22 Jan

Posted at 09:24h in Film by

It’s a very sad Marriage Story. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) haven’t stopped loving each other. But, Nicole doesn’t know how to do their marriage anymore. The only answer seems to be divorce. Yet, is it? Noah Baumbach’s film, in all its unearthing of the many deeper questions not yet answered, shows us the complexities of what a couple brings to a marriage. Along with the tangles their individual emotional worlds and early family histories create (and weave around them) when not fully understood. Or, worked out. What would it take to save this marriage? Especially since, as...

16 Aug

Posted at 11:22h in Film by

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is a brilliant, terrifying, and timely treatise on hate. The film tells Ron Stallworth’s true early 1970's story (played by John David Washington): a courageous, harrowing, but ultimately foiled effort to expose the KKK and its virulent racial hate. Fuel it’s fires and hate justifies violence. Then is now: 1970 is 2018. Hate doesn’t make us “fine” people. Hate is never “fine.” BlacKkKlansman takes hate seriously. Lee masterfully juxtaposes the haters and the hated to expose the insidiousness of hate. This is the film’s overarching intent. And, Lee succeeds. He recruits us to join in fighting hate's power. Certainly,...

28 May

Posted at 22:21h in Television by

Dr. Rice didn’t get Hannah at all. Season 2, It’s Back, leaves Hannah obsessively counting in 8’s. She needs a different kind of help. If Hannah was in therapy with me, I’d listen closely to her conflicting and ever-shifting feelings; her “I need your help. No, I’m fine.” “I’m sad. No, I’m not.” This is the torment behind OCD. When something feels one way, doubt sets in; or the feeling is flatly denied. Hannah doesn’t like to need anything, especially when she does: At lunch with her parents, before they insist she see Dr. Rice (Bob Balaban), Hannah (Lena Dunham) taps her...

26 May

Posted at 07:48h in Film by

Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young is much more than a look at how youth wants to outdo the old, how the older envy youth, and how a mid-life crisis leads to all kinds of desperate shenanigans. It’s also the story of 40-something Josh (Ben Stiller) who can’t move forward for complex psychological reasons. And, of 20-something Jamie (Adam Driver) who gives us a pretty good clue about what Josh is afraid of. Josh, a documentary filmmaker, has had some success, but nothing like his father-in law, Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin). Leslie’s famous. This makes Josh feel small in comparison. He can’t...

04 May

Posted at 07:58h in Television by

This is the first in a series of 4 Posts. The word OCD is tossed around too casually in our contemporary culture – as in “I’m so OCD” to mean “I’m a perfectionist” or “I like to have things organized and controlled.” Sure, those things can be true of people who actually have OCD. But, real OCD isn’t so benign. OCD involves torturous compulsions that can’t be controlled. In Girl’s Episodes 8 “It’s Back” and 9 “On All Fours” (otherwise known as the Q-Tip episode), we see Hannah’s (Lena Dunham) compulsion to do things in 8’s or multiples of 8’s. Counting is common in...