From the time he was a young man, cosmologist Stephen Hawking was obsessed with the notion that time had a beginning. In 1988 he even published a book on the topic, A Brief History of Time. Not surprisingly, then, the predominant archetype in the Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything is Saturn, whose domain is […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Nightcrawler’ (2014)
October 28, 2014 by
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 […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Manhattan’ Season 1 Finale: Death, Pluto and the Bomb
October 26, 2014 by
Pluto was first spotted in the sky in early 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. And this planet’s archetypal energies – death, destruction, power, transformation, secrecy, spying, obsession and control – shatter every frame of “Manhattan,” WGN America’s smart, riveting drama series which broadcast its first-season finale last week. Created by […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Citizenfour’ (2014)
October 25, 2014 by
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: ‘Force Majeure’ (2014)
October 24, 2014 by
Blindingly white and light-reflective, snow shows a surprisingly dark side in Force Majeure, which abruptly detours from its seeming family-vacation premise to one family member’s full-blown side trip to a hell of his own making. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, the movie is set in a postcard-perfect ski resort in the French Alps, with […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘St. Vincent’ (2014)
October 7, 2014 by
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: ‘The Good Lie’ (2014)
October 5, 2014 by
Whether it’s called the Motherland or Fatherland, one’s native country is an extension of family, especially in the face of tragic uprooting. The Good Lie, written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, uses the civil war in Sudan and the “Lost Boys” it generated as inspiration for a fictional story about how the human spirit strives […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Gone Girl’ (2014)
October 3, 2014 by
Containers abound in Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher and based on the popular novel by Gillian Flynn, who wrote the screenplay. There are envelopes, which hold the clues for the treasure hunt Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has prepared for her husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) to celebrate their fifth anniversary, the very day […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Giver’ (2014)
August 14, 2014 by
Many people refer to their homeland as the mother country. Those people didn’t know The Chief Elder, a matriarch as stern as they come who’s running the show in the country depicted in The Giver. Directed by Philip Noyce and based on the YA book by Lois Lowry, The Giver essentially rips in half the mother archetype, […]
Astrology: Television: ‘The Knick’: The Mercurial Bridge between Life and Death
August 11, 2014 by
Mythological Mercury was the god who, at the behest of the deities, winged his way back and forth from Olympus to the Underworld. In Cinemax’s “The Knick,” directed by Steven Soderbergh, New York City’s Knickerbocker Hospital, at the turn of the 20th century, metaphorically and efficiently does duty as both locations. The hospital’s residential Mercurial […]
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