For some artists, inspiration comes in disparate pieces that get magically assembled into a riveting whole. Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind The Beach Boys, welcomed and embraced those random, other-realm visitations. It was the broken pieces of his life he couldn’t glue back together. Directed by Bill Pohlad, the biopic Love & Mercy jumps back […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (2015)
February 11, 2015 by Leave a Comment
If there’s a semblance of saving grace to the inert sexual drivel that is Fifty Shades of Grey, it’s the film’s gauzy archetypal connection to the myth of Persephone, whom Hades abducted while she was picking flowers and took to his Underworld lair. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and based on the novel by E. L. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘A Most Violent Year’ (2014)
December 31, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The killing and savagery rampant in the world are mirrored in the hearts of people who inhabit it. In A Most Violent Year, written and directed by J. D. Chandor, the ethics and values of Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) are sorely tested in 1981, one of the more statistically turbulent times in New York City. […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Nightcrawler’ (2014)
October 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In the business world, adding value is the name of the game. In Nightcrawler, this type of proactive goal-setting is the mantra of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the amoral, manipulative, lying, eruptive sleazebag of an entrepreneur whose behavior is, in equal measure, both horrifying and fascinating. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler introduces Lou […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘St. Vincent’ (2014)
October 7, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Sainthood is aspirational at best and yet, as depicted in St. Vincent, it’s a possibility within reach in the real world. Written and directed by Theodore Melfi, the movie makes the surprising agent of divinity a curmudgeonly Brooklyn guy named Vincent (Bill Murray) who’s in his late sixties, drinks, gambles, is in debt to a […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Get On Up’ (2014)
July 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment
It’s all there. The riffs, the shoes that swivel maniacally as though greased, the slurrified words, the clipped throaty growls. But Tate Taylor’s Get On Up, the biopic of soul-funk innovator and icon James Brown, ups the ante by letting us see the legend living out what the movie’s title promises. Brown did “get on […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)
July 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
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 […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ (2014)
July 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In the annals of history, many liberators of the oppressed freed their citizenry only to become tyrants themselves. It’s this age old cycle of restrictive Saturn sidling up to revolutionary Uranus – a rhythm that topples and rebuilds civilizations – that’s at the core of Matt Reeves’ highly charged Dawn of the Planet of the […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Boyhood’ (2014)
July 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
For most of us, life is way too busy to allow for keen observations of minute gradations of growth and blossoming of family members, friends and other significant individuals who help grace our time on the planet. Perhaps it’s for this reason – our lack of attention to or even caring for such detail – […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Fargo’: Season 1 Finale: ‘Morton’s Fork’
June 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The question that haunts Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) at the beginning of “Fargo”’s Season 1 finale, “Morton’s Fork,” is Lorne Malvo’s (Billy Bob Thornton) Las Vegas elevator query. “Is this what you want?” Malvo taunts. So what’s the “this” that Malvo tosses out to an increasingly depraved Lester, like the brass ring as a prize […]
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