The feeling- and consciousness-infused machine has been one of cinema’s more popular go-to sci-fi archetypes. Add the titular robot of Chappie to that list. Set in a near-future Johannesburg that’s riddled by crime gangs, Neill Blomkamp, the movie’s co-writer and director, has created a parable – sandwiched between two revenge tales – about one man’s […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ (2015)
February 26, 2015 by
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, overstuffed like a frenetically busy street in Mumbai, is short on narrative and richly heavy on the theme of aging. The movie’s predecessor, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, focused on the eruptive Uranian surge that sparked a light in a group of retirees to live out the rest of […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Lazarus Effect’ (2015)
February 25, 2015 by
The Resurrection archetype never, well, dies. The savior revivified in Christianity, the phoenix arising from its ashes in mythology and the undead walking amongst us in pop culture all demonstrate that life-after-death is the gift that keeps on giving, as it does in The Lazarus Effect. Directed by David Gelb, and with its titular nod […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ (2015)
February 13, 2015 by
Kingsman: The Secret Service seems pleased to be nothing more than a good-guys-save-the-world film. But at the archetypal level, the movie is way more than its display of outlandish, cartoon-like derring do. This is about legacy, fathers and sons. Directed by Matthew Vaughn and based on the comic book series, Kingsman is the name of […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (2015)
February 11, 2015 by
If there’s a semblance of saving grace to the inert sexual drivel that is Fifty Shades of Grey, it’s the film’s gauzy archetypal connection to the myth of Persephone, whom Hades abducted while she was picking flowers and took to his Underworld lair. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and based on the novel by E. L. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Mommy’ (2015)
January 20, 2015 by
Motherhood can turn the best maternal caregivers into moonstruck lunatics, an identifier that pays tribute to the always changing waxing and waning night-sky luminary. The Canadian film Mommy makes a meal of the Lunar principle – tied to nurturing, emotion, security, family and home – in all its messy, excessive and often thankless glory. Written […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Cake’ (2015)
January 19, 2015 by
Physical and psychological immobilization caused by pain can be literally life-halting. This inability to go forward is at the heart of Cake, a sly exploration of the energy-fueled Mars archetype. Typically the operative archetype in summer tentpole actioners, Mars – the ability to go after what one wants in life through will power, ego, motion […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘Nightcrawler’ (2014): Rene Russo’s Nina Romina’s Older Working Woman’s Survival Strategy
January 18, 2015 by
Over the years, movies have given us a wide array of female characters at all levels of professionalism who supervise, control and make life-and-death decisions. But last year no cinematic woman stayed in my head as long as Nina Romina, the fictional news director at a television station in Nightcrawler. The original screenplay, written by […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Missing’ Season 1 Finale
January 11, 2015 by
Not every kidnapping provides closure. The merged realities resulting from years of searching for a loved one – is the victim dead, living under a new identity, an unwilling participant in a dreadful ongoing scenario, or all of these? – is the substance of “The Missing,” a miniseries on Starz which broadcast its Season 1 […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Paddington’ (2015)
January 9, 2015 by
Broadening one’s outlook often occurs through travel and education. Both these archetypes of expansion are the heart of Paddington, which delights in sharing the arrival, in London, of the iconic teddy bear immortalized in Michael Bond’s books. Written and directed by Paul King, the movie, a combination of live action and CG (for the bears), […]
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