In the coming-of-age movie The Kings of Summer, Patrick’s (Gabriel Basso) parents are prickly hoverers. Joe’s (Nick Robinson) widowed dad Frank (Nick Offerman), on the other hand, is simply a prick. Throw a third kid into the mix – a scythe-carrying weirdo named Biaggio (Moises Arias) – and you have a trio of teens who […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Shadow Dancer’ (2013)
May 31, 2013 by
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: ‘Mud’ (2013)
April 25, 2013 by
Usually it’s female movie characters who pine away for the guys they just can’t have and interminably wait for the phone to ring. In a refreshing and sobering twist, it’s the male character in Jeff Nichols’s new movie Mud who’s unrequitedly in love. The lovelorn guy holed up on an island in the Mississippi is […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Antiviral’ (2013)
April 11, 2013 by
The cult of celebrity provokes fans to want to eat, dress and live like their icons. Antiviral, written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, ups the ante considerably. The movie is a wickedly smart paean to the Neptune archetype whose domain is seduction, addiction and merging that erases all boundaries between two entities. Antiviral’s futuristic setting […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Trance’ (2013)
April 2, 2013 by
“Now, what did I do with that Goya?” That’s the life-and-death question that sends Simon (James McAvoy) running for a hypnotist in Danny Boyle’s Trance. The professional whom Simon consults is gorgeous Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) who quickly figures out that her client is in deep trouble, the details of which are spooled over the […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Company You Keep’ (2013)
April 2, 2013 by
At some point, people’s pasts catch up with them, or they catch up with their pasts. In The Company You Keep, Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), who in the late 1960s was a member of the Weather Underground, participated in a robbery that resulted in a guard’s getting killed. After decades living under a false identity, […]
Film: ‘Life of Pi’ (2012)
November 25, 2012 by
Seductive, elusive and vividly imaginative Neptune, with its proclivity towards unconscious exploration, blankets Ang Lee’s 3-D “Life of Pi” like a shimmering veil. The movie is as much a tribute to the watery planet as it is a revelation of Lee’s own fascination with fictive truth. “Life of Pi,” which debuted at the New York […]
Film: ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (2012)
November 16, 2012 by
David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook” only seems like a fluid, edgy romantic comedy. At its core, the movie is a serious and even gut-wrenching exploration of what constitutes imprisonment. The Zodiac’s Neptune-ruled 12th house is traditionally the domain of confined spaces, including prisons and mental institutions. It’s an arena whose inhabitants, behaving unconsciously, become […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’ Season 5: Neptune’s Murky Blue Pool
September 5, 2012 by
If you’re overseeing an empire with Plutonic ruthlessness and efficiency, seducing your subjects first is a good strategy. And so it’s been with “Breaking Bad,” which just completed the first eight episodes of its fifth and final season. I’ve written about Pluto’s irrevocable pull towards death via Walter White’s lung cancer and moral dissolution. It’s […]
Film: ‘ParaNorman’ (2012)
August 16, 2012 by
Norman Babcock, the 11-year-old hero in the stop-motion 3D animated feature “ParaNorman,” sees dead people. In addition to communing with the spirits of those who have passed on – he’s severely bullied and marginalized at school for his preoccupation – Norman has brand loyalty to Zombie-centric toothbrushes, posters and otherworldly paraphernalia. In other words, he’s […]
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