The non-human partner in cinematic interspecies-like procreation has typically been extra-terrestrial. It’s time to add plush toys to the mix, specifically, Ted, the teddy-bear BFF of man-child John Barrett. Co-written and directed by Seth MacFarlane, Ted 2 continues the saga of John, who was gifted with Ted in the mid-’80s. Ted, of course, turned into […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Inside Out’ (2015)
June 19, 2015 by
They say it takes a village to raise a child. Wait until you meet the community that’s helping grow Riley. In Peter Docter’s Pixar-animated Inside Out, pre-pubescent Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) has a parental unit (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). But in addition to Mom and Dad, there’s a cadre monitoring her interior well […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Jurassic World’ (2015)
June 10, 2015 by
The dinosaur-populated tourist attraction at the center of Jurassic World is heavily promoted as a place to bring the family. But what this theme part is really about – technology and genetics research at its most impersonal – is at the opposite end of the feeling-spectrum. The constant archetypal interplay between high tech and the […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Love & Mercy’ (2015)
May 31, 2015 by
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: ‘Good Kill’ (2015)
May 12, 2015 by
Is military killing easier to rationalize when it’s done with a joystick? That’s the question at the heart of Good Kill, which looks at how drone warfare affects a group of military fighting the Taliban from crate-like structures in the Las Vegas desert. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the film, which screened at the […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Slow West’ (2015)
May 11, 2015 by
Just about the only purity and innocence you’ll see in Slow West are the breathtakingly pristine natural vistas of this country in 1870 – mountains, rivers, fields and day-and-midnight-blue skies – and Jay Cavendish, a lovestruck teen from Scotland who’s traveling through “the baking heart of America” to locate the woman he fell for in […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hot Pursuit’ (2015)
May 7, 2015 by
On the surface, Hot Pursuit is about an uptight law enforcement agent shepherding an unwilling witness to court to testify against a drug lord. Archetypally, it’s a joust between by-the-book, tightly coiled Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) and renegade Colombian hottie Daniella (Sofia Vergara). Given that one woman intensely colors inside the lines and the other doesn’t […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Welcome to Me’ (2015)
April 26, 2015 by
Welcome to Me is a fairytale for grown-ups. Its message? The way to address life’s limitations is often through embracing further limitations. Primed to learn this lesson – the hard way – is the film’s deluded heroine Alice Klieg (Kristen Wiig). Alice, a 30-something denizen of Palm Desert, California, who suffers from borderline personality disorder, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘While We’re Young’ (2015)
March 23, 2015 by
In the creation of art, does the maker’s lack of adherence to a solid level of truthiness nullify the creation? That’s the question posed by Noah Baumbach, the writer and director of While We’re Young, who uses two couples from different generations as his conduits. Representing the mid-40s demographic is married couple Josh and Cornelia. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘White God’ (2015)
March 22, 2015 by
Political allegories are rarely as thrilling as White God, a film in which mixed-breed canines are stand-ins for oppressed peoples who rise up when irrevocably marginalized and mistreated by the system. The movie screened at New Directors/New Films, program jointly presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. At […]
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