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: ‘The Nice Guys’ (2016)
May 18, 2016 by
Done right, the two-guys-and-a-gal buddy-movie combo is hard to beat. It worked superbly in the 1950s-set L.A. Confidential, where a nurturing Veronica Lake-lookalike prostitute (Kim Basinger) was sandwiched between Bud White’s (Russell Crowe) brawn and Ed Exley’s (Guy Pearce) brains. That archetypal Moon-Mars-Mercury triad has somehow begotten The Nice Guys. The movie, co-written and directed […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Maggie’s Plan’ (2016)
May 17, 2016 by
Life plans sound so solid and promising, but are often unreliable conduits to bliss. Maggie (Greta Gerwig), an affable, soul-searching millennial with an MBA, stable career and what she thinks is a viable agenda, is about to find that out. Written and directed by Rebecca Miller, and based on a story by Karen Rinaldi, Maggie’s […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’ (2016)
February 3, 2016 by
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: ‘Rams’ (2016)
February 2, 2016 by
When you title your movie Rams, there’s a good chance there’ll be some onscreen Aries-like behavior befitting the ram-ruled, Zodiac sign: head-butting, fighting, competitiveness, impatience and demonstrations of male virility. All this comes to pass in director Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams, with a bit of a twist. The pungent behavior does not emanate from the titular […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Hateful Eight’ (2015)
December 15, 2015 by
Quentin Tarantino, a huge fan of the Western, likes to hybridize genres. His latest experiment, The Hateful Eight, set in Wyoming about a decade after the Civil War, is a movie about a bunch of cunning entrepreneur-cowboys for whom, in Saturnine style, the end justifies the means. A significant part of this three-hour, solo-film festival […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘45 Years’ (2015)
December 12, 2015 by
When a marriage lasts nearly half a century, presumably the partners have figured out a way to romp in the garden without stomping on the flowers. But because every spring blasts new growth, who can predict what seasonal surprises lurk in the soil? In the case of Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband Geoff […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Son of Saul’ (2015)
December 12, 2015 by
No matter what privileges they give you, the enemy is still the enemy, an adage at the heart of Holocaust drama Son of Saul, whose protagonist must figure out how to use a benefit bestowed by his oppressor to create a personal testimony to goodness before he dies. Directed by Hungarian László Nemes, the movie […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Big Short’ (2015)
December 12, 2015 by
In the continuously expanding and contracting world of finance, fortunes are made by those able to spot markers ahead of everyone else, just like the men propelling the narrative in The Big Short. Co-written and directed by Adam McKay, and based on Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book about the meltdown in the housing market in 2008, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Revenant’ (2015)
December 4, 2015 by
Survival has always been about either vanquishing or besting one’s foes, whether they’re humans or offshoots of Nature at its most unforgiving. In The Revenant, co-written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the protagonist must triumph over both. The ordeal is not pretty. The movie is loosely based on Michael Punke’s novel set in the […]
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