Category Archives: Couple and Family Counseling

Used People

Title: Used People

Date: 1992

Media type: Film

Category: Couple and Family Counseling

Keywords: cognitive intimacy

Rating: PG-13

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults

Language: English

Film/Episode Summary: At her husband’s funeral, Pearl (Shirley Maclean), Jewish mother of two divorced and antagonistic daughters, meets an old Italian friend (Marcello Mastroianni) of her husband, whose advice years previously had stopped the husband leaving home. For 23 years he, now a widower, has secretly loved Pearl…

Places to view: Amazon Video, Itunes

Contributor: Anonymous

Marvin’s Room

Title: Marvin’s Room

Date: 1996

Media type: Film

Category: Couple and Family Counseling

Keywords: conflict management, dysfunction

Rating: PG-13

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults

Language: English

Film/Episode Summary: Estranged since their father’s first stroke some 17 years earlier, Lee and Bessie lead separate lives in separate states. Lee’s son, Hank, finds himself committed to a mental institution after setting fire to his mother’s house. His younger brother, Charlie, seems unfazed by his brother’s eccentricities or his mother’s seeming disinterest. When Lee comes to the asylum to spring Hank for a week in Florida so that he can be tested as a possible bone marrow donor for Bessie, Hank is incredulous. “I didn’t even know you had a sister,” he says. “Remember, every Christmas, when I used to say ‘Well, looks like Aunt Bessie didn’t send us a card again this year?'” “Oh yeah,” Hank says. Meanwhile, Marvin, the two women’s bedridden father, has “been dying for the past twenty years.” “He’s doing it real slow so I don’t miss anything,” Bessie tells Dr. Wally. In Bessie’s regular doctor’s absence, it has fallen to Dr. Wally to inform Bessie that she has leukemia and will die without a bone marrow transplant. This precipitates the two sisters uneasy reunion. In Marvin’s room, Bessie cares for her father’s every need. In Lee’s eyes, the sacrifice Bessie has made is too great and realizing the old man’s welfare will fall to her if Bessie dies, Lee’s first instinct is to look for a nursing home. “In a few month’s, I’ll have my cosmetology degree,” she says. “My life is just coming together; I’m not going to give it all up, now!” As first Lee is tested and then the boys for the compatibility of their marrow with Bessie’s, the women take stock of their lives and rediscover the meaning of “family.”

Places to view: Youtube, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play, Itunes

Contributor: Anonymous

 

Harold and Maude

Title: Harold and Maude

Date: 1971

Media type: Film

Category: Internal Dynamics of Families, Parenting, Couple and Family Counseling

Keywords: family relationship, parent-child relationships, parenting style, therapy, conflict management

Rating: PG

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults

Language: English

Film/Episode Summary: Self-destructive and needy but wealthy teenager Harold is obsessed with death and spends his leisure time attending funerals, watching the demolition of buildings, visiting junkyards, simulating suicides trying to get the attention of his indifferent, snobbish and egocentric mother, and having sessions with his psychologist. When Harold meets the anarchic seventy-nine-year-old Maude at a funeral, they become friends and the old lady discloses other perspectives of the cycle of life for him. Meanwhile, his mother enlists him in a dating service and tries to force him to join the army. On the day of Maude’s eightieth birthday, Harold proposes to her but he finds the truth about life at the end of hers.

Places to view: Youtube, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play, Itunes

Contributor: Anonymous