MAD MAX FURY ROAD
Depression &
Tyrants That Take Over Your Mind

Opportunists in the mind take over in states of emotional deprivation. Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) in Director George Miller’s western style post apocalyptic film, Mad Max:Fury Road, is a good example. As a psychoanalyst who treats severe depressive states, I found this film a fascinating allegorical tale of the conditions under which mental tyrants take over,…

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STEVE JOBS
What Happens To A Baby
When No One Says Hello?

Steve Jobs is a brilliantly conceived and emotionally revealing film by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle. According to both, this film is a human story, not a biopic. I agree. As we get to know Jobs through the filmmakers’ eyes and Michael Fassbender’s performance, we learn the heartbreaking roots of Steve Jobs’ controlling…

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ROOM
How Does Therapy Find Words
For Wordless Trauma?

Director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Emma Donoghue’s film, ROOM, takes us directly into the emotional experience of trauma. As the film opens, we hear a little boy’s voice introducing us to a girl named Ma. Kidnapped, stolen from her life, and kept in ROOM for seven years, Ma lives in a world as incomprehensible as Alice’s…

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THE BIG SHORT
Danger Of Living In Bubbles
& Fooling Ourselves

The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay, starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Brad Pitt, tells more than the story of the U.S. housing bubble from 2001 to 2005. More than the story of risky advantages taken by mortgage companies, hedge funds, and investment bankers to profit from it. I’m a psychoanalyst, not an…

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THE REVENANT
Humanizing Revenge

As much as I loved Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, I can’t say I felt the same about The Revenant. I know the film won big at the Golden Globes and has received Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Actor. Perhaps that’s because a fantasy lives deep inside us about exacting revenge where we believe revenge…

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