“Stop giving me that look, Yorick. Your infinite jest isn’t helping.”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity to see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Heartland’s 35th edition runs October 7-18 and will be my fourth time diving in. I’ve made plans to catch at least six films in all, maybe more if time permits…
Next up: the British late-stage biopic Elsinore, which premiered last month at the Telluride Film Festival. Not just the next entry in the Hamlet Cinematic Universe after last year’s Hamnet, it’s a tour de force for actor Andrew Scott, who doesn’t merely breathe new life into the Bard — he pays tribute to another actor who breathed new life into the Bard before he in turn breathed his last.
Older fans of Matthew McConaughey’s spate of ’90s romantic comedies may be in for a shock when they walk into Dallas Buyers Club and see him playing Christian Bale’s character from The Machinist. He and costar Jared Leto (both radically transformed and up for Oscars this year) underwent severe weight loss for their roles in this based-on-a-true-story underdog drama that’s one part can’t-we-all-just-get-along and four parts sticking-it-to-The-MAN.