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: ‘Manchester by the Sea’ (2016)
November 18, 2016 by
The archetypal Father is many things. The biological dad. A person who behaves like a father. A vigilant caretaker. All these paternal activities encompass the same vital force: guide, lead, protect and introduce the child into the world. Directed and written by Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea is a sobering, often heartbreaking story about […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Little Prince’ (2016)
August 8, 2016 by
Finding one’s way back home is one of storytelling’s most popular themes, especially when a character, like the Little Prince, travels through galaxies to re-root physically, emotionally and spiritually. The Little Prince, the animated movie, directed by Mark Osborne and based on the 1943 for-children-of-all-ages classic by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, uses a modern framework to […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Jason Bourne’ (2016)
July 26, 2016 by
We’re long past identity, supremacy, ultimatum and legacy. Now, as the title says, it’s just Jason Bourne, with the entirety of his chiseled-six-pack essence reduced to finding the truth about the trajectory that led him to become amnesiac Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). Bourne has kept in touch with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who has gone […]
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: ‘Creed’ (2015)
November 25, 2015 by
What could be worse than being the son of an absentee father? Try being illegitimate, and having Dad – an iconic boxer – die before you were born. Those are the sizable issues gnawing at the soul of the protagonist of Creed, the sixth sequel in the Rocky franchise. Directed and co-written by Ryan Coogler, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: Magic Mike XXL (2015)
July 1, 2015 by
Putting away the things of childhood is the extra-extra large theme behind Magic Mike XXL. Sure there’s plenty of male skin here. But the movie, directed by Gregory Jacobs, has its serious underside: a likeable bunch of strippers’ search for their self-identities. There’s a lot of archetypal Mars – males, physicality, energy, sex and sexual […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Ted 2’ (2015)
June 24, 2015 by
The non-human partner in cinematic interspecies-like procreation has typically been extra-terrestrial. It’s time to add plush toys to the mix, specifically, Ted, the teddy-bear BFF of man-child John Barrett. Co-written and directed by Seth MacFarlane, Ted 2 continues the saga of John, who was gifted with Ted in the mid-’80s. Ted, of course, turned into […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Inside Out’ (2015)
June 19, 2015 by
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: ‘Selma’ (2014)
December 27, 2014 by
Saturnine self-mastery is never easy. The challenge becomes even more formidable when one’s values and integrity are tied up with the political well being of a people. In Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, the Rev. Martin Luther King finds himself in exactly this position as he straddles being true to his core beliefs while creating […]
Latest Tweets