“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” That spirit-leveling Shakespearean tidbit, delivered by Gloucester in “King Lear,” gets a radical makeover in, of all places, a maniacally existential, animated, supermarket dramedy. Yes, in Sausage Party the same sentiment is explosively rendered by a desperate jar of […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hell or High Water’ (2016)
August 8, 2016 by
When a guy who hasn’t exactly been the best “older brother” wants to make amends, the bounty can be both huge and illegal. In Hell or High Water, a taut, muscular little movie directed by David Mackenzie, jailbird Tanner (Ben Foster) wasn’t around much to help his kid bro Toby (Chris Pine). When she died, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Little Prince’ (2016)
August 8, 2016 by
Finding one’s way back home is one of storytelling’s most popular themes, especially when a character, like the Little Prince, travels through galaxies to re-root physically, emotionally and spiritually. The Little Prince, the animated movie, directed by Mark Osborne and based on the 1943 for-children-of-all-ages classic by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, uses a modern framework to […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Indignation’ (2016)
July 26, 2016 by
Indignation, typically a strong reaction to an offense, also suggests a sense of unworthiness or feeling like an outlier uncomfortable in one’s own skin. Written and directed by James Schamus, the film Indignation, based on Philip Roth’s novel, brings together two non-mainstream individuals who, precisely because of their inability to fit into their culture, fall […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Jason Bourne’ (2016)
July 26, 2016 by
We’re long past identity, supremacy, ultimatum and legacy. Now, as the title says, it’s just Jason Bourne, with the entirety of his chiseled-six-pack essence reduced to finding the truth about the trajectory that led him to become amnesiac Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). Bourne has kept in touch with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who has gone […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Don’t Think Twice’ (2016)
July 21, 2016 by
There’s communication that happens through traditional Mercurial processes. And then there’s the Uranian kind which bypasses logic. With Uranus in the driver’s seat, the mental goods drop into your cranium unobstructed and insanely quickly – no detours – like some kind of enlightenment. It’s not unlike improvisational theater: split-second, unhinged and out-of-left-field dialog. Don’t Think […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Lights Out’ (2016)
July 18, 2016 by
Abandonment issues – scary, painful and often irreparable – can haunt people their entire lives. In Lights Out, that time frame gets extended to beyond-the-grave. Directed by David F. Sandberg, the film is a taut rubber band of resentments, vengefulness and post-mortem co-dependence. The film’s spindly title font suggests what’s to come, as a shadowy […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Captain Fantastic’ (2016)
July 6, 2016 by
We’d all be a lot happier, wrote Plato, if government overseers were philosopher-kings, rulers who also loved wisdom. Turns out that political hyphenate, an aspirational theme in Captain Fantastic, is much easier to execute on paper than in reality. Figuring out which “real world” is the viable one is at the heart of this movie, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Nice Guys’ (2016)
May 18, 2016 by
Done right, the two-guys-and-a-gal buddy-movie combo is hard to beat. It worked superbly in the 1950s-set L.A. Confidential, where a nurturing Veronica Lake-lookalike prostitute (Kim Basinger) was sandwiched between Bud White’s (Russell Crowe) brawn and Ed Exley’s (Guy Pearce) brains. That archetypal Moon-Mars-Mercury triad has somehow begotten The Nice Guys. The movie, co-written and directed […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Maggie’s Plan’ (2016)
May 17, 2016 by
Life plans sound so solid and promising, but are often unreliable conduits to bliss. Maggie (Greta Gerwig), an affable, soul-searching millennial with an MBA, stable career and what she thinks is a viable agenda, is about to find that out. Written and directed by Rebecca Miller, and based on a story by Karen Rinaldi, Maggie’s […]
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