During the time of The Troubles in 1970s Belfast – marked by ongoing warfare between British and Irish Republican Army forces – a person’s allegiance to Northern Ireland carried the same weight as commitment to one’s own flesh and blood. The Moon – with its connections to family and, especially, Mother – is an ominous […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Now You See Me’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
Mercury the Trickster does a massive sleight of hand in Louis Leterrier’s crime caper Now You See Me, given there are not one but four magicians, all at the top of their mischievous games, creating enthralling mayhem. Befuddled detective Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is looking increasingly incompetent as he tries to keep one step ahead […]
Astrology: Film: ‘After Earth’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth is less the sci-fi action story it purports to be, and more a meditation on the prickly nature of the father-son relationship. After Earth is set far into the future, a thousand years after earth has become uninhabitable. The planet to which humans had been evacuated relies on the […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Before Midnight’ (2013)
May 30, 2013 by
Relationships are no better than the communication that cultivates and perhaps dooms them. There’s no grander cinematic illustration of this hypothesis than Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, which revisits American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Frenchwoman Celine (Julie Delpy) years after they meet neat in Before Sunrise (1995) as young adults, and several years later when Jesse […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Frances Ha’ (2013)
May 14, 2013 by
Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is a tribute to both the magic that happens when love and work are well integrated in a person’s life, and the chaos that ensues when either or both of these elements are out of sync. Twenty-seven-year-old Frances (Greta Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script) is the poster child for anyone […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Stories We Tell’ (2013)
May 9, 2013 by
Citing parental and sibling resemblances is a bit of a family sport. But what happens when a child who really doesn’t look as though she’s from the same brood takes it step further to pull up what she had assumed were her roots? That’s the subject of Stories We Tell, an autobiographical documentary written and […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Great Gatsby’ (2013)
May 9, 2013 by
The lush, lavish and raucous The Great Gatsby excels at making its point that nothing – absolutely nothing – was too deliriously large, expansive or optimistic for Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). That “J” on his business card? It’s simply a stand-in for Jupiter. Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel focuses on a […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Iron Man 3’ (2013)
May 3, 2013 by
Films about futuristic weaponry typically fall neatly under the archetypes of Mars and Uranus: Mars for the fighting, metal and militarism. And Uranus for the visionary punch, including robotic machinations, of what’s to come. Most blow-’em-ups manage to cover the larger-than-life gadgetry and the 100-years-from-now angles. But true “Aquarian Age” movies that deliver the entire […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Iceman’ (2013)
May 3, 2013 by
Early in The Iceman, crime boss Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) calls contract killer Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) “cold as ice.” No one would argue that Kuklinski’s murderous proclivities emanate from the archetypal nether regions of Pluto, locked in the depths of the coldest element, earth. But what truly mesmerizes in director Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Love Is All You Need’ (2013)
April 29, 2013 by
You won’t look at lemons the same way after seeing Love Is All You Need, the new romantic comedy from Danish director Susanne Bier. The yellow citrus, after its initial mouth-puckering sourness, transitions into a satisfying sweetness, the transformation audiences will wish for the movie’s heroine Ida (Trine Dyrholm). Ida, a hairdresser who’s just completed […]
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