Many people refer to their homeland as the mother country. Those people didn’t know The Chief Elder, a matriarch as stern as they come who’s running the show in the country depicted in The Giver. Directed by Philip Noyce and based on the YA book by Lois Lowry, The Giver essentially rips in half the mother archetype, […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)
July 20, 2014 by
The grim espionage business relies, for its success, on Neptunian deception and Plutonic penetration of secrets. The most clever master spies throw a third archetype into the mix: the Saturnine User, who’ll exploit the captured by making them spy on their own people and then feed information back to their new handlers. In A Most […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ (2014)
July 9, 2014 by
In the annals of history, many liberators of the oppressed freed their citizenry only to become tyrants themselves. It’s this age old cycle of restrictive Saturn sidling up to revolutionary Uranus – a rhythm that topples and rebuilds civilizations – that’s at the core of Matt Reeves’ highly charged Dawn of the Planet of the […]
Astrology: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’: Motherhood and the Battered Moon
May 12, 2014 by
In a sly move, “Mad Men” broadcast its “Runaways” episode on Mother’s Day, a holiday which, as far back as the 1960s, began to give women pause. Turns out, “Runaways” was full of mother references, evoking the archetypal Moon – Luna – and its derived word, “lunacy.” It’s no coincidence that 1970 was the release […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Ida’ (2014)
April 28, 2014 by
Can a sacrificial offering really count if the person making the gesture has no clear idea of the value of what’s she’s giving up? That’s the question at the heart – literally – of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, a Polish-language movie whose breathtakingly austere black and white cinematography underscores the all-or-nothing dimensions of its subject and […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘RoboCop’ (2014)
February 11, 2014 by
For movie goers with a penchant for archetypes, the original RoboCop (1987), directed by Paul Verhoeven, was the ultimate Aquarian-Age piece of celluloid. The preceding Age of Pisces was all about connecting with the Son of God (Pisces) through his mother (Virgo). The balancing act in the Age of Aquarius is the one between Uranus […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘August: Osage County’ (2013)
December 26, 2013 by
At the heart of August: Osage County, directed by John Wells, is an ugly metaphor for what ails the Weston family. We learn soon enough that Violet (Meryl Streep), the clan’s matriarch and Lunar symbol, is terminally ill with cancer of the mouth, the body part which takes in food and nourishment. In this case, […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
December 26, 2013 by
Based on the true story of crooked broker Jordan Belfort, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is a three-hour evocation of the revelry-filled Roman festival known as the Saturnalia. At some point during that ancient manic carnival, the head reveler was put to death. This mythology-as-art winds up imitating life as Belfort’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Pieces of April’ (2003)
November 28, 2013 by
Love Actually may rule the Christmas season but the cinematic queen of Thanksgiving is arguably Pieces of April, written and directed by Peter Hedges and released in 2003, a year after his About a Boy. Pieces of April, though, is about a girl. She’s April Burns (Katie Holmes), her family’s designated eldest-child screw-up – drugs, […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Philomena’ (2013)
November 20, 2013 by
The heartfelt story of a mother’s love over a period of decades, Stephen Frears’ Philomena is a haunting riff on the maternal and emotional Lunar archetype. The total Moon-package here is real-life Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) who, as a teen in 1950s’ Northern Ireland, delivers an out-of-wedlock child she names Anthony. The birthing place is […]
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