Category Archives: Movies/Films/Flicks

“Room”: Your Life Should Be More Than a Bottle Episode

February 22, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Room!

Every year there’s always at least one Oscar contender for Best Picture that was shot for $50 and had a marketing budget of about $20. This year’s Little Engine That Could is Room, which I’ve been interested in ever since we saw the trailer at the Heartland Film Festival preview night back in September. Unfortunately, its initial run lasted in Indianapolis for a week or two at a single theater on the other side of town, in a month when when we had far too many things going on. Its Best Picture nomination gave it a new reason to live, its distributor dug some spare change out of their couches, and it reopened here on twice as many screens last month. Behold the power of awards-season prestige.

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“The Revenant”: Furrier Road

February 20, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments
The Revenant!

Through the rigorous weeks of shooting, Leonardo DiCaprio burned hundreds of unsold Growing Pains: Season 7 sets to keep warm.

With a week to go till the Academy Awards, I’ve seen all eight Best Picture nominees as part of my annual Oscar Quest. I’ve only written about five of them so far and have some catch-up to do. Usually the AMPAS voters love at least one film I’d rather not see, but I’m relieved to report the 2015 lineup gave me the best Oscar Quest I’ve had in over a decade. Early on, I’d gotten the impression that if any nominee would annoy me more than the rest, it would be Alejandro González Iñárritu’s next film stunt The Revenant. I decided to see it anyway and form my own opinions, whether justified or flawed.

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2015 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films: Best to Not-Best

February 11, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bear Story!

Each year since 2009 my wife and I have paid a visit to Keystone Art Cinema, the only dedicated art-film theater in Indianapolis, to view the big-screen release of the Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film. Results vary each time and aren’t always for all audiences, but we appreciate this opportunity to sample such works and see what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of celebrating, whether we agree with their collective opinions or not. Usually we do both sets as a one-day double-feature date, but a non-negotiable scheduling conflict cut into our window of opportunity. We saw the live-action shorts two weekends ago, and caught the animated shorts this past weekend.

Presented below are my rankings of this year’s five Animated Short Film nominees, in order from “So Many Feels” to “Had Drawbacks”. They’re probably available on iTunes or other streaming services, but I honestly haven’t checked. Links are provided to official sites where available if you’re interested in more info. Enjoy where possible!

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2015 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Short Films: Best to Not-Best

January 31, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Alles Wird Gut.

Local Dad Misreads Calendar, Mistakenly Celebrates “Take Your Daughter Day”

Each year since 2009 my wife and I have paid a visit to Keystone Art Cinema, the only dedicated art-film theater in Indianapolis, to view the big-screen release of the Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film. Results vary each time and aren’t always for all audiences, but we appreciate this opportunity to sample such works and see what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of celebrating, whether we agree with their collective opinions or not. Usually we do both sets as a one-day double-feature date, but a non-negotiable scheduling conflict cut into our window of opportunity. We saw the live-action set this week, with hopes to catch the animated shorts next weekend.

This was the first time in years that neither Anne nor I hated any of the five live-action contenders. Oddly, this was also the first year in some time that not a single nominee featured any Hollywood actors we recognized. (I uncovered a few low-level ones after the fact, but they were strangers to us.) We don’t require familiar faces to enjoy a given work, but it’s nifty to have a lineup 100% guaranteed not to have slid in on marquee recognition alone. Presented below are my rankings of this year’s five Live-Action Short Film nominees, from the most Outstanding to the most Needs Improvement, as my old report cards used to label. They’re probably available on iTunes or other streaming services, but I honestly haven’t checked. Links are provided to the official sites if you’re interested in more info. Enjoy where possible!

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“The Big Short”: Mortgages Most Foul

January 27, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The Big Short!

“Hi, yes, I don’t have a question. I’d just like to point out for the record that no one has ever produced a single shred of evidence linking paper companies to the 2008 recession. So SUCK IT, BANKS.”

The first time I saw the name Adam McKay, he was a writer on Saturday Night Live who occasionally appeared in short films that helped kill time during the show’s after-12:30 wasteland. Those never did much for me, but he moved on to helming Will Ferrell comedies that attracted much larger audiences, of which I’ve not been a part. Fourteen years after his SNL stint, he’s now co-written a Marvel super-hero movie (last summer’s not-bad Ant-Man) and directed a Best Picture nominee in The Big Short, which ought to be mandatory viewing as an ethics cautionary tale in all future finance classes ever.

