Putting away the things of childhood is the extra-extra large theme behind Magic Mike XXL. Sure there’s plenty of male skin here. But the movie, directed by Gregory Jacobs, has its serious underside: a likeable bunch of strippers’ search for their self-identities. There’s a lot of archetypal Mars – males, physicality, energy, sex and sexual […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Ted 2’ (2015)
June 24, 2015 by
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: ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’ (2015)
June 8, 2015 by
It’s rare that a peer guides an adolescent into the afterlife, but such is the premise of the affable, often funny and deeply moving Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and written by Jesse Andrews who adapted his own novel, the movie evokes archetypal Mercury. The winged messenger, doing the […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Spy’ (2015)
June 5, 2015 by
As masters of disguise, spies are the ultimate impostors, a premise which Spy, a female-driven comedy, brilliantly turns into a feminist tract. Written and directed by Paul Feig, the movie is a sophisticated, barely concealed take on impostor syndrome, a psychological phenomenon that’s been kicking around for nearly four decades. Impostor syndrome typically affects successful […]
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: ‘Hungry Hearts’ (2015)
May 31, 2015 by
It’s fitting that the protagonists in Hungry Hearts meet neat in the bowels of a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. The bathroom door jams and the duo are literally trapped in an area the size of a closet. It’s a signal that plunging into the heart of this movie – food, one’s approach to it, the […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ Series Finale (2015): Priest, Penance, Confessor, Confessee
May 18, 2015 by
The core of “Mad Men” has always been religious: Advertising man Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) original sin, akin to Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, involved his stealing the identity of another man. Neptunian themes of deceit and fuzzy identity merged with other ways to “Neptune out” – through drugs, alcohol, sex, as well as […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘Mad Men’: Don Draper, Addictions and the Priest
May 17, 2015 by
The addiction-centric archetypes associated with “Mad Men”’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm) have been consistent over the series’ seven-season run. In the pilot, viewers learned that Don drank, smoked and was unfaithful. Over several dozen episodes, they realized those habits – booze, cigarettes and sex – were embedded in the man’s sinews. And that these activities […]
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