I had to travel on a number of planes recently (six in the last month) and for the first time in a while none of the planes on which I travelled (even on different airlines) had those small television screens in the back of the seat. I was mildly annoyed by this; I usually look forward to seeing new films on the plane, something that only a choice of eight or nine stations will guarantee.

As it turned out, I had indeed seen both the films on the main long haul flight - Robert Altman's Gosford Park and Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind. Having already finished all the books that I had brought along for entertainment on my trip, I decided to watch the films anyway. I had immensely enjoyed the former but had found the latter a disappointment, its Oscar success notwithstanding. Yet to my surprise, I enjoyed A Beautiful Mind much more and Gosford Park much less than previously. Then I remembered this had happened before: I had enjoyed Shakespeare in Love more than Elizabeth when I saw them on planes, but the other way around when I got to see them in their full-screen grandeur.

These reversals made me reconsider my original idea for this month's column ("Motion pictures in motion: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles") to write about what makes a good aeroplane film. Despite the security precautions and the terror that necessitates them, there are more and more people flying further and further, making the aeroplane film an increasingly important genre. The genre has certain constraints. The audience is:

Captive

Continually distracted by cabin announcements, crying babies, turbulence, etc.

Of all ages

Eating

Squinting to look at a tiny seatback screen, or a distant cabin one.

With these factors in mind, herewith my five criteria for what makes a good aeroplane film. In ascending level of importance, they are:

5. The content of the film must not contain material that could be offensive or worrying to anyone. This mainly means the exclusion of subjects such as sex, terrorism, accidents, and disasters (In the late 1970s, I did see Airport 77 on a plane, which was a very amusing miscalculation on the part of the airline.) It also means that the film should not be subtitled unless it is a Bollywood film and it should have little or no bad language. The film will anyway be bowdlerized from such incitements to revolution as "Holy Shit" and "What the hell" to "Holy Smoke" and "What the heck" but the fewer such replacements the better. Also food films are best avoided. Films about good food (Eat, Drink, Man, Woman or Big Night) make the passengers look at their freeze-dried chicken with disappointment, and films about bad food make the passengers want to throw the food around like in Animal House or The Meaning of Life.

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