There’s a tasty question posed in the title Only Lovers Left Alive. Are the film’s two protagonists the only two very long term lovers allowed to endure another day, until they’ve racked up centuries’ worth of togetherness? Or are “lovers” – those passionate, caring, committed loyal few under the archetype of Venus – the only […]
Astrology: Film: Review ‘In Secret’ (2014)
February 19, 2014 by
The Underworld energy of Pluto is alive and kicking in In Secret, which blurs the line between physical and moral disintegration in mid-1860s France. Based on Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin, the movie, written and directed by Charlie Stratton, lays out life-and-death matters from the start. Thérèse, an illegitimate child, has been saved by her […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Child’s Pose’ (2014)
February 19, 2014 by
The stunningly self-involved central figure in the Romanian movie Child’s Pose is Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu), the latest in a long line of cinematic devouring mothers who operate from terrifying, chthonic depths when unable to control offspring who’ve had enough of Mommy. Directed by Calin Peter Netzer, Child’s Pose is set in Bucharest, where the […]
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: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: “Granite State”
September 23, 2013 by
“Breaking Bad” has always been about the compartmentalization of Walter White’s motives. Caring for his family, so he says, propels him. But so does rising professionally, based on how he uses his chemist’s skill sets, no matter how many people’s lives he destroys. From the very first episodes, we saw Walt’s frustration being a high […]
Astrology: Film: ‘A Single Shot’ (2013)
September 18, 2013 by
At the beginning of the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy writes, “Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before.” David M. Rosenthal’s A Single Shot is spectacularly gray – a gorgeously shot moody hue of a sky, replete with a breathtaking, overhanging mist set against the pines – […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Blue Caprice’ (2013)
September 9, 2013 by
A son’s being taught by his dad how to drive a car is one of those seminal steps to manhood. This celebrated ritual becomes a deadly foreboding in Blue Caprice, a film that tracks a murderous sniper spree conducted from inside that titular vehicle by a man and the abandoned male teen he’s metaphorically adopted […]
Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: ‘Buried’ Too Deep to Resurrect
August 21, 2013 by
There’s a reason they call it “filthy lucre,” and in “Buried,” the most recently aired episode of “Breaking Bad,” the term is an especially apt archetypal gut punch. Derived from the Latin word lucrum, which means monetary or other wealth-related gain, “lucre” is a stand-in term for money, as is the Biblical expression “filthy lucre.” […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones’ (2013)
August 20, 2013 by
In The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, New York City has been given an in-depth makeover that’s literally as deep as hell. Based on the first novel in the series by Cassandra Clare, the movie, set in modern times and directed by Harald Zwart, takes us to a Hogwarts-like realm smack in the middle of […]
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