Introduction to Film Studies

I came to Columbia University with the intention of majoring in film. Alas, I took the Intro to Film course taught by Larry Engel. Dare I say this was the worst experience of my life. He rambles for hours, especially when he has a new made-for-TV movie in the works. He has the ability to ruin the most touching and affecting scenes with his stream-of-consciousness commentary. Additionally, Larry hates everything. He is one of those igonorant intellectualls who believes that old is good. This is coming from a man who claims to never go to the movies anymore. He will lull you to sleep with his stories and self-aggrandizing anecdotes. Stay Away. Stay Far Away. Not only his teaching style is bad, you will learn nothing about the history of the movies, and his lectures on the meaning of films are completely vague and superficial. If you want to get anything out of the class you must do the reading. And there is a lot of it. He teaches movies as if it were math. You will actually have to graph scenes of movies, and analyze them in an essay. Depending on your TA, the discussion sections vary in quality. HATE is the only word that can describe my feeling. If you are interested in Film Studies, take the course offered through the English department at Barnard.

Some like him, others don't. He tends to ramble a lot. Slightly arrogant. He assigns an extreme amount of reading, but by the end of the semester, he even stops reading it. Midterm and Final are both take home. Much of how much you like this course depends on your TA.