As Hollywood careers go, that escalated nicely.

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The 88th Oscars Nominations: Initial Thoughts, Lists, and Stats

January 14, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Creed!

Original working title for this entry: “I’m Sorry the Academy Thinks Michael B. Jordan Sucks”.

The Academy Award nominations are in! But you already knew that because chances are you’ve had more time for internet than I have today. You’ve already been surprised at how many of the nominees you’ve seen, not surprised that the theme of the 88th Academy Awards will be the Year of the White Guy, and probably up in arms that Star Wars: The Force Awakens wasn’t nominated in nineteen different categories including Best Foreign Language Film on behalf of the one scene with the two guys from The Raid. Ha! Sorry you got your hopes up, you FOOL. The guys from The Raid weren’t nearly white enough.

(If you had to work today like I did, here’s the complete list in showy poster format, or you can do like I do and skip to the “Printable List” button on the right side of that page for a handy PDF. I have zero interest in copying ‘n’ pasting the entirety from someone else’s site, or in typing every single title from scratch. It’s not like I’m paid by the word.)

Momentary pause here to signify my disappointment that Creed likewise failed to be nominated for all the awards ever. I’m sincerely cool with Stallone’s nomination and expected no less, but much more love needed to go out to Michael B. Jordan, director Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Goransson’s score, screenplay, editing, the works. I already went through this frustration two years ago with Fruitvale Station, and yet here we go again. A few things went my way, but seeing Creed seated at the kiddie table wasn’t one of them.

(Same goes to a certain extent for Inside Out, my favorite film of 2015, but I’m used to Hollywood underrating its animated films. To its credit, it received nods for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Screenplay, which means it got twice as many nominations as Creed did. Congrats?)

The following lists and other thoughts popped into my head throughout the day while I mulled over this year’s honorees:

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My 2015 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Year’s Least Worst

January 9, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ultron!

2015’s movie theme: The Year of Trying to Bury Your Father.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Once again it’s National List Month, when all of Hollywood runs down to Hallmark and buys “For Your Consideration” cards to mail out to their fifty thousand closest friends. Meanwhile on the internet, where no one sends us free stuff to buy our love, we dedicated theater-goers are forced to make up our own minds, revisit our opinions, and vote with our bullet points. I saw twenty-six films in theaters in 2015, but five were Best Picture nominees released in 2014 and therefore disqualified from this list, even though two of them amazed me, because I’m an unreasonable stickler about dates…

And now, on with the countdown:

Right this way for our picks of the year’s best films!

My 2015 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Least Best

January 8, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , 9 Comments
Jai Courtney!

Jai Courtney comin’ up on loot at the thrift shop while waiting for a call back from the producers of Lethal Weapon 5.

Once again it’s National List Month, when all of Hollywood runs down to Hallmark and buys “For Your Consideration” cards to mail out to their fifty thousand closest friends. Meanwhile on the internet, where no one sends us free stuff to buy our love, we dedicated theater-goers are forced to make up our own minds, revisit our opinions, and vote with our bullet points. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

I saw twenty-six films in theaters in 2015, but five were Best Picture nominees released in 2014 and therefore disqualified from this list, even though two of them amazed me, because I’m an unreasonable stickler about dates. Also disqualified are a few 2015 indie releases I watched via the graces of Netflix as well as one recent sci-fi film I caught on Blu-ray last night. Of the remaining 21 contenders, one was a reboot, ten were sequels or continuations of long-running series, and one was arguably both depending on how you feel about time travel consequences. Call it a “bootquel”, I guess.

Right this way for our least favorite films of the year!

“The Hateful Eight”: Bloodbaths of the Old West

December 31, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments
Hateful Eight!

If I were trapped under an eyepatch for eight years, I’d be awfully excited about taking it off, too.

