By Jove, Annie literally lives, breathes and radiates Jupiter – the planet representing the archetype tied to education, expansiveness, and truth and meaning of life – as surely as the Sun will come out tomorrow. Directed by Will Gluck, the movie begins with the titular character (Quvenzhané Wallis) in a classroom, with an exasperated teacher […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Inherent Vice’ (2014)
Inherent Vice, based on Thomas Pynchon’s druggy novel, isn’t just about people under the influence of a proverbial purple haze. Adapted and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the movie is itself a purple haze, a cinematic rendering of archetypal Neptune’s perennial blurry fuzzed-out state and penchant for purple, which makes it literally impossible to pinpoint […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Imitation Game’ (2014)
The Uranian archetype of genius, innovation and unconventional habits could not have found a better conduit than Alan Turing, the British mathematician heralded for having cracked Germany’s Enigma code, which was used to communicate that country’s secret plans and activities during WWII. Directed by Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game has, as its hero, an unlikely […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Babadook’ (2014)
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)
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 […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Foxcatcher’ (2014)
For many athletes, winning an Olympic gold medal opens countless doors, leading to personal growth, financial security, and a validation that all their hard work has value in a post-Olympics existence. As explored in Foxcatcher, this scenario was not the fate of the Schultz brothers, both wrestling gold medalists in the 1984 Olympics, in Los […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘The Theory of Everything’ (2014)
From the time he was a young man, cosmologist Stephen Hawking was obsessed with the notion that time had a beginning. In 1988 he even published a book on the topic, A Brief History of Time. Not surprisingly, then, the predominant archetype in the Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything is Saturn, whose domain is […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Manhattan’ Season 1 Finale: Death, Pluto and the Bomb
Pluto was first spotted in the sky in early 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. And this planet’s archetypal energies – death, destruction, power, transformation, secrecy, spying, obsession and control – shatter every frame of “Manhattan,” WGN America’s smart, riveting drama series which broadcast its first-season finale last week. Created by […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Citizenfour’ (2014)
The most vibrant movie characters, fictional or biographical, tend to carry the most riveting archetypes. Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’ documentary about Edward J. Snowden, falls – rather, bursts – into that category of memorable players. And, like most of the U.S. population unaware of how its government was massively breaching citizens’ privacy, Poitras begins her project […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Force Majeure’ (2014)
Blindingly white and light-reflective, snow shows a surprisingly dark side in Force Majeure, which abruptly detours from its seeming family-vacation premise to one family member’s full-blown side trip to a hell of his own making. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, the movie is set in a postcard-perfect ski resort in the French Alps, with […]










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