Vastro

No matter where he turns, he is being watched, chased, bothered, distracted, advertised to—all in attempts to vie for the show audience’s attention, and by proxy us. There’s no difference between this film and any other film in that it’s trying to get your attention so that you watch it, so this constant provocation of Truman is the very act of any film trying to get you to watch it.

It is a mirror to what the audience does as a passive viewer of film.

But looking at the direct storyline, Truman simply exists in a world that, while fictional, is specially made to comfort him into false illusions that do the trick nearly every time.

Until they don’t.

When he leaves the world created for him, he changes the channel and goes to live the dream. He decides when to walk away from the fairy tale in the end because it was a picaresque nightmare anyway and try brutal reality for a change.

In the end, brutal reality is more often the real dream than not.

Choosing to live out your life rather than wasting it watching others is the ultimate message the film serves us, and this film is nothing but characters who act as Gemini twin mirrors for Truman and the audience to figure out the truth.

The real question toward discovering that truth is: What do you see in your reflection? Are you trapped by the idealistic limitations of your own making or have you found freedom in seeking out truth? Has seeking the truth become its own idealistic limitation?

I cannot help but ask myself this around every summer solstice, probably because the curious nature of late Gemini season demands these kind of questions in the same way that The Truman Show demands them.

8° Virgo Moon - Midsommar

There’s something particularly cruel about Ari Aster’s decision to set this film in Sweden during midsummer. From forcing Dani and the audience through an unbelievably heavy tragedy as the murder-suicide of her family to then going on a drug-trip gone wrong in the part of the world where there are near night-less midsummer days is truly mad lad behavior.

You can’t help but feel the few moments when horror occurs at night somehow always pale in comparison to the horrors set in the daytime — where that blinding light of horrible truth—the pagan death cult our main characters find themselves lured into—forever shines.

I hail this Virgo Moon the May Queen herself simply for the reason that she is the only one with the ending so horrible, it is truly a crime against humanity: she lives and has to watch the world burn down from so close by.

The horrors of humanity are real and we live with that maddening fact daily.

And it’s true: some of us are so welcomed by the fires set by world annihilators that they begin to feel comforted, even loved by the doom of it all, and if that that isn’t the true horror of today, I honestly don’t know what is.

22° Cancer Mercury - Brave

When it comes to Princess Merida as a character, she is almost entirely fire and earth-based, so why does this watery transit scream Brave to me? The reason is the particular relationship between Merida and her mother.

The story’s overall message, especially through the framing of the transformation finale, accomplishes what most mother-daughter media barely scratch the surface of: it demonstrates the importance of repairing the family relationship while everyone is still young and at home.

Brave is not about Merida — it is about her mother, or better, her relationship to her mother and womanhood as a whole. There could be no Merida without her mother, and that is the framing of Brave as a character exploration: the movie would not exist as another spunky Disney princess original without keeping her mother alive (because you know how Disney loves dead moms).

The chicken is as important as the egg in the story narrative, so if we look at the film through Queen Elinor’s perspective, we will see the greater point of the story. Because Elinor was not given the same luxuries of choosing her fate as Merida, resentment and over(bear)ing control became her life’s mantra, passing onto Merida vicariously through her need to escape traditional femininity and royal duty.

Through a series of magical events, both learn to appreciate the balance of loving your life as it is handed to you — whether that be societal or familial expectation — while also doing what you can to make your life as you’d like it to be. It's this kind of loving appreciation that we need so incredibly right now.

7° Leo Venus - My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Consider yourself blessed by a Leo Venus because yours truly wants you to know that this film is the ultimate film for us Leo Venuses and for this current transit!

We love a good rom-com and this is the rom-com of all rom-coms in my honest Leo opinion, so if you want to start your summer of loving off right, start here.

Libra has her degree and her home planet along for the ride, so of course I had to pick the rom-com with the happy wedding in it as well! Weddings are so stressful but this film makes wedding prep look ridiculous in the most wholesome, unstressful ways and that’s an important story choice!

The story is full of tropes but manages to unpack them in beautifully refreshing ways and it’s incredibly quotable — I cannot meet a Nick without echoing “Nick, Nick, Nick…” every time.

Watching Tula and Ian fall in love while managing the Greekness of it all is so damn fun and the best film to forget all your worries to. And it’s easy to. Tula stereotypically starts as a “frump girl” tired of never getting her way, but rather than expecting a man to save her from her resigned life, she gives herself a try, embraces her true beauty—inside and out— and got her man because it isn’t to win him over.

It’s to win over herself.

To marry yourself first is to become a bride any good partner could love, but only one person ever caught her eye, so the audience gets to win alongside Tula as this whimsically fated love story unfolds into her effortlessly winning over Ian, her perfect groom.

Even if right now you have no intentions on marrying or even connecting with a romantic partner, this transit can act as a placeholder for any passionate love you feel towards whatever brings you bright beauty and joy into this world. Finding that joy attracts whatever it is you seek most.

23° Taurus Mars - Tampopo

The quintessential Taurus film in my eyes, Tampopo is a fun recommendation to food-lovers and love-lovers alike, not only because it satisfies both, but also because it satisfies some other stuff you weren’t formerly aware could satisfy you...or repulse you, whichever reflex comes most naturally.

To me, the film is a vibe I never knew I needed. Every time I watch it, I crave ramen that I can’t get here in the States because even a real deal chef can’t bring me 2019 spring break Tokyo trip ramen, now can they?