Funny story: my original plan for Wednesday night was to add one last movie to my 2015 list, with a showing of The Good Dinosaur. Unfortunately showtimes were scarce because it’s exiting local theaters earlier than I’d expected. Having barely crossed the $100 million mark after five weeks, it’s about to go down in the books as the lowest grossing Pixar film of all time, with or without adjusting for inflation. I’m not ready to quit Pixar yet, so I did some digging and found exactly one screen that offered me the right time and place. Then my morning started off with a mysterious technical malfunction that ruined my entire itinerary and kicked off a domino effect that later slammed my window of opportunity shut. Alas, poor cartoon with mediocre trailers, I have yet to know thee.

I searched the theater listings once more for our side of town in hopes that I could simply catch a later showing without driving forty miles out of my way…and then I noticed Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight just opened. I hadn’t attended a movie on opening night since The Matrix in 1999, so for that novelty alone I figured why not. The 70mm roadshow version is playing nowhere in Indiana at the moment, but I figured I could cope with the ostensibly inferior mainstream version. Call it the Director’s Compromise Cut, I guess.

You’ll have to pardon me in this moment of aesthetic whiplash if I seem a little grouchy with the results. The past few days have seen quite a few confounded expectations.

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #6: Year-End Title Dump

December 30, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Beasts of No Nation!

…or How Netflix Won My 2015.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I came up with a recurring feature that was meant to be me jotting down capsule-sized notes about Stuff I Recently Watched on our own TV. And then I spent the last several months accumulating a backlog while finding plenty of other topics to explore instead. With 2016 a handful of hours away, I’m taking this moment to play superficial catch-up and clear the slate in case I decide to call do-over on this next year.

Many of these were made possible by the power of Netflix, for which we finally signed up in 2015 and learned to super-like. Others came from assorted sources, but many sort neatly into categories. These, then, are the films I watched at home within the past 365 days that weren’t in the last five Scorecard summaries. I’ve added notes only to those titles that spark the sharpest, most immediate memories and reactions.

Right this way for another list in the imitable MCC fashion!

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”: the IMAX 3-D Entry

December 26, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
M-Falcon!

Even the silliest pew-pew-pew effects sound glorious when you crank the speakers up to 27.

I have no current plans to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens six times as I did with one of its predecessors, but my son and I caught an encore for fun at one of the local IMAX theaters to see if the 3-D made any difference. It’s something we try maybe once every 2-3 years, not a regular part of our movie-going diet. I confess I dig IMAX screens more for their super-sized speaker systems than for any picture enlargement. In both TV and movies, JJ Abrams tends to be one of those directors who coach their sound effects team to deliver a booming, raucous performance in which you can feel the depth and the weight of every noise great and small. As a guy with lousy hearing who watches most TV shows with the captioning turned on just in case, I love a heavy hand at the soundboards.

After seeing the same scenes twice, I noticed slight shifts in a few of my opinions, along with a few other random observations beyond what I previously wrote over here and over there. I talked to a few relatives at Christmas gatherings today who still haven’t seen TFA, so I’m not the sort of elitist to assume that anyone who hasn’t seen it yet deserves spoilers as their punishment. If you’re like them and haven’t had the time or funds, please enjoy this courtesy SPOILER ALERT telling you politely to go away for now and save this entry for later.

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Right this way for MCC bonus notes!

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”: The All-Spoiler Entry

December 20, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments
Captain Phasma!

Hey, remember that time we had high hopes for every well-dressed new character in The Force Awakens?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens! The previous entry was the requisite MCC review-not-review, but lighter on details this time for the benefit of those fans who want a fighting change to see the movie with as few surprises spoiled as possible. According to my son, some deranged Expanded Universe fans were invading random YouTube comments sections for videos that had absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars and were posting major TFA spoilers because they are bitter and they are twelve. Between the heavily armed loner gunmen we fear are waiting at the crowded theater lobbies and the entitled trolls waiting to type furiously at innocents at home, the cinema experience is strangely more challenging and less fun than ever.

That didn’t stop us, though. We had thoughts and I remembered to write down many of them. Here’s a COURTESY SPOILER WARNING in case you somehow overlooked the title.

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Right this way for another round of Star Wars!

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”: The Non-Spoiler Entry

December 20, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

BB-8!

Still hiding out from rampant internet spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

Never fear! We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover know your fears. I spent part of Thursday and all of Friday hiding out from social media, shunning all peer contact, and busying myself around the house until it was our turn to see it