I was thinking about how Harry Potter/Hogwarts is the perfect encapsulation of 9th house themes: magic, the hero's journey, traveling far from home, learning new things and getting that coveted acceptance letter, adventures, etc. Then I started to think if there were other films that could come to represent the significations of the other houses and why.
This is just a fun exercise to start thinking more about the houses, so feel free to comment your own below, to disagree, agree, or just ponder the resonance.
Here's what I came up with and why:
First House: It feels lazy to start out on this note, but, literally any biographical or autobiographical film. When the life, personality, identity and purpose of a person is front and center, it's a first house "me"--oriented film. Any film with a protagonist, really, has to be a first house film because we are the leads of our own stories. For the purposes of this post, a film like The Perks of Being a Wallflower about the formative years that shape identity, or even Identity Thief, a comedy about literal identity theft, are what came to mind.
Second House: Confessions of a Shopaholic. Well, this is easy. The main character has a shopping problem, and the entire movie is about how she mismanages her money, and places disproportional importance on material things. Of course, this lands her in debt, there a foibles around her misplacing and selling expensive goods, bartering, and otherwise is a cute and campy film about how one uses their belongings. I also thought of Hustlers--a group of women out to get rich and subvert the status quo against the backdrop of The Great Recession (2nd house - 8th house polarity).
Third House: Neighbors. For this house, it would have been easy to find a film about writing or a vlogger or siblings. But if there is any house a raunchy family comedy belongs to it's the third. In this film, a fraternity moves next door to a normal suburban family with a new infant daughter. Hijinks ensue. The people who live next-door to us is a third house signification, as is trickery, and petty sibling-like rivalries (frat brother, sorority sister)
Fourth House: Home Alone. This film, from what I remember, is literally about the home, defending it from invaders. The home itself is a character in the film. But it also touches on themes of family, how we fit in in it, how we dislike or learn to appreciate it. The alone in Home Alone is also a nod to the privacy of the 4th house--our inner-most psychology, our private life, who we are when no one is looking.
Fifth House: Leaving Las Vegas. This is more a cautionary 5th house theme. A man who goes to Vegas to drink himself to death, and meeting up with a woman who enables it, while he enables her and her own vices. Vegas kind of symbolically represents, to me, the exacerbation of human pleasures: where people go famously to shop, eat , drink, gamble, have fun. I also thought of The Hangover. (LLV also reminded me of the self-sabotage of the 12th, but via doing 5th house things).
Sixth House: 9 to 5. The title of the move itself is a 6th house theme--boring day to day work, clocking in and clocking out. Though the film has feminist themes that are far broader than the 6th, the impetus for the characters' disillusion and plot to kill their boss comes from office life--having a slave-driving and misogynistic boss and feeling unfulfilled. I also thought of Office Space and The Devil Wears Prada, where the work environment played heavily in the plot.
Seventh House: Like the first house, a seventh house film feels ubiquitous and hard to pin. Relationships to other people is the underpinning, for example, of every romantic comedy. For this house I searched for films told through second person narrative with an omnipresent narrator, and landed upon the film Life Itself, where we get to know the characters not through their own words, but through the words and perspective of an onlooker. This is a seventh house theme, where our lives can be distilled through the perspective of another, or an objective counter-person. The film itself (pun intended) is about the intricate web of coincidental relationships formed to other people over generations as a result of a tragic accident.
Eight House: Now You See Me. Illusions, magic tricks, and diversions are an 8th house theme to me because it replies upon keeping people in the dark, unable to know how or why things happen. There can be a line drawn from this to the occult, which is a famous 8th house theme. In this film, magicians use their savvy and mystique to redirect money--out of the bank accounts of corrupt rich people, and into the hands of people in their audience. (Also: The Prestige).
Ninth House: Harry Potter, as explained above.
Tenth House: The Founder. Any movie about building a massive empire carries with it the aspirational themes of the 10th house. Of course there are smaller ways we accomplish 10th house things, but they aren't movie material! This movie is about how Ray Kroc built up what we know now as the omnipresent McDonald's chain because of his franchising idea and emphasis on efficiency. He moved from struggling salesman to billionaire.
Eleventh House: The Social Network. This one is fairly obvious! It is about the creation of Facebook, and touches upon the inception of a company that connects people worldwide. Ok, Camille, this is lazy--I hear you thinking it. Milk, the story of openly gay politician Harvey Milk who was a springboard for gay rights and helped San Francisco turn into the LGBTQ+ mecca it became. Stories of social movements, politicians, campaigning, and human rights belong to the 11th house, or where we go to make changes in and simply participate as members of the human community, be it a city or the world at large.
Twelfth House: Inception. This movie famously blurred the lines between what is dream and what is reality, and explored the human subconscious and how it motivates decision making. It also had themes of extradition, or moving to a foreign land to avoid arrest, themes of loss and suicide, and visually portrayed how the human mind collects memories and trauma.
What do you think? Of course many of these films can fit elsewhere, as can other unmentioned films fit here as well.