the flight attendants ask you to stow your tray table and put your seat back in an upright position. Third, the movie can either be a familiar and cozy comfort watch or maybe something that takes place in an exotic locale to get you pumped up for your trip. Honestly, there's any number of pieces of criteria that make for a great plane movie; here are 10 excellent choices, if we do say do ourselves.

The reason why isn't clear, but it's a truth universally acknowledged that "Crazy Rich Asians" is a perfect plane watch. Jon M. Chu's blockbuster adaptation of the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan introduces us to economics professor Rachel Chu ("Fresh off the Boat" and "Hustlers" star Constance Wu), who's happily dating her handsome, dashing boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) when he invites her to his best friend's wedding in Singapore. As they board their luxurious first-class flight, Rachel is startled to learn that Nick isn't just from a wealthy family; he's from a "crazy rich" family, and the Youngs, according to Rachel's Singapore-based friend Peik Lin (Awkwafina), are "basically royalty" and own a real estate empire in the nation.

Rachel, thrown into the upscale world of the Youngs as they all celebrate the wedding of heiress Araminta Lee (future "House of the Dragon" standout Sonoya Mizuno) and Nick's best buddy Colin Khoo (Chris Pang), also must contend with Nick's formidable mother and the defacto head of the Young family, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh). As she keeps trying to win over Eleanor and adjust to Nick's obscene level of wealth, Rachel starts worrying about whether or not this is what she really wants, while Eleanor seems determined to drive her out at any cost.

Not only does "Crazy Rich Asians" prominently feature stunningly beautiful locations throughout Singapore and beyond (a decent amount of filming actually happened in Malaysia), but it's a sweeping, gorgeous love story that'll keep you entranced until the credits roll. Have tissues handy for that stunning romantic ending, and when it's over, you can hope that maybe, one day, we'll get a sequel.

Pretty much any movie by writer-director Nancy Meyers, including "Something's Gotta Give" and "It's Complicated," could go on this list ... but we're going with a left-field pick that's a fluffy plane movie you can half-watch while you stare out of the window at the clouds. In this 2015 film, Robert De Niro's Ben Whittaker, who's 70 and a widower, needs something to fill his time as a retiree and ultimately takes a job as the titular "intern" at a fashion startup run by the kind but eternally overwhelmed CEO, Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway). Even though Jules overlooks this random older gentleman suddenly working in her office at first, she soon realizes that he's a valuable resource in her workplace, full of wisdom, and offers a different perspective than her younger colleagues ... and begins to appreciate him not just as her right-hand man at work, but as her friend. From there, Ben gets unexpectedly involved with Jules' home life, where she struggles to balance her professional obligations with raising her daughter and maintaining a healthy relationship with her increasingly distant stay-at-home husband Matt ("Workaholics" star Anders Holm).

Look, is "The Intern" the best movie Meyers has ever made? Not by a long shot. Still, it's a ridiculously easy and low-key watch, has absolutely zero offensive content in it whatsoever as far as fellow pasengers might be concerned, and if you miss some of the lines through your headphones while you're munching on free pretzels, it doesn't really matter! Ultimately, the story is simple, soothing, and will leave you in a great mood, which might be precisely why "The Intern" is particularly great at 35,000 feet.

In the wake of the horrific and tragic passing of director, producer, and actor Rob Reiner, people across the world are making a point to watch or re-watch some of his best movies, and there's truly never a bad time to watch his 1989 romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally..." Directed by Reiner and written by another late legend, Nora Ephron (who passed away in 2012), this genre-defining rom-com stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as Harry Burns and Sally Albright, who first meet as they travel from Chicago to New York City together after graduation. To say the two don't much like each other at first is an understatement, but as their paths keep serendipitously crossing over decades and they both end up residing in Manhattan, Harry and Sally decide to become friends, even though Harry claims men and women can't be friends because they'll inevitably end up attracted to each other. Throughout the following years, the two get closer and closer, though a true love connection seems out of reach at first; still, their banter makes it clear that the two are basically destined for each other.

Harry and Sally's romantic ending takes quite a while — during which they both cycle through various serious and casual partners and even experience a totally ill-advised romantic encounter one night — but the journey is the point, and thanks to Reiner's careful direction, Ephron's pitch-perfect script, and phenomenal performances from Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby as Sally and Harry's best friends Marie and Jess, "When Harry Met Sally..." is a modern masterpiece. It's always the right time to pick this movie, so why not on a flight?

