October 2025: Best or Worst Film you have seen in a class

Huge thanks to Ali Zakreski for October's Collaborative List theme!

Hen Hop (1942) | directed by Norman McLaren | reviewed by Ali Zakreski

Hen Hop (1942) is the most delightful movie that I watched in a film class. It represents the very best of Canadian cinema. All hail the glorious NFB and Norman McLaren. There isn’t really a plot; it’s a little Hen gleefully hopping and dancing. Honestly, I don’t need much more from a movie. The bright colours of the orange and blue background just make me so happy. The Hen is just so energetic, making me smile every time I see that little guy dancing. Haters will say the Hen in Hen Hop doesn’t hop because of the lack of a horizon line. They think that just because Norm McLaren didn’t give the poor Hen any ground, the Hen can’t hop. I say, horizon line be dammed, that Hen hopped! Anyone who understands anything about animation knows in their hearts that the Hen hops. Haters just can’t stand to see a happy Canadian Hen hopping.

Kalki 2898 AD (2024) | directed by Nag Ashwin | reviewed by Jason Lepine

Film 405: Science Fiction in the Global South, was an absolute blast, and introduced me to many films that I honestly would never have discovered had I not taken this class. Although I am a fan of international cinema, there are many countries whose rich history of film I have never explored, in particular, films from India. I admit that my knowledge of Indian cinema has come from viral social media posts that usually include an over-the-top sequence. I admit I had an un-supported idea of what Indian cinema was, and little motivation to pursue it. In fact, I had no idea that were so many sub-industries of Indian cinema outside of what I assumed to be solely Bollywood. Enter Nag Ashwin’s Kalki 2898 AD (2024), a Tollywood production, and the most expensive film in Indian cinema history. My expectations were flashy visuals, loud music, derivative plotlines, and over-the-top action, all of which could potentially lean on the side of cringe. How wrong I was! Did the film lean into my pre-conceived impressions of Indian Cinema? Absolutely! There are ample chases, explosions, gravity defying feats of strength, elaborate CGI, and even an ode to a musical number. However, I found myself questioning why I assumed this to be cringey when I open-heartedly accept these features in a Hollywood production like any one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. The film itself had a uniquely Indian identity in its mythology and references to classic figures, which I initially felt I was not the intended audience for; but again, I have no issues watching Thor and getting lost in all the faux-Norse mythology, so why would I treat Kalki any different? As the post-credits scene played out, I found myself fully invested in the world Ashwin created, and exploring the film catalogues of the actors and filmmakers involved. Admittedly, this is not going to go down in history as a classic film, however, this film will always hold a significant place in my collection as being the catalyst that opened my eyes to a whole new lane of cinema, that without FILM 405, I may have never found.

Magic Mike XXL (2015) | directed by Gregory Jacobs | reviewed by Lexi Proulx

Making a lesbian watch Magic Mike XXL (2015) should be considered a hate crime. Dr. Pierson considers this trash a musical, but I fear that it's just skimpy shirtless men. If I didn’t find the male form attractive before, gee golly, I sure as hell don’t now. This horror movie that was shown in Pierson’s Intro to Film class was absolutely horrendous. I have seen some super stinkers, such as The Thief and the Cobbler (1993) and Torn Curtain (1966), but this genuinely was the smelliest thing I have watched… and I am the girl who is a Human Centipede (2009) enthusiast. I had to watch in horror as my best friend ogled at the stripper men (icky). I screamed in fear, “Stop humping the floor,” multiple times. The men in this film genuinely remind me of dogs in heat humping just about anything, including Mike when he went to town on the table. If I were that table, I would have been screaming bloody murder over the sound of Pony by Ginuwine screeching in the background. I wholeheartedly believe that we should start a GoFundMe for that table to get into therapy, as well as me. Thanks, Dr. Pierson for the traum…I mean character development.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | directed by Stanley Kubrick | reviewed by Lucy Schwindt

This review is less about the movie itself and more about how atrocious my screening experience of watching 2001: A Space Odyssey was in hindsight. 2001 was a film I had watched back in high school in one of my first ever film studies classes. I was just getting into movies and at this point Stanley Kubrick was one of the only directors names I could properly recognized, so I was very excited when my teacher had said we were going to watch it in class. The only issue with this was that 2001 is a rather long movie, and our class period was particularly short, so my teacher had the genius idea to break it up into three different segments that we would watch over a week period. Part one, being the "The Dawn of Man", part two being the journey to Jupiter, and part three being the arrival at Jupiter.  My entire class left that first day having only seen humans dressed up as monkeys beating the hell out of one another. Safe to say, not many of us were particularly impressed, and those of us who were still interested felt a little lost at what could possibly be in store for the rest of this film. We were all devoid of the iconic transition from the bone being thrown into the air into the satellite, and the whole experience left the last part feeling more and more disconnected. By the end of these three days, everyone (including myself) walked out of that class more confused than we needed to be, and I was a little unsure on why this movie was so well known. I thankfully decided to give it another shot a couple years later and instantly realized what a severe injustice this film had been done by splitting into three viewings. Moral of the story, 2001: A Space Odyssey is definitely meant to be watch front to back in one viewing.