Eco-terrorists are still terrorists. But when they’re as earnest and nice as the ones in Zal Batmanglij’s The East, it will make life a lot more murky for the infiltrator who’s been assigned to find them, become one of them, and take them down. The woman assigned to crack the case – the group’s name […]
Archives for May 2013
Astrology: Film: ‘The Kings of Summer’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
In the coming-of-age movie The Kings of Summer, Patrick’s (Gabriel Basso) parents are prickly hoverers. Joe’s (Nick Robinson) widowed dad Frank (Nick Offerman), on the other hand, is simply a prick. Throw a third kid into the mix – a scythe-carrying weirdo named Biaggio (Moises Arias) – and you have a trio of teens who […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Shadow Dancer’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
During the time of The Troubles in 1970s Belfast – marked by ongoing warfare between British and Irish Republican Army forces – a person’s allegiance to Northern Ireland carried the same weight as commitment to one’s own flesh and blood. The Moon – with its connections to family and, especially, Mother – is an ominous […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Now You See Me’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
Mercury the Trickster does a massive sleight of hand in Louis Leterrier’s crime caper Now You See Me, given there are not one but four magicians, all at the top of their mischievous games, creating enthralling mayhem. Befuddled detective Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is looking increasingly incompetent as he tries to keep one step ahead […]
Astrology: Film: ‘After Earth’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth is less the sci-fi action story it purports to be, and more a meditation on the prickly nature of the father-son relationship. After Earth is set far into the future, a thousand years after earth has become uninhabitable. The planet to which humans had been evacuated relies on the […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Before Midnight’ (2013)
May 30, 2013 by
Relationships are no better than the communication that cultivates and perhaps dooms them. There’s no grander cinematic illustration of this hypothesis than Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, which revisits American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Frenchwoman Celine (Julie Delpy) years after they meet neat in Before Sunrise (1995) as young adults, and several years later when Jesse […]
Astrology: Fashion: ‘Frances Ha’ and the Pencil Skirt
May 15, 2013 by
The classic pencil skirt worn by Greta Gerwig’s Frances, the lovable 27-year-old gal-in-transition heroine in the new movie Frances Ha, is an aspirational one for this character. Her life is sprawling out of control, as she experiences unstable housing arrangements, a modern-dance career that’s spiraling ever out of reach, and the potential loss of her […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Frances Ha’ (2013)
May 14, 2013 by
Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is a tribute to both the magic that happens when love and work are well integrated in a person’s life, and the chaos that ensues when either or both of these elements are out of sync. Twenty-seven-year-old Frances (Greta Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script) is the poster child for anyone […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Mad Men’: Don Plays Pluto and Takes Sylvia to Hades
May 13, 2013 by
Could Don Draper’s hostage-taking of Sylvia, his mistress, have been an unconscious plan to get her to end their affair? Given his warped sexual appetite and taste for Pluto control, yes, it was. At the beginning of the episode, “Man with a Plan,” Don (Jon Hamm), in his apartment building’s elevator, has overheard Sylvia (Linda […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Stories We Tell’ (2013)
May 9, 2013 by
Citing parental and sibling resemblances is a bit of a family sport. But what happens when a child who really doesn’t look as though she’s from the same brood takes it step further to pull up what she had assumed were her roots? That’s the subject of Stories We Tell, an autobiographical documentary written and […]
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