Death is often seen as a conduit to new life, a theme at the heart of The Babadook, a psychological horror film written and directed by Australian Jennifer Kent. Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single mother, whose husband died seven years earlier in a car crash while driving her to hospital to deliver her child. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Homesman’ (2014)
November 14, 2014 by
Despite the title, The Homesman is a film that richly explores the Feminine and provides a heartbreaking contrast between the Venusian archetype of seduction and beauty and the Lunar archetype of nurturing, caring and mothering. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, the movie is set around 1850, as hardy folk from the East migrated westward. Mary […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Foxcatcher’ (2014)
November 14, 2014 by
For many athletes, winning an Olympic gold medal opens countless doors, leading to personal growth, financial security, and a validation that all their hard work has value in a post-Olympics existence. As explored in Foxcatcher, this scenario was not the fate of the Schultz brothers, both wrestling gold medalists in the 1984 Olympics, in Los […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘The Theory of Everything’ (2014)
November 7, 2014 by
From the time he was a young man, cosmologist Stephen Hawking was obsessed with the notion that time had a beginning. In 1988 he even published a book on the topic, A Brief History of Time. Not surprisingly, then, the predominant archetype in the Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything is Saturn, whose domain is […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Nightcrawler’ (2014)
October 28, 2014 by
In the business world, adding value is the name of the game. In Nightcrawler, this type of proactive goal-setting is the mantra of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the amoral, manipulative, lying, eruptive sleazebag of an entrepreneur whose behavior is, in equal measure, both horrifying and fascinating. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler introduces Lou […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Manhattan’ Season 1 Finale: Death, Pluto and the Bomb
October 26, 2014 by
Pluto was first spotted in the sky in early 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. And this planet’s archetypal energies – death, destruction, power, transformation, secrecy, spying, obsession and control – shatter every frame of “Manhattan,” WGN America’s smart, riveting drama series which broadcast its first-season finale last week. Created by […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Citizenfour’ (2014)
October 25, 2014 by
The most vibrant movie characters, fictional or biographical, tend to carry the most riveting archetypes. Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’ documentary about Edward J. Snowden, falls – rather, bursts – into that category of memorable players. And, like most of the U.S. population unaware of how its government was massively breaching citizens’ privacy, Poitras begins her project […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Force Majeure’ (2014)
October 24, 2014 by
Blindingly white and light-reflective, snow shows a surprisingly dark side in Force Majeure, which abruptly detours from its seeming family-vacation premise to one family member’s full-blown side trip to a hell of his own making. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, the movie is set in a postcard-perfect ski resort in the French Alps, with […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘St. Vincent’ (2014)
October 7, 2014 by
Sainthood is aspirational at best and yet, as depicted in St. Vincent, it’s a possibility within reach in the real world. Written and directed by Theodore Melfi, the movie makes the surprising agent of divinity a curmudgeonly Brooklyn guy named Vincent (Bill Murray) who’s in his late sixties, drinks, gambles, is in debt to a […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Good Lie’ (2014)
October 5, 2014 by
Whether it’s called the Motherland or Fatherland, one’s native country is an extension of family, especially in the face of tragic uprooting. The Good Lie, written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, uses the civil war in Sudan and the “Lost Boys” it generated as inspiration for a fictional story about how the human spirit strives […]
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