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Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Big Little Lies” and the World of Neptune (2017)

As the waves relentlessly crash onto the shoreline of Monterey, you anticipate the emergence, any minute now, of bearded Neptune, sporting his trident as though waiting to pierce some high-end seafood and olives. “Big Little Lies,” HBO’s seven-episode drama based on Liane Moriarty’s novel and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, is about a murder tied to […]

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’ (2016)

Hollywood in the 1950s was a mosaic of studios, each with its own stable of stars that churned out movies with machine-like efficiency. Written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Hail, Caesar!, an exuberant satire of that cinematic era, has installed an unlikely human hub at the center of it all. Eddie Mannix […]

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Amy’ (2015)

Extraordinary English vocal talent Amy Winehouse broke hearts when she died at 27 in 2011 from alcohol poisoning. Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Amy, only heightens our sadness as we relive it. As Amy demonstrates, Winehouse didn’t so much die as orchestrate her own disappearance, a phenomenon associated with archetypal Neptune, whose bailiwick also includes drugs, addiction, […]

Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ Series Finale (2015): Priest, Penance, Confessor, Confessee

The core of “Mad Men” has always been religious: Advertising man Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) original sin, akin to Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, involved his stealing the identity of another man. Neptunian themes of deceit and fuzzy identity merged with other ways to “Neptune out” – through drugs, alcohol, sex, as well as […]

Archetypes: Television: ‘Mad Men’: Don Draper, Addictions and the Priest

The addiction-centric archetypes associated with “Mad Men”’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm) have been consistent over the series’ seven-season run. In the pilot, viewers learned that Don drank, smoked and was unfaithful. Over several dozen episodes, they realized those habits – booze, cigarettes and sex – were embedded in the man’s sinews. And that these activities […]

Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘iZombie’ (2015)

You are what you eat plays out big time in CW’s undead-medical procedural “iZombie,” adapted from a comic book series by the creatives that brought you “Veronica Mars.” “iZombie” features another plucky female, the well named Olivia “Liv” Moore (Rose McIver), a medical resident whose life literally transforms one night during some zombie mayhem at […]

Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Big Eyes’ (2014)

If eyes are the windows to the soul, you can’t get a better view of the psyche than by peering through the gigantic orbs painted on despondent-looking waifs’ faces by Margaret Keane half a century ago. Big Eyes, a movie about Keane’s creations which were both jarring and evocative, explores these sad wide-eyed wonders as […]

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: ‘The Congress’ (2014)

Can the veil that separates Saturnine corporeal reality from the transcendent Neptunian realm actually be a cruel trick devised by Hollywood moguls? Yes, indeed, and it’s the premise of Ari Folman’s part live-action, part animated film The Congress, loosely based on the sci-fi novel by Stanisław Lem. At the beginning of The Congress, the real, […]

Astrology: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)

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 […]