  Over the past year and a half we have developed an innovative approach to the
teaching of `Physical Science', a general education course typically found in
the curricula of nearly every college and university. The new approach uses
popular movies to illustrate the principles of physical science, analyzing
individual scenes against the background of the fundamental physical laws. The
impact of being able to understand why, in reality, the scene could or could
not have occurred as depicted in the film, what the director got right and what
he got wrong, has excited student interest enormously in a course that, when
taught in the traditional mode, is usually considered to be `too hard and
boring'. The performance of students on exams reflected the increased attention
to and retention of basic physical concepts, a result that was a primary goal
of the `Physics in Films' approach. Following the first offering of the
revitalization of the Physical Science course, in which action and sci-fi films
were the primary source of the scene clips used in class, the instructors have
demonstrated the versatility of the approach by building variations of the
course around other genres, as well --`Physics in Films: Superheroes' and
`Physics in Films: Pseudoscience'. A parallel approach to the general education
course in astronomy is currently being discussed; many others are in our
thoughts.
