Men with a burning need to express more of their Feminine side typically do it by connecting with archetypal Venus – fashion, appearance and the arts – rather than the nurturing Moon. The New Girlfriend, written and directed by François Ozon, and adapted from a fictional work by Ruth Rendell, features the rare male protagonist […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Visit’ (2015)
No wonder grandparents are so culturally revered. Their nurturing and protective genes still glow, they can usually set down a good plate of food and ignore curfews from the parental unit and, if track records are good, even shine as confidantes. The ones in The Visit are not those sort of elders. They’re different, and […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mr. Robot,’ Prometheus and Stealing Fire from the Gods (2015)
An early episode in the first season of cyber-thriller series “Mr. Robot,” created and written by Sam Esmail, has Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) pondering the college loans that hang like an albatross around the neck of his childhood friend and now work colleague Angela (Portia Doubleday). Wouldn’t it be a gift if the financial burdens […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘Hannibal,’ the Stag and the Artemis Thing (2015)
Motown released one of Smokey Robinson’s slyest songs, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game,” recorded by the Marvelettes, in late December 1966. And if Bryan Fuller, creator of the equally sly, just-ended series “Hannibal,” had listened to this ditty for inspiration for the entirety of show’s three seasons, it shows. The song is a […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Grandma’ (2015)
The grandparent-grandchild connection is invariably one that fuels hopes for the future, as age embraces optimistic and expansive youth. But the past is often a demanding guest in this generational interplay, generating a flood of memories of watershed moments in the older person. This phenomenon is at the core of Grandma, where an idiosyncratic and […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ (2015)
The music group N.W.A. smashed rules to become a seminal force in creating the new revolutionary musical genres of hip hop and gangsta rap. When it came to growing their business, though, they were stuck dealing with mundane business-as-usual deceits and manipulation. The contrast between these two archetypal energies – Uranian rebellion, insight into future […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘True Detective 2 Season Finale’: Greek Tragedy and the Ani-Antigone Thing
Hardly anyone will argue about the density and lack of clarity in plotting and dialog throughout “True Detective”’s second season. The thing did have a most distinctive “pop,” though, which emanated from an unlikely source: its Greekness. In fact, there was so much Greece – the birthplace of tragedy – that Season 2 could easily […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Mistress America’ (2015)
In the same way people steal content and images off the Internet, some folks arbitrarily co-opt the lives of others, using them, as would heartless deities, for sport. Such psychic and experiential theft is at the core of Mistress America. Directed and co-written by Noah Baumbach, the movie is essentially the tale a sudden friendship […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Gift’ (2015)
Written and directed by Joel Edgerton, The Gift is a tight, stark and claustrophobic little thriller that spools as murky as the script’s reference to “let bygones be bygones.” The pair at the receiving end of those words – initially we don’t know exactly what the “bygones” are which need to be absolved – are […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ (2015)
Nothing is as intoxicating – or terrifying – as power that’s been thrust on you and which shockingly fits you like a glove. In The Diary of a Teenage Girl, 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) learns about wielding such power through the carnal and emotional pleasures of sex. The downside is that her first, two-decades […]










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