They say it takes a village to raise a child. Wait until you meet the community that’s helping grow Riley. In Peter Docter’s Pixar-animated Inside Out, pre-pubescent Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) has a parental unit (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). But in addition to Mom and Dad, there’s a cadre monitoring her interior well […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hungry Hearts’ (2015)
May 31, 2015 by
It’s fitting that the protagonists in Hungry Hearts meet neat in the bowels of a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. The bathroom door jams and the duo are literally trapped in an area the size of a closet. It’s a signal that plunging into the heart of this movie – food, one’s approach to it, the […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Brings On the Matriarchy and the Feminine (2015)
May 16, 2015 by
The great balancing act in Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t the circus-like, high-pole-dipping soldiers swooping down onto enemy vehicles like birds of prey, or the astounding center of gravity that keeps racing rigs and trucks from keeling over onto desert sands out of sheer momentum. The real equilibrium here is the propulsive paean director and […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Americans’ Season 3 (2015): Parent-Child. Parent-Asset
April 23, 2015 by
Children are the most personal entities in the world. But, in the spy arena, to refer to someone in the field as a nameless “asset” is as impersonal as it gets. “The Americans” sees these two categories of individuals – neither of whom, for different reasons, are capable of fending for themselves and ensuring their […]
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: ‘The Babadook’ (2014)
November 28, 2014 by
Death is often seen as a conduit to new life, a theme at the heart of The Babadook, a psychological horror film written and directed by Australian Jennifer Kent. Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single mother, whose husband died seven years earlier in a car crash while driving her to hospital to deliver her child. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Homesman’ (2014)
November 14, 2014 by
Despite the title, The Homesman is a film that richly explores the Feminine and provides a heartbreaking contrast between the Venusian archetype of seduction and beauty and the Lunar archetype of nurturing, caring and mothering. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, the movie is set around 1850, as hardy folk from the East migrated westward. Mary […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Good Lie’ (2014)
October 5, 2014 by
Whether it’s called the Motherland or Fatherland, one’s native country is an extension of family, especially in the face of tragic uprooting. The Good Lie, written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, uses the civil war in Sudan and the “Lost Boys” it generated as inspiration for a fictional story about how the human spirit strives […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Giver’ (2014)
August 14, 2014 by
Many people refer to their homeland as the mother country. Those people didn’t know The Chief Elder, a matriarch as stern as they come who’s running the show in the country depicted in The Giver. Directed by Philip Noyce and based on the YA book by Lois Lowry, The Giver essentially rips in half the mother archetype, […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)
July 20, 2014 by
The grim espionage business relies, for its success, on Neptunian deception and Plutonic penetration of secrets. The most clever master spies throw a third archetype into the mix: the Saturnine User, who’ll exploit the captured by making them spy on their own people and then feed information back to their new handlers. In A Most […]
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