And back on the plane I went, when it was time to come home from my latest journey overseas. Like on my way out, my first flight international leg of my journey was overnight, which means I’ll usually tune into one movie just to tire myself out, before trying (with limited success) to sleep.

And also like last time, second international leg (which was the last flight that brought me home) was from the morning to the mid-afternoon, and was long enough for about two movies. On the way there, I watched A Minecraft Movie, which was bad, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which was mediocre, and The Amateur, which was pretty good (read about them all here). How did my choices on the way home stack up against the ones I watched on the way there? Read on to find out!

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Adventure

This an animated Looney Tunes feature that had a limited release in 2024 before being more widely shown this year, 2025, and is basically Daffy Duck and Porky Pig featuring in story akin to an alien invasion B movie from the 1950s. This version of the animated stars has them as adopted siblings wh have grown up together, and, desperate for money to repair their broken house, look for work. For a while, they find an opportunity at the Goodie Gum factory, thanks to Porky’s new-found love interest, Petunia Pig, who works there as someone chasing optimal gum flavor.

Unbeknownst to any of them, aliens have infiltrated the factory and have infected the company’s new gum with mind controlling alien parasites–anyone who chews the gum is taken over and becomes a mindless zombie-like slave. Daffy is the first to discover this but because he is such an unreliable goofball, nobody believes him at first. Eventually, Porky and Petunia realize he is right, and the trio set out to fight back. Along the way, Porky learns a predictable lesson when he is forced to confront his prejudices about Daffy’s capabilities, as well as the reality of his own limitations.

The Day the Earth Blew Up is far from a masterpiece, but it was sufficiently diverting to get me through the first part of that late night flight (and it was certainly better then A Minecraft Movie, which occupied the same spot on my trip the other way). The movie begins, not surprisingly, with a flood of low-brow jokes that I found kind of dull, but eventually there was enough of a story going on to keep me engaged. This version of Daffy is not my favorite (I prefer it, generally, when he is a foil for Bugs) but it does hearken back to his characterization in the early days of the character, when he really lived up to his name with lots of off-the-wall looniness (I would have used another word if I could have thought of it, but they really did names these things appropriately), but just this time given enough history with Porky that the more sensible pig doesn’t just want to be rid of him forever.

Impressively, there are no (at least that I saw) cameos from other Looney Tunes characters anywhere in this story, aside from he central trio, which is not the sort of thing I’d normal comment on except that it’s become such a big part of so many big franchises that it’s notable that it’s not part of this one. I appreciated that the film stayed focussed on its core characters and story, rather then trying to reintroduce the whole gamut of the Looney Tunes universe audience in this one movie.

The King’s Man

The King’s Man is the cleverly-named prequel to the two Kingsmen films, high-concept espionage films that share some elements of James Bond, but which take the gloves off a bit in terms of intensity and audacity. This offering stars Ralph Fiennes as Orlando Oxford, a British aristocrat with a tragic backstory who ends up opposing a massive conspiracy to plunge the world into global war. The story weaves all sorts of crazy spy stuff with real-life history surrounding World War I, and creates quite a fun package of action, thrills and drama that is also surprisingly emotionally affecting.

A lot of that is down to the performance of Ralph Fiennes, as well as Matthew Vaughn’s direction. Vaughn directed all three Kingsmen movies, and though it’d be foolhardy to call any of them “realistic”, this one is the most grounded. Fiennes’ character has got real places to go to dramatically, and Vaughn and the filmmakers do a good job taking us on the journey of the character, even in the midst of all the spectacle a film like this includes.

This movie didn’t have great reviews, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

Death on the Nile

The second of the Kenneth Branagh-helmed and -headlined Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot murder mystery movies (coming in between Murder on the Orient Express and A Haunting in Venice), this is the only one I hadn’t seen yet. I had seen the 1978 movie featuring Peter Ustinov as Poirot, and while this movie changed a number of things about the story, it kept to the main plot, which is about an heiress (Gal Gadot) who after a whirlwind romance marries the former fiancé of her (former) close friend, and winds up murdered for her troubles.

But even though the main murderer, victim, means and motive were things I was familiar with, the movie was really enjoyable to watch. Branagh’s Poirot is probably the deepest that I’ve seen–I’m not saying he’s the “best” exactly, just that the script gives him a lot of opportunity to go deeper with the character than you’d typically expect.

Some of that falls into the category of unnecessary backstory, where we learn about Poirot’s history as a soldier in war and learn the origin of his moustache (really!), but even with this sort of extraneous filling out of lore, the character works well and the performance is strong.

Branagh also is an excellent director, highly skilled with the placement of his camera to convey the film’s story, characters and mood. Death on the Nile has had mixed reviews at best, albeit better than The King’s Man, but I found it a good, diverting bit of entertainment, especially on the plane.

And that’s the rundown of what I saw on the way back! Overall, the way home had higher quality viewings than the way there. And overall, I’d have to say The King’s Man, 41% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and all, was my favorite film on this trip (both ways), followed by Death on the Nile and (from the first half of the trip) The Amateur.

Until next time!