Film
GOOD WILL HUNTING
Whys of Robin Williams’ Suicide?
Self-Hate Must Be Healed
The heartbreak of Robin Williams’ suicide brings depression and suicide to the forefront of everyone’s mind, along with remembrances of his many film roles. Why did he do it? Ironically, Williams won his only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1998 for his emotional performance as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. Maguire, a…
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12 YEARS A SLAVE
What Makes Some People Crueler?
Some people need someone to hate. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, “Anti-Semite and Jew,” he says: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” I don’t think it’s a far leap to put the history of Blacks in America in the same category. The important question is why? Why does this need to…
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HER
Fantasy Relationship 3.0
Spike Jonze is interested in loneliness. His new film, Her, is a semi-futuristic exploration of one lonely man’s struggle to learn what love is and what love is not. Here’s what we know about Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). He has a broken heart. His marriage to Catherine has come to a devastatingly sad end. At BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com,…
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GRAVITY
Grave Losses: Fight or Flight?
Life In Space Is Impossible What kind of beautiful and terrifying space does Gravity tell us about? The vast reaches of outer space, to be sure. Alfonso Cuaron’s film, Gravity, is a cinematographically beautiful cliffhanger of a space odyssey. Yet, there is a compelling psychological subtext: the gravity of Dr. Ryan Stone’s unresolved grief. What…
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PHILOMENA
Triumph Over Shame
And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness … (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets) Shame ravages. It eats away at you. It makes you collapse into yourself and live with secrets – seemingly too shameful to tell. Philomena Lee’s (Judi Dench) story is the story of…
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NEBRASKA
Money or Love? What’s the Prize?
What does a son do when he feels his dad doesn’t love him? Either silently withdraw or take the road trip of his life to just spend a little time together. Director Alexander Payne has done it brilliantly again. Nebraska isn’t the road trip we took in Sideways. It’s a father-son road trip, and a touchingly redemptive ride…
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