So I deliciously slurp up the feast for the eyes through the memory of my tonkotsu-lined stomach and feel forever comforted and forever full by the love that produced and starred in this film.

With the director’s wife leading as the titular character, she becomes the vessel for all that her husband as an artist can dream up, and it is magical to watch!

Itami remixes a traditional Spaghetti Western format into a new-and-improved Ramen Western, becoming a timeless classic the moment it begins.

27° Cancer Jupiter - Freaky Friday (2003) & Freakier Friday Double Feature‼️

Purely because it is at a Gemini degree in Gemini season and this is the Jupiter pick, this transit gets both installments of the Lohan-Curtis saga.

(I never watched the 1976 OG in full, so forgive me for my young generational nostalgia, but I am being exclusionary here.)

There is something about these two leading ladies that has obviously hit the cultural stratosphere enough to warrant a sequel 22 years after the first installment, and while there is no outdoing the keen humor of its former freaky film companion, the sequel is still worthy a watch for me.

This duo is for the millennial/gen z kids-at-heart whose nostalgia isn’t saccharine or dopey like the other chumps’ nostalgia bait. There’s an edge to the films that could almost challenge white suburbia the teensiest bit if it weren’t for being a Disney production.

No matter, that's not the point of Jupiter "More is more" McGee anyway, so pop some popcorn and sit in for a freaky double feature if you're feeling like you just can't get enough of these two!

13° Aries Saturn - Moneyball

It’s been a few years since I’ve watched this one, but its impact is long-lasting enough to make me think of it immediately.

There’s something inherently competitive about Aries in Saturn, even in places where competition shouldn’t exist, and pro sports is one of those worlds that cannot help but be competitive in every aspect possible.

There is no way to make an unfair game completely fair, but the Oakland Athletics general manager whose story inspired this film got pretty damn close to making it fair, and there’s something awfully double Aries energy about that.

We want to attribute fairness to Libra because she naturally urges fairness toward others, but the axis reveals both Aries and Libra are capable of fairness — they just go about it in opposite ways.

Rather than trying to gain equal ground by using the other big leagues’ methods, Beane and co. develops a new analytical approach to finding undervalued talent, creating a whole new ballgame of their own in the world of pro athlete scouting.

Aries is a gamemnaker and a gamebreaker, and that general manager broke so many baseball bros balls by coming up with an ingenious method they couldn’t possibly dream of that I cannot help but love the guy and the film for affirming that believing in the underdog will bring the best kinds of change.

3° Gemini Uranus - The Animatrix

This collection of short films is so early aughts, it hurts, but because Matrix: Resurrections was so bad, The Animatrix proves it’s better to stick with the grimier days of cyberpunk goth mania than trading in for LED phone screens anyway.

Back then, there was dirt, sweat, and latex like you’ve never seen, and even this film cannot help but feature all that with elegance even with its digital limitations.

Listen, there are clearly some films that are far superior than others in this collection, but they are all interesting at the least and breathtaking at the most.

The top earners in story and animation have to go to “Program” and “A Detective Story,” created by Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Shinichiro Watanabe respectively—legends in the industry still today.

Double Gemini Uranus is all about the artistically innovative who appeal to the masses in the way a beautiful mirror is all about the vanity, so where better yet to demonstrate that Uranian innovation than The Matrix universe—otherwise known as the revolutionary-and-queer-cybernetic-opera-that-could. Enough of the fine Matrix soul stuff is there to hold up the film as a worthy admission to sci-fi film royalty—alongside the trilogy films.

4° Aries Neptune - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I don’t personally like Neptune in Aries because of all the strife but it’s the reality we’re living in. I also didn’t personally like the passing of Heath Ledger back in 2008, becoming the first celebrity death to affect me intensely due to my affections.

See, we all have celebrity crushes. I had several, but Heath was special.

By all accounts, I think of him as the pinnacle of Aries men, and as his last film proper, I cannot feel incredibly wounded watching this film while simultaneously healed by the fact that he’s at least always there behind the screen, doing an amazing job despite the horrible circumstances surrounding the end of his short life.

And film as a medium acts like dreams in that those no longer living come back alive and be as they always were. Neptune may be a planet of illusions, but its influence on the film highlights how the dreams conjured within the Imaginarium itself are realities to someone, somewhere.

Living the Aries dream can be as violent and peaceful as a warlord dreaming of fields and fields of war machines steadily becoming one with the flowers.

Is it a beautiful dream? Is it a horrific nightmare? Who’s to say.

Anyway, there is a whoooole lot of Devil/God conflict in the film that is far from subtle, but neither is the God of War in Neptunian waters, so for that reason, it belongs here.

5° Aquarius Pluto - Back to the Future

When Pluto enters Aquarius, he goes sci-fi in a weirdly dramatic way. “Don’t fuck your mom or you’ll never be born” certainly qualifies.

I want to say we are prepared for the rest of this Pluto Return but, my dear friends, there isn’t a film in the world to prepare us for the bonkers mess that’s coming up so let’s just enjoy this 80’s popcorn film once again because hoo-boy this is not gonna be pretty.

I don’t fear time paradoxes nearly as much as I fear the dementia demon’s dangerous proximity to the big red button that takes happiness away for everyone, and that could be a number of things I’m referring to.

Alas, none of it matters, and we are born to live for now at least.

If you or your loved one have been forced to prevent your birth from ever taking place, you may be eligible to receive financial compensation under this Aquarius Pluto transit.