Like archetypal wing-footed Mercury who zips through the air and Underworld doing the bidding of the gods, pilot Barry Seal, the anti-hero of Doug Liman’s American Made, flies. And, in Mercurial style, there are a lot of deities from whom he takes orders. Relentlessly and dizzyingly in motion, the movie is so consistently zany – […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Logan Lucky’ (2017)
August 19, 2017 by
Being unlucky is often in the eyes of the beholder. That’s the conceit at the heart of Logan Lucky, a comedic heist movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, which takes a couple of brothers – their entire “simpleminded” family is nestled in Boone County, West Virgina and carries the generational “bad luck” stigma – and watches […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Alien: Covenant’ (2017)
May 15, 2017 by
The Alien franchise’s signature archetype has been the Moon, signifying Lunar birthing and caregiving: there’s the space vessels’ operating system MU/TH/UR, simply referred to as “Mother”; the extraterrestrial xenomorph, keen on reproducing; the absentee mom who misses out on her daugheter’s entire life – easy to do when you’re lost in space – and who […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Toni Erdmann’ (2016)
December 2, 2016 by
You yell at the screen and cover your eyes. But this is no horror film. It’s a highly sophisticated cinematic tale of the affectionately desperate pursuit of an adult female executive by her aging father who takes on Grand Guignol attire – atrocious, fake vampiric teeth and bad wig – and the name “Toni Erdmann” […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Arrival’ (2016)
November 13, 2016 by
What does a host say to the newly arrived? Especially when they’re aliens? That’s the key question posed in Arrival: What’s your business here, given that 12 of your ships that look like squished Bosu balls standing upright have plopped down all over our planet. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and based on the Ted Chiang […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Indignation’ (2016)
July 26, 2016 by
Indignation, typically a strong reaction to an offense, also suggests a sense of unworthiness or feeling like an outlier uncomfortable in one’s own skin. Written and directed by James Schamus, the film Indignation, based on Philip Roth’s novel, brings together two non-mainstream individuals who, precisely because of their inability to fit into their culture, fall […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Don’t Think Twice’ (2016)
July 21, 2016 by
There’s communication that happens through traditional Mercurial processes. And then there’s the Uranian kind which bypasses logic. With Uranus in the driver’s seat, the mental goods drop into your cranium unobstructed and insanely quickly – no detours – like some kind of enlightenment. It’s not unlike improvisational theater: split-second, unhinged and out-of-left-field dialog. Don’t Think […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Captain Fantastic’ (2016)
July 6, 2016 by
We’d all be a lot happier, wrote Plato, if government overseers were philosopher-kings, rulers who also loved wisdom. Turns out that political hyphenate, an aspirational theme in Captain Fantastic, is much easier to execute on paper than in reality. Figuring out which “real world” is the viable one is at the heart of this movie, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Rams’ (2016)
February 2, 2016 by
When you title your movie Rams, there’s a good chance there’ll be some onscreen Aries-like behavior befitting the ram-ruled, Zodiac sign: head-butting, fighting, competitiveness, impatience and demonstrations of male virility. All this comes to pass in director Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams, with a bit of a twist. The pungent behavior does not emanate from the titular […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ (2015)
August 10, 2015 by
The music group N.W.A. smashed rules to become a seminal force in creating the new revolutionary musical genres of hip hop and gangsta rap. When it came to growing their business, though, they were stuck dealing with mundane business-as-usual deceits and manipulation. The contrast between these two archetypal energies – Uranian rebellion, insight into future […]
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