Abandonment issues – scary, painful and often irreparable – can haunt people their entire lives. In Lights Out, that time frame gets extended to beyond-the-grave. Directed by David F. Sandberg, the film is a taut rubber band of resentments, vengefulness and post-mortem co-dependence. The film’s spindly title font suggests what’s to come, as a shadowy […]
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 […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Macbeth’ (2015)
December 3, 2015 by
Towards the end of the official Shakespearian “Macbeth,” the titular character delivers a grim assessment of “dusty death”: the candle of vitality burns but briefly, and life “struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” Director Justin Kurzel, whose Macbeth is based on the Bard’s, takes the metaphor of the stage and runs with it, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Carol’ (2015)
November 18, 2015 by
Venus, the archetype signifying love and pleasure, is at the heart of most enduring relationships. Although same-sex unions are now increasingly embraced by the general population, they were at one time more than Venusian. They were non-mainstream-Venusian, and aligned with the Uranian archetype of uniqueness, rebellion and, for some, subversiveness. However, this notion of anarchy-in-love […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Spectre’ (2015)
November 3, 2015 by
Like a sturdy shoe stomping cockroaches, James Bond, as British Agent 007, exists to exterminate cartoonish villains whose goal is to appropriate global power. Directed by Sam Mendes, Spectre, the latest offering in the franchise, gives us more of the same derring do, at a critical moment involving national security. The “007” program is likely […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Black Mass’ (2015)
September 18, 2015 by
Making a deal with one Satan whom you hope will decimate another devil is never a good idea. The maneuver, preposterous as it sounds, is at the heart of the appropriately named Black Mass, a liturgy that turns everything good and holy face down staring at the Underworld. Directed by Scott Cooper, Black Mass is […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Gift’ (2015)
August 5, 2015 by
Written and directed by Joel Edgerton, The Gift is a tight, stark and claustrophobic little thriller that spools as murky as the script’s reference to “let bygones be bygones.” The pair at the receiving end of those words – initially we don’t know exactly what the “bygones” are which need to be absolved – are […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ (2015)
August 1, 2015 by
Nothing is as intoxicating – or terrifying – as power that’s been thrust on you and which shockingly fits you like a glove. In The Diary of a Teenage Girl, 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) learns about wielding such power through the carnal and emotional pleasures of sex. The downside is that her first, two-decades […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ (2015)
July 11, 2015 by
Where’s that “safe word” when you need it? Male Stanford students, who participated in a daring piece of psychological research in 1971, thought the “contracts” they had with that academic institution guaranteed them a way out at any time. But as The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film based on those events, demonstrates, the study took […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Self/less’ (2015)
July 5, 2015 by
Death means disintegration of the body, as well as the evaporation of every thought and mental talent the deceased ever accrued in life. Damian Hale, a wealthy real estate mogul with terminal cancer, is one of those people who’d like to stick around a bit longer. Self/Less, a medical thriller directed by Tarsem Singh, explores […]
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