Posts Tagged ‘fear’
GET OUT
Trauma, #Never Again
& Getting Out
Jordan Peele’s brilliantly conceived film, Get Out, does its job of shattering the myth that we’re living in a post-racial America. My great uncle, Leo Hurwitz’s film, Strange Victory, did the same in 1948 after we won the war against Hitler but came home to racism here. It’s now 72 years later and there’s still…
Read More
BLACK PANTHER
What Heartlessness Has to Do With
An Abandoned Kid’s
Need For Power?
Heartlessness, and what causes it, is the theme in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther; as far as I can see. More importantly, Black Panther shows us how heartlessness can “create a monster,” in an abandoned child now-man, with his slow-burning hate; vengeful rage; and need for power. And, certainly, we witness what heartlessness has to do…
Read More
VICE
Tyrants & Bullies
What Do These 2 Have To Do With Childhood Trauma?
What makes someone greedy; heartless; manipulative; and corrupt? So hungry for power that anything goes; even law; morality; & a daughter? Adam McCay’s Vice doesn’t answer questions of what or why. Vice tells the story of who and how. Yet, let’s for a moment think about Dick and Lynne Cheney as two parts of one…
Read More
THE SHAPE OF WATER
Seemingly Magic Cures
Cruelty and misunderstanding can make you a monster or a mute. Guillermo del Toro’s compelling allegorical fable, The Shape of Water, shows us that quite well. We can say all the obvious things about this multi-layered film set in its backdrop of the Cold War and a high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. There’s loneliness…
Read More
NETFLIX’S LOVE
A Dance Of Insecurities
Obstacles to Making Love Work
Is it real? What does it take to make love work? Netflix’s Love by Judd Apatow, Paul Rust, and Leslie Arfin raises some important questions. What takes an attraction farther than a romantic fantasy? What allows two people who’ve been hurt in the past to get beyond the fear of being hurt again? Sometimes we don’t…
Read More
BRIDGE OF SPIES
A Standing Man
How Integrity Triumphs Over Fear
Steven Spielberg’s powerful film, Bridge of Spies, asks some compelling psychological questions. Could there be two more different men than a Brooklyn lawyer in 1957 at the height of the Cold War and an alleged Russian spy – or are they different at all? And, if they aren’t, what is it exactly that forms an unexpected…
Read More