About the only positive thing about a 15 hour flight between Newark and India (and back) is that, even if you get a good night’s sleep (ha!) you still have plenty of time to watch movies on the plane’s movie’ system (at least on the flights I was on). I usually use this as an opportunity to watch films I missed and don’t imagine I’ll ever pick up and watch at home.
There …
The Italian Job (2003): Yes, I’d never seen this before. And, honestly, I can’t say I suffered all that much for it. It’s an entertaining little thief / caper flick, most noteworthy for its use of Minis as get-away vehicles. Unfortunately, the caper (and the inevitable double- and triple-crosses), and punched-up personal drama never get past (or even up to) TV level in engagement or personality. Lots of nice action showpieces, but ultimately there’s not nearly as much there there to this film. 
Battleship (2012): I could feel the IQ points leaking out my brain from the very first scene, but if you simply let go, ignore the inconsistencies and awful science, and let this “Top Gun, Only With Ships, Alien Invaders, and Michael Bay sensibilities” run its course, you can at least appreciate the big explosions and CGstraviganza for the sugary froth it is and move on to something more sophisticated and realistic in the genre, like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
(Note: minor game-tie-in credit must be give to a scene where firing on coordinates occurs, and scenes where there are peg-shaped artillery projectiles.) 
The Hunger Games (2012): The movie does a decent job of adapting the book, plot-wise and visually. What it lacks in left-out background detail and personality, it makes up in avoiding the teen emo-fest of the written version. The action does seem to fly by pretty quickly, leaving me feeling like this was pretty light fair (some violence notwithstanding).
… and Back Again …
Prometheus (2012): This movie tries so hard to be artsy and profound that it fails to actually tell a decent story, give us more than character sketches of the participants, or even do reasonable hand-waving away of its scientific contradictions. Add to that people doing laughably stupid “haunted house” types of activities, and the whole thing comes crashing down. Which is a shame, because there are some visually stunning elements, some pretty cool questions being asked, and some intriguing vignettes, but with nothing more than style and pseudo-profundity to keep them held together.
The best thing to come from this movie was encouraging me to watch Lawrence of Arabia again. 
Lawrence of Arabia (1962): This was not the first time I’ve watched David Lean’s staggering and epic portrayal of the life and death(s) of T.E. Lawrence, an unexpectedly great man of tragic flaws, nor will it be the last. In addition to the Lawrence tale, there are also some interesting geopolitical bits about Arab nationhood (and tribalism) and European colonialism to sweeten the pot, and which remain of useful note to this very day. Add to that the remarkable, sweeping cinematography of Lean and grand music by Maurice Jarre, and it’s a true and well-deserved classic. That it was O’Toole’s first film makes it even moreso.
If the film has any weaknesses (aside from a bit of dramatic license here in there) it is that, in trying to give give an entire career in context, we get more in the way of scenes, glimpses, episodes about Lawrence, than an engaging, contiguous story — all of them fantastically crafted, to be sure, but more making a whole from the parts than starting with an integral whole to begin with. 
* * *
I threw out a trivia question on Twitter about how I’d seen, in three of the movies I’d watched, Charlize Theron twice, and Donald Sutherland twice. The two are together in The Italian Job, Theron also appears (largely wasted, like the rest of the cast) in Prometheus, and Sutherland in The Hunger Games. This was not planned.
Reward yourself and watch the proper Italian Job
(Movie fact – the man playing Mr Bridger’s sidekick is Noel Cowards partner Graham Payn. Because Coward was in the early stages of dementia, Payn was cast – he was an actor already – to help him stop getting too disorientated.
Also after watching this jolly jape movie that was played Sunday afternoons when I was a kid, go back and watch the actual heist scene again. There is no cheery music, and it shows thugs using pick axe handles…)
@LH – Watching the original is “on my list.”
Still shocked that you never watched the remake of the Italian Job.
The original is still all sorts of great.
For the Olympics they had some Italian Job fun in Bexhill.
@bd – Action adventure flick. Not likely to be something we see.
I was disappointed in the remake (well disappointed in general) that when they get the van and find the lock has been changed, the script writer didn’t take the oppotunity to put in the line “Can’t you blow the bloody doors off?”
@Last Hussar
Ha! Yeah, that would have been way better. 🙂