At what point does impediment become a portal? That’s the question posed by The Mountain Between Us, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, which is essentially two characters trying to escape death from both the elements and their deepest fears and regrets. The players are Ben (Idris Elba), a neurosurgeon, and Alix (Kate Winslet), a photojournalist. They […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Alien: Covenant’ (2017)
May 15, 2017 by
The Alien franchise’s signature archetype has been the Moon, signifying Lunar birthing and caregiving: there’s the space vessels’ operating system MU/TH/UR, simply referred to as “Mother”; the extraterrestrial xenomorph, keen on reproducing; the absentee mom who misses out on her daugheter’s entire life – easy to do when you’re lost in space – and who […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Snatched’ (2017)
May 10, 2017 by
A sharp turn off the beaten track – defying one’s traditional pattern of behavior – is at the heart of Snatched. Directed by Jonathan Levine, the female-centric movie adds another archetypal dimension to its Mother-Daughter theme: Saturnine safety and convention vs. Uranian risk, individualism and non-conformity. Emily (Amy Schumer) has just been dumped by her […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Life’ (2017)
March 23, 2017 by
Life will out. As a viable entity, it has no choice except – as we known from the story of the scorpion and the frog – to survive by acting according to its nature. That’s not good news for the six-member crew of an international space station in Life, directed by Daniel Espinosa, whose mission […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Kong: Skull Island’ (2017)
March 8, 2017 by
The multi-layered archetypal survival theme in Kong: Skull Island comes as no surprise. Throw in a entitlement motif, though, and the mayhem that occurs in 1973 on an uncharted island in the South Pacific packs on a lot more proverbial muscle. Briskly directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the film quickly lays out the time line of […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Get Out’ (2017)
February 21, 2017 by
Ever get that sunken feeling? A hellish thing. Persephone, siphoned out of a field while she was picking posies en route to servitude, knew it well. And somehow Jordan Peele, writer and director of Get Out, has turned that Greek myth on its head so that its bones miraculously structure the story of Chris (Daniel […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘A United Kingdom’ (2017)
January 31, 2017 by
A United Kingdom, directed by Amma Asante and based on a true story, wastes no time announcing its Uranian theme of breaking with tradition. On the one hand, the upheaval is personal. In 1947 Englishwoman Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) attends a dance with her sister (Laura Carmichael) and has one of those love-at-first-sight moments with […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Patriots Day’ (2016)
December 15, 2016 by
Archetypal, explosive violence – the coupling of energy that’s both Martian-aggressive and Uranian-sudden – is both a personal and collective attack in Patriots Day. Co-written and directed by Peter Berg, the film sets in motion the rhythms just prior to the Boston Marathon, in 1913, that traditionally falls on what’s called Patriots Day. That year, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Eagle Huntress’ (2016)
November 4, 2016 by
Who needs a canine for a companion when a gal can have an eagle? That’s the aspiration behind poetic documentary The Eagle Huntress, which follows the yearnings of a young teen who’s got it in her head to break a 12-generation, Kazakh-family tradition in the soaring, magnificently photogenic mountain ranges of the Mongolian steppe. Directed […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Loving’ (2016)
November 4, 2016 by
Occasionally real-life events enter the fray adorned with the sort of proverbial beacons that signal their relevance and even fatedness. The story captured in the quiet, gem-of-a-film Loving, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is one such piece of historicity. It’s 1958 and the protagonists are Richard and Mildred Loving, with their surname suggesting that […]
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