The adage “Time heals all wounds” is the anti-mantra that pervades Doctor Strange, the new addition to Marvel’s filmography about a gifted neurosurgeon who goes down the proverbial rabbit hole. Co-written and directed by Scott Derrickson, the movie describes the mental and mystical evolution of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) within a framework of Saturnine […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’ (2016)
Hollywood in the 1950s was a mosaic of studios, each with its own stable of stars that churned out movies with machine-like efficiency. Written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Hail, Caesar!, an exuberant satire of that cinematic era, has installed an unlikely human hub at the center of it all. Eddie Mannix […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Trainwreck’ (2015)
It’s every dad’s dream that his little girl lovingly takes to heart the life lessons he drops like pearls. In Trainwreck, one daughter who embraced such messages years ago now finds herself on a bleak road trying to undo the sins of the father. Directed by Judd Apatow, the movie starts as young Amy and […]
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ (2014)
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: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (2014)
In The Grand Budapest Hotel, the movie’s titular edifice is seen perched atop an Alps-like mountain looking like a birthday cake smothered in icing you can almost taste. It’s an old-world, pretty-in-pink picture, and the movie’s writer and director Wes Anderson wants to regress us back to that more civilized time whose days are, unfortunately, […]