Watching Movies on an Airplane

Not every movie is best seen while flying. This is a conclusion I drew after several twelve hour flights that I had to take recently. While it is much better to try and sleep on planes, who can resist watching a few movies? Especially on the newer planes that have individual seat screens where each passenger can choose what movie to watch and when to watch it. This is a huge advance from the one showing -- you snooze, you lose -- traditional view of in-flight entertainment. Yet even the new system is not perfect.
The screens are small so full blown action features just don't work. Take my advice, if one of the options is a violent, military or law and order flick, wait until you can see it in a movie theater. You will just lose most of the effects that major action films spend millions of dollars on these days.
The other problem is with the sound. Airplane headphones are just awful and key dialogue is often missed. I have no idea why the airline entertainment gurus don't give passengers the option to view movies with subtitles. I mean, every DVD these days has such an option. It would make viewing much better. As it is, steer clear of movies with complicated plot and lots of dialogue.
I would say that without violent pictures or those with interesting plots, you might be left with romance movies. Yet the problem is that to be shown on an airplane, all the interesting bits of romance movies have been censored out. What results is just plain (no pun intended) boring. Skip the romance flicks.
I guess that leaves comedy movies, but try not to laugh out loud. Nothing will disturb fellow travelers more that a guy laughing loudly in the next seat. Plus, most comedy movies these days are just not funny. I can't remember the last time I saw a "laugh out loud" movie. Where are Chevy Chase and Steve Martin these days?
On second thought, skip all the movies. Get your sleep and hit the cinema after you land!