Okay, hear us out. Yes, James Cameron's Oscar-sweeping blockbuster epic "Titanic," which came out in 1997, is about a massive disaster that happens while quite a lot of people are traveling, if we want to be extremely literal about this whole thing. Still, it's really long, so if you're on a particularly lengthy flight and want it to fly by (sorry), consider "Titanic." When we first meet Kate Winslet's idealistic young Rose DeWitt Bukater, she's boarding the Titanic outside of London with her mother and odious but extremely wealthy fiancé Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), and despite the fact that she enjoys the privilege and trappings of wealth, she's desperate to escape her gilded cage. Enter Jack Dawson (a young, unbelievably handsome Leonardo DiCaprio), a steerage passenger who sweeps Rose off her feet, helping her see that she could chart her own path without Cal, and convinces her to leave the boat with him when they dock in New York. We only learn this story, incidentally, thanks to a much-older Rose (Gloria Stuart), whose granddaughter links her up with a crew inspecting the Titanic's underwater remains to search for a missing jewel.

Alas, that never happens, because — spoiler alert? — the Titanic sinks. Cameron's finest touch here is that the time from the initial iceberg strike to the ship fully capsizing in the cold Atlantic Ocean is 2 hours and 40 minutes (the same time as the real Titanic took to sink), and if you turn on "Titanic" on a plane, you'll be gripped and enthralled not just by Jack and Rose's love story, but Cameron's masterful depiction of one of the greatest disasters in human history. Just put aside the fact that they're traveling, for your own peace of mind.

A super-long double feature might be the best possible thing to watch on an airplane, so choose or download the two-part epic "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame" if you're crossing multiple time zones in the air. Released in 2018 and 2019, this set of massive Phase 3 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe brings basically everyone in the cinematic universe into the same place as they all work to defeat Thanos (Josh Brolin), a giant purple villain who seeks to find all of the Infinity Stones across universes and multiverses and assemble them into a gauntlet, giving him the power to eradicate half of all living beings. Unfortunately for our intrepid Avengers, Thanos does succeed at the end of "Infinity War," activating the gauntlet and "dusting" heroes like T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), among others.

In "Endgame," remaining Avengers including Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) try to figure out a way to undo Thanos' damage and ultimately turn to time travel thanks to the mysterious and seldom explored Quantum Realm, inadvertently discovered by Paul Rudd's Scott Lang — also known as Ant-Man — in his old van where he was trapped during the "dusting." When they succeed, a major battle takes up that second movie's third act as Iron Man himself Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gets ahold of Thanos' full Infinity Gauntlet. "Infinity War" and "Endgame" flow seamlessly together, and by the time they're over, your flight will probably be over too.

Really, any movie in the "Ocean's" franchise is really good on a long or short flight, but if you've already seen "Ocean's Eleven" and its sequels a whole bunch of times, try the spin-off "Ocean's 8," directed by Gary Ross and starring Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the sister of "Ocean's Eleven" leading man Danny Ocean (George Clooney). After Debbie is released from prison for a previous heist orchestrated by her ex-boyfriend Claude Becker (Richard Armitage) — who was also involved but got off scot-free — Debbie wants revenge, and she also wants to stage a brand new job. Debbie reunites with her best friend Lou Miller (a perfectly deadpan Cate Blanchett), and together, the two decide that they'll rob New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art during its annual Met Gala, stealing a massive Cartier necklace known as the Touissant.

Debbie and Lou assemble a team of women — as Debbie says, "a him gets noticed, a her gets ignored" — including Rihanna's crackerjack hacker Nine-Ball, Awkwafina's slick pickpocket Constance, Mindy Kaling's jeweler Amita, expert mover and procurer turned suburban housewife Tammy (Sarah Paulson), and disgraced fashion designer Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter) to get the Touissant onto the neck of actress and Met Gala co-chair Daphne Kluger (a hilariously self-referential Anne Hathaway). The heist in "Ocean's 8" is every bit as fun as it is in the other "Ocean's" movies, and keep your eye out for few clever cameos from the men who appear in Steven Soderbergh's original film trilogy.

Written by Nia Vardalos as a one-woman play before she got some unexpected help from Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in bringing it to the big screen, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" doesn't take place in Greece at all and instead tells the story of Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos (Vardalos herself), an introverted young woman who lives in Chicago with her enormous, overbearing Greek family. Toula, the first-generation daughter of Greek immigrants Costas "Gus" Portokalos (Michael Constantine) and his hilarious but imposing wife Maria Portokalos (Lainie Kazan), wants to forge her own path, but her parents want her to marry a nice Greek boy and buy a house down the street from theirs. Undeterred, Toula starts taking classes in Chicago to learn how to use computers (this movie came out in 2002), starts wearing makeup and dressing in more flattering styles, and eventually meets and falls for English teacher Ian Miller (a charming John Corbett). 

Toula and Ian end up engaged, but what that means is that she has to introduce Ian to her huge judgmental family and somehow get their blessing, even though Ian is decidedly not Greek (he's Protestant and ultimately is rebaptized as Greek Orthodox to fully convince Toula's family). "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is one of the most joyful, funny, and sweet romantic comedies ever made, and it's prety perfect to watch on the ground or in the air. The only problem with the second option is that you might laugh so loudly at everything that Andrea Martin says and does in this film as Toula's bizarre aunt Voula that you might startle the person sitting next to you.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Catherine Johnson (the mind behind the stage musical), 2008's "Mamma Mia!" is, unlike "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," set in the beautiful Greek isles (specifically, on the fictional island of Kalokairi, which just means "summer" in Greek). As Sophie Sheridan (the stunning Amanda Seyfried) prepares for her marriage to her soulmate Sky Rymand (Dominic Cooper), she learns that her mother Donna Sheridan (living legend Meryl Streep), who runs a hotel called Villa Donna on the isle, hasn't been totally honest with her about her father. After Sophie finds out, through an old diary of Donna's, that her father could be one of three men — Irish and American architect Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), Swedish travel writer Bill Anderson (Stellan Skårsgard), or English banker Harry Bright (Colin Firth) — she invites all three of them to the wedding without telling Donna, hoping one of them will walk her down the aisle and give her away to Sky.

Donna is understandably a bit miffed that her daughter invited three of her former lovers to the wedding without saying anything, but the festivities go on as planned anyway until Donna and Sam end up re-evaluating the reason they even broke up in the first place. Sophie ends up with three father figures, she and Sky put off the wedding to travel the world, and the whole story picks up in 2018's "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" if you're looking for a double feature.

We had to pick this one, right?! Jason Reitman's 2009 comedy-drama hybrid "Up in the Air" stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a guy who travels across the country to fire people (more technically, he works for a firm that provides third parties for corporations so that they don't have to let their own employees go). Set against the backdrop of the 2008-2009 financial crisis that decimated the United States economy, the movie really gets going when business ingenue Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her performance) shows up at Ryan's company and suggests that they start using video calls, then a relatively iffy technology, to fire people, thus grounding Ryan and other agents that do his job. Ryan, who has a home base in Omaha but hates being there and loves traveling, insists that Natalie join him for a series of firings, and the two travel across America to relieve people of their hard-earned jobs.

Along the way, Ryan's independent and stubborn nature is challenged by fellow business traveler Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), with whom he starts a casual relationship whenever they happen to be in the same location, and as he starts to fall for Alex, Ryan's entire belief system is challenged. With a gut punch of an ending and a particularly lived-in performance from Clooney, "Up in the Air" is just a great movie, but it feels particularly appropriate to watch it while you're flying.

As long as you don't panic assuming that your own pilot is a fraud like the protagonist of "Catch Me If You Can," this underrated Steven Spielberg classic is excellent airplane fare. Based on a memoir of the same name by real con man Frank Abagnale Jr., the movie casts Leonardo DiCaprio as the man himself, who — both in real life and in the movie — works as a "confidence man," using his own power of persuasion to circulate fake checks, steal money, and pretend to be someone he's not. Throughout the film, Frank, who remains loyal to his dad Frank Abagnale Sr. (Christopher Walken) despite the man's own history of tax fraud ... and his parents' divorce, instigated by his mother Paula's (Nathalie Baye) affair with one of Frank Sr.'s friends from the Rotary Club, forces Frank Jr. to find a clever way to make money. Luckily, he's a charismatic and handsome young man, and the first fraud Frank pulls off successfully is pretending to be a pilot for Pan-Am, despite, obviously, having zero credentials or training when it comes to flying a plane.

As he pretends to be a pilot and a doctor, Frank becomes an unexpected success — he even gets engaged to a young nurse named Brenda Strong (Amy Adams) and accepts her wealthy father's help as he, a "doctor," takes the bar exam to also become a lawyer — but FBI agent Carl Hanratty (a spectacularly good Tom Hanks) is always just one step behind Frank, keeping the scammer on his toes. Not only is "Catch Me If You Can" an absolute thrill ride thanks to DiCaprio's performance, it's an engrossing cat-and-mouse story that will keep you distracted on a flight ... and don't worry. The pilot manning your plane isn't a fraud.