About that Mother Ship...

When psychiatrists visit psychiatrists what do they talk about? I can guess what Freudian psychiatrist Herbert M. Stein discusses on the couch: his passion for movies. In Double Feature: Discovering Our Hidden Fantasies in Film, Dr. Stein makes his secret life public by revealing the subliminal themes, fantasies and archetypes underlyng such classic motion pictures as Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Field of Dreams and The Usual Suspects. You may not be aware as you munch popcorn that you're reliving childhood Oedipal fixations, undergoing castration anxieties, or yearning for your mother's breast. One reason why is that the people who produced the film may not have been aware of it, either. But one reason why some movies affect us so profoundly is that we are resonating to fundamental images buried deep below our personal and tribal consciousness.

Dr. Stein has managed to articulate these themes in a way that makes us want to rush to view these movies again to see what we missed the first time.

And the rental costs are a helluva lot cheaper than a session in a shrink's office.

- Richard Curtis