Abandonment issues – scary, painful and often irreparable – can haunt people their entire lives. In Lights Out, that time frame gets extended to beyond-the-grave. Directed by David F. Sandberg, the film is a taut rubber band of resentments, vengefulness and post-mortem co-dependence. The film’s spindly title font suggests what’s to come, as a shadowy […]
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: ‘Brooklyn’ (2015)
November 4, 2015 by
Robert Frost wrote that home was the place where, if you had to go there, they have to take you in. Whether the guest wants to stay permanently is another matter entirely, and it’s at the heart of Brooklyn, a lyrical film about a young Irish immigrant to that titular New York City borough, who […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Spectre’ (2015)
November 3, 2015 by
Like a sturdy shoe stomping cockroaches, James Bond, as British Agent 007, exists to exterminate cartoonish villains whose goal is to appropriate global power. Directed by Sam Mendes, Spectre, the latest offering in the franchise, gives us more of the same derring do, at a critical moment involving national security. The “007” program is likely […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Trumbo’ (2015)
November 2, 2015 by
Governments that run nations are not unlike larger-than-life parents – the mother lands and father countries with their books of rules that keep the machine from falling into chaos. Trumbo is about a period of time in U.S. history when that so-called list of no-nos and smackdowns got a bigger workout than usual. Directed by […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Grandma’ (2015)
August 15, 2015 by
The grandparent-grandchild connection is invariably one that fuels hopes for the future, as age embraces optimistic and expansive youth. But the past is often a demanding guest in this generational interplay, generating a flood of memories of watershed moments in the older person. This phenomenon is at the core of Grandma, where an idiosyncratic and […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ (2015)
August 1, 2015 by
Nothing is as intoxicating – or terrifying – as power that’s been thrust on you and which shockingly fits you like a glove. In The Diary of a Teenage Girl, 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) learns about wielding such power through the carnal and emotional pleasures of sex. The downside is that her first, two-decades […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The End of the Tour’ (2015)
July 29, 2015 by
Two people participate in an intense bonding experience which ultimately turns out to have a limited shelf life. That notion – the ephemeral nature of human connection – is made especially poignant in the haunting The End of the Tour, which posits that embracing the moment may be the most solid option in life. Directed by James […]
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: ‘Jurassic World’ (2015)
June 10, 2015 by
The dinosaur-populated tourist attraction at the center of Jurassic World is heavily promoted as a place to bring the family. But what this theme part is really about – technology and genetics research at its most impersonal – is at the opposite end of the feeling-spectrum. The constant archetypal interplay between high tech and the […]
Latest Tweets