I travel a fair amount and while the process gets a little exhausting, I’ve recently discovered something that makes at least the getting there something to look forward to.
Here are some of the films Delta Airlines currently lets you stream directly to your laptop in flight.
As far as I can tell, all Delta Airlines planes have wifi on board. While access to the full internet will cost you, anybody can use the network to access Delta Studio, which is a fairly broad collection of films you can stream right to your laptop. About a third of them you can watch for free. The rest cost just $6.
And here’s the best part: they are, without exception that I’ve been able to identify so far, all good films. Not all Oscar-worthy, but all unusually entertaining.
Here are some of the movies I’ve seen in the past couple of months, starting with these works of cinematic art, which are all free and all likely to leave you staring at your screen the entire time the credits roll, missing the leading characters and thinking deep thoughts about life.:
- Birdman: I ended this film thinking it might be one of the best I’ve ever seen. Then I found it won the Oscar for Best Picture. Nice to be on the same wavelength as the Academy. Obviously I don’t follow these things.
- The Drop: By the end of this film I decided that the actor who played Bob Saginowski must either be one of the best actors on earth or just some schlep they picked up off the street who was forced to act just like himself for the entire movie. A little research revealed that Bob was played by Tom Hardy, who is just some British guy who’s happened to have been in a dozen movies I’ve seen, but I never took note. Anyway, that dude is shockingly good.
- Chef: Best word to describe this bit of indie perfection is ‘art’, with improvised lines that made this thing unusually real.
- Luna en Leo: Argentine film that stands entirely on engrossing dialog and character. You’ll fall in love with Luna and Leo and will truly want them to find happiness…ideally together.
- Begin Again: This is the follow up by the director of Once, which is currently my all time favorite film. Begin Again has a much higher budget than Once and has a more complex plotline, but retains all the magic and chemistry that made Once work so well.
Next come the films that aren’t going to change the way you live and might tend toward the formulaic, but are undeniably fun to watch:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Non-stop entertaining. Funny. So very funny.
- The Maze Runner: Made for teenagers but pretty interesting anyway.
- 22 Jump Street: I appreciate a formula film that doesn’t take itself seriously. At all. Jonah Hill is always a sure bet.
- X-Men: These kinds of films are just eye candy but very entertaining eye candy.
- Paul: This was not Simon Pegg’s best work, but still fun.
I must admit to being a big fan of Delta Airlines generally. I know it’s not popular to praise airlines, but I think Delta does a great job. Still, being on the road a bit isn’t my favorite, but knowing Delta has someone who really gets it selecting streaming in flight movies sort of makes me look forward to at least the getting there and home part of the traveling process.
I do have one complaint. The Delta Studio video player is only compatible with an unusually small number of browsers. You can’t watch on your phone and many tablets won’t work with it, either. As far as I can tell, it’s just Internet Explorer (and only the 32 bit version, not 64 bit). That’s sort of anachronistic. Delta should fix that. Ipads do seem to work.