Paul Giamatti! Julianne Moore! You’ll be surprised which one is the scariest!
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…
Last but not least: the festival’s Closing Night selection The Debut, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last month. It’s the third film from actor-turned-writer/director Jesse Eisenberg, whose Poland group-tour dramedy A Real Pain played at HIFF 2024 and won an Academy Award for costar Kieran Culkin. Not ready to slow down, Eisenberg nimbly switched gears for this comedy-about-musicals — wrote several all-new songs for its play-within-the-film and prerecorded a short, Heartland-exclusive thank-you that ran in front of our screening.
