Category: Film
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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April 10, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
We watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, … and Spring for the final film in the HMU Winter Film Series. What a film with gorgeous scenery and a wonderful narrative!
As the title would indicate, the film opens in springtime. A boy forages on a mountainside while his master, a Buddhist monk, goes into town for some supplies.
February 27, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The soundtrack to The Hours by Philip Glass
The Hours, a 2002 film based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, weaves together the lives of three complicated women. First, Virginia Woolf is shown writing the manuscript for Mrs. Dalloway. Next, Laura Brown, a housewife in the 1950s,
January 23, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Peter Brook’s version of Lord of the Flies opens to church bells and a stream of photos from and English boys’ school. The photos and audio include math lessons and angelic sounding chorale arrangements, which are quickly replaced by drums and a cricket match interspersed with missiles, airplanes behind Big Ben, and a chalkboard list of evacuation plans.
October 10, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s review.
While I’ve always loved Jane Austen’s characters, it was only after becoming an adult that I understood Austen’s complex social commentaries. I’ve read most of her works multiple times. For some reason, however, I never picked up Persuasion. So, in honor of Austen’s 250th birthday this year, I read that final novel. As usual, I identify with the strong female voice.
April 11, 2025
Thanks to 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, Rachel D. Perez, for today’s post.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and rapid advancements in technology, even the fundamental aspects of human education and child-rearing are being called into question. As we move toward an era where machines increasingly shape our world, one might wonder: Can AI disrupt our humanness? In this blog, I argue that Mother in I Am Mother may represent the ideal tutor Rousseau envisioned in Émile.
» Read more about: The AI Tutor: Revisiting Rousseau’s Philosophy in a Technological Age »
March 21, 2025
Thanks to Joy Reeves, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
“Fortune befriends the bold,” Virgil first wrote in Aeneid. But in a world where boldness, the self-serving counterpart of courage, is so quick to estrange and sour relationships—is fortune’s friendship enough? Todd Field’s 2022 film Tár masterfully addresses this question in a unique, provocative portrait of a lonely musical genius.
February 21, 2025
Thanks to Rachel D. Perez, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
Cinema, at its most incisive, does not merely tell stories—it unmasks the world. El hoyo (The Platform, 2019), directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, is one such film, a relentless interrogation of survival, power, and the human condition. Set within a vertical prison where food descends level by level, the film captures the raw brutality of artificial scarcity.
» Read more about: The Horror of Being: A Philosophical Review of El hoyo (The Platform) »
January 24, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Winter Film Series kicked off with the hard-hitting Women Talking. The film, directed by Sarah Polley, profiles a small, isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia. A series of incidents lead the women to discover that some men in the community have repeatedly drugged and then sexually assault them. The women hold a plebiscite on whether to do nothing,
August 2, 2024
Thanks to 2023 HMU Fellow in Ideas Chad Greene for today’s post.
“We’re on a road to nowhere”?
Why was that line – seemingly depressing on a surface level – so inspiring to me that I unexpectedly found myself on my feet in front of the TV in my living room, dancing, singing, and even crying?
During my 2023 Fellowship in Ideas at Harrison Middleton University,
Thanks to Aaron Ducksworth, a 2023 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
November 10, 2023
Many movies of various genres have been made about the relationship between humans and anthropomorphic technology and the complicated relationship between them – think The Terminator franchise (1984-2019), I, Robot (2004), Virtuosity (1995), and The Matrix franchise (1999-2021). M3GAN is different! Not because it attempts to bridge the gap between horror and science fiction through an AI-based film,
» Read more about: FILM REVIEW: Philosophical Roots in Tech-Horror »