By Reid Ramsey 2019 in film brought about an embarrassment of riches. Most of those riches came at the tail-end of the year, which—unlike most years—is great for the Academy Awards. Where you have an embarrassing amount of good films, though,…
Film Review: ‘Ad Astra’ – A Cerebral Thriller That Asks Questions But Perplexes With Answers
By Reid Ramsey In the opening scene of Ad Astra, Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) exits the International Space Antenna for some routine maintenance. A power surge storms through the space antenna and Roy falls. With an acclaimed calm that…
Big Ears 2019: Some Overlooked Festival Gems
Overlooked is a bit of a loaded word when it comes to the Big Ears Festival. The festival features so much music unlike anything you’ve ever seen, that it’s truly impossible to see it all. For an introvert like myself, FOMO became a relatively new and profoundly constant state-of-mind throughout the weekend. Some of the most talked about performances of the weekend — such as Spiritualized, Mountain Man, the Messthetics, and Dejohnette Coltrane Garrison, only the last of whom I saw — simply conflicted with other performances on my schedule. So having missed some of the most impressive and mind-bending performances, how can I even refer to other acts as overlooked? Big Ears just offers so much.
The 91st Academy Awards: Who Will Win and Who Should Win
Life as a movie-lover in Knoxville can be difficult, especially around this time of year. With this year’s Oscars Ceremony this Sunday — honoring the movies of 2018 — it’s easy to not only feel overwhelmed by the amount of nominees but disappointed in the amount of nominated movies that are actually accessible in our city. Most years, many of the “best movies of the year” are not even screening in Knoxville until the week before the ceremony and often they screen even after that. 2018 marks a unique occurrence in the world of film distribution, though, and likely illustrates a shifting tide. Films produced and distributed by online streaming platforms for the first time cracked the major categories and may signal an even greater shift for years to come.
Preview: Welles Classic – ‘Touch of Evil’ – At Central Cinema
By Reid Ramsey Orson Welles is having a moment. While the director has never moved out of conversations about cinema and Classic Hollywood in the more than thirty years since his death, Welles’s work is experiencing a unique resurgence.…
Review: Director Bradley Cooper Makes His Remake of ‘A Star Is Born’ Truly His Own
By Reid Ramsey “Music is essentially twelve notes between any octave. Twelve notes and then the octave repeats. It’s the same story, told over and over. All the artist can offer the world is how they see those twelve…
Central Cinema Revisits the Western as Anti-McCarthyism Allegory with ‘High Noon’
By Reid Ramsey When audiences originally filed into theaters expecting to see gun battles, carriage chases, and extraordinary heroism in the 1952 masterpiece High Noon, the actual content of the film confounded them. They instead found a rhythmic melodrama…
