It feels like a lot of the movies I’ve been writing about lately have been really heavy. Not necessarily depressing, but intense enough to feel like a mix between homework and heavy lifting. So this week I decided I was going to try to watch something that pressed all of my nostalgia buttons; something that […]
Film
Posted inCulture
The Bat, The Cat and Riddle Me That
The extremely Dark Knight rises again
“The Batman,” director Matt Reeves’ new reboot of the forever franchise (after Ben Affleck turned in the cape and cowl) answers a question many of us have had for years: what if Batman was super into The Cure? Imagine if a mix of Kurt Cobain and Howard Hughes and you’ll be close to Robert Pattinson’s […]
Posted inCulture
May the Source Be With You
March edition: Small towns, Always Sunny and family recipes
Here we are, in the midst of a lovely false spring and the skies are clear, the sun is warm and nothing could possibly go wrong. What’s that you say? Russia is acting squirrelly? Yeah, that makes sense, only in the roaring ’20s would we follow up a planet-wide pandemic with a possible world war. […]
Posted inCulture
Leaf of Life
“Faya Dayi” gives us much to chew on
There’s nothing I love more than an underlying current of melancholy floating beneath a film, giving the piece a tone and a texture unlike anything else. As great as a romance or a horror movie can be, if there’s a film that finds that balance of emotional realism and a sadness based in the everyday […]
Posted inCulture
Leaf of Life
“Faya Dayi” gives us much to chew on
There’s nothing I love more than an underlying current of melancholy floating beneath a film, giving the piece a tone and a texture unlike anything else. As great as a romance or a horror movie can be, if there’s a film that finds that balance of emotional realism and a sadness based in the everyday […]
Posted inCulture
A Refugee Song
“Flee” takes animation to the next level
Sometimes if a film has a lot on its mind, it can get buried under too much thematic weight. Look at something like “Don’t Look Up,” which I liked a lot more than most, but between the warring tones of comedy, drama, satire and science fiction, and the battle between the ideas of climate change, […]
Posted inCulture
It’s a Hard Knoxville Life
Hey COVID, welcome to "Jackass Forever"
Whenever something is just too beautiful to put into words, there’s a line from the 1997 Jodie Foster movie, “Contact,” I fall back on: “They should have sent a poet.” She says that line when laying eyes on extraterrestrial life for the first time because she just can’t explain to the people back in mission […]
Posted inCulture
Maternal Instincts
Conjoining the “Parallel Mothers”
Pedro Almodóvar changed movies forever, and he did so by simply following his exact vision and never deviating from it…even a little bit. When he moved to Madrid in 1967 to go to the National School of Cinema, he could have never guessed that infamous Spanish dictator Francisco Franco would have it shut down. Such […]
Posted inCulture
May the Source Be With You
January edition: Heroes, islands and hotels
I can’t believe I’m here for another January edition of May the Source Be With You. I’ve now been writing on and off for the Source Weekly since 2010, which makes me feel simultaneously incredibly old and profoundly lucky at the same time. To pay my bills as a writer is a dream come true and […]
Posted inCulture
Scumbags, Slashers and Shakespeare
Three movies to watch
Normally the first few weeks of the new year see a glut of terrible movies get foisted upon us from studios that have no faith in whatever product they are shilling. But because we now exist in the Upside Down, good movies come out in January, terrible ones come out in December instead of Oscar […]
