Air New Zealand is my new favorite airline. They have the best selection of films I have ever come across on a commercial airline. It's the kind of film selection where you can watch what you want, when you want, and you can also pause or rewind or fast forward.

The first film I watched was Terence Malick's "The New World." It was like watching a miracle. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. How is it possible that this film wasn't universally praised? I thought it was his best film to date, and this from a director who had already made three of the greatest films of all time. What I especially loved about it was the way the locus of the poetry in this film shifts from his previous voice-over and imagery-centric poetics to a poetics of narrativity itself. I was stunned by the brilliance and maturity of his story-telling, and I can't think of a more brilliantly edited film. I have also never seen a film that so convincingly captures the absolute disparity between the mindset of the European colonists and the radical alterity of the Native Americans they first encountered.

Afterwards, I watched Michael Haneke's "Cache." He won the best directing award at Cannes for this film, and it's easy to see why. Every single shot is brilliantly conceived, brilliantly composed, and brilliantly executed. This film has already been universally praised, so there's no need for me to add my voice to the already loud chorus, but I would like to add my voice to that chorus just the same.

The last film I watched was "Tsotsi," the South African film that won the best foreign film oscar this year. Usually, I'm not crazy about the oscar winners, but this particular film blew me away.

This was the most fun I've ever had on a plane.