4. Flight of the Phoenix
You know what I would do if I was on a cargo plane that crashed in the middle of the Gobi desert? I would cry. I would cry and survive on my tears for nutrition until the sand melts away into a madness-induced illusion of cotton candy. But what would you do if you were Dennis Quaid? Well apparently you say "water is for wimps" and you build a new plane. Duh! That should have seemed obvious. A remake of the 1965 film of the same name, which was based on a novel from the year before, Flight of the Phoenix ruins the ending in its own title. So much for suspense. But a new plane doesn't take off until after Frank Towns pulls a group of weeping grown men (and one lady) together to survive in the sweltering heat of the "middle of absolute nowhere" desert. So it's a battle of survival with almost nothing, as they build a new plane. Of course, we just ignore that there are bandit smugglers surviving just fine on their own nearby. "They want to attack us? Why? To steal our stuff?" Yes, so they can sale it to a nearby civilisation. Jesus: think, people. But I digress. Flight of the Phoenix is a decent enough movie. It stars House, the guy who replaced Vin Diesel in the second The Fast & The Furious except with an eye patch (we were all thinking it), Phoebe's creepy brother from Friends, not Julianne Moore, and maybe the Iraqi guy from Lost -wait, nope. With little chance of rescue, and even a smaller amount of hope, Towns pulls this dysfunctional group as one to build a way out of the desert. He's mentally and physically broken. And his spirit is tested because he likes to be a grumpy old man. But it doesn't matter because when most people in the world would have perished, Dennis Quaid did not.