Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
What Fake Personas Cover-Up
Why does someone create an illusion of who they are? Wes Anderson, a master of psychological ironies, tells us quite a lot about that subject in The Grand Budapest Hotel. At the center of the film is M. Gustave trying to live as someone he is not. All around him are juxtapositions of barbarism with…
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THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
My Views On Loneliness
Loneliness comes in many forms. James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything tells a few stories of loneliness – Stephen Hawkings’, Jane Hawkings, and Jonathan Hellyer Jones. Jonathan – choir director, family helper, and the man who became Jane’s second husband – captures vividly what can become loneliness’ black hole when he says: “I suffer from the…
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THE IMITATION GAME
Turing’s Anxiety
Keeping Peas And Carrots Apart
Peas versus carrots: thinking versus feeling. Which is the winner? Alan Turing’s mathematical thinking, as The Imitation Game shows, cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during WWII and saved millions. Yet, the same man’s brilliant thinking couldn’t save him. Crippled by terrible psychological fears (far worsened by Britain’s criminalization of homosexuality), his crafty “imitation game” was…
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BOYHOOD
Feeling Stuff is the Point of Life
Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s beautiful new film, is so compellingly real it’s easy to forget we aren’t watching a 12-year documentary of an actual family. With deft cinematic strokes, Linklater melds one phase of this family’s life. And Mason’s (Ellar Coltrane) journey through adolescence from ages 6 – 18, moves seamlessly into the next. Yet, Linklater’s…
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LOVE IS STRANGE
No. This Is The Best Of Love
Ben (John Lithgow) and George’s (Alfred Molina) relationship, in Ira Sach’s virtuoso film, Love Is Strange, celebrates the best of love. Love can bring many things – happiness, joy and companionship, yes. But, also, conflict, mismatch, disappointment, hurt, and loss. The specialness of Love Is Strange is how this film gives us an open window into just what adult…
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MY OLD LADY
Stories of a Past
Self-Hate or Liberating Truth?
The way any one of us lives with the past is a complicated thing. My Old Lady, a deeply psychological and sometimes shockingly honest film written and directed by Israel Horovitz, takes us layer upon layer into the kinds of deeply wrought emotional problems living with a difficult past can bring. Matthias Gold (Kevin Kline) lives…
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