I’ve been ramping down my participation in the Coursera MOOCs of late, mainly because I’ve taken just about all of the introductory courses that I can take and because what’s left that I have any interest in is a bit too in-depth for a casual learner like me. But it’s also because as I get older I’m more set in my ways and getting lazier about truly exercising my mind and getting very involved in tricky subjects. This course, the follow-up to the Introduction of Philosophy course from the University of Edinburgh that I took earlier this year, is an unfortunate example.
Rear Window (1954)
When ranking the best films of Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window invariably makes the list alongside other greats like Vertigo and Psycho. It’s arguably the ur-film for an entire sub-genre of Peeping Tom movies with the traditional Hitchcockian ice blonde here being none other than the fabulous Grace Kelly while perennial favorite James Stewart is the protagonist.
The Assassin (2015)
Despite a long and prolific directing career, Hou Hsiao-Hsien had never made a wuxia film before this one, which explains why its release was so highly anticipated in the Chinese-speaking world. Its English title makes it sound boringly generic but its more informative Chinese title indicates that it was adapted from an ancient story that is a classic of the genre.
Foxcatcher (2014)
Foxcatcher is one those films that I added to our to-watch list out of a sense of duty since it earned multiple Academy Award nominations and showed up on several critics’ lists of the best films of 2014. I’d heard that it was based on a true story and had some vague idea that it was about wrestling but since I don’t much care for sports I didn’t really think much about it and simply thought that it was just another sports biopic. Boy, was I wrong.
The Talos Principle
Even my wife, non-gamer that she is, knows enough to remark, “Hey, this looks a lot like Portal!” It’s a puzzle game that takes obvious design cues from Portal and even overtly references it in a number of ways. There’s no portal gun in here and Elohim is no GLaDOS but this turned out to very worthy successor to what is one of the most famous puzzle games ever made, a state of affair that I still have some trouble wrapping my head around given that this was made by the same studio responsible for the thoroughly silly Serious Sam series.
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
If one didn’t already know that this film was directed by the same director, Jacques Demy, who made The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, you surely will within five minutes of it starting. Like the previous film, this is a musical though it is a more traditional one with musical set-pieces in between normal scenes with dialogue. There’s plenty of dancing too as it features Gene Kelly as a sort of special guest star.
A Passage to India (1984)
A Passage to India was David Lean’s final film and he made it only after a pause of some 14 years. I’d previously written about Brief Encounter as being one of the best romantic films I’d ever watched and before that we were very glad to have spent the nearly four hours required for Lawrence of Arabia. It stands to reason that we were expecting similar greatness out of this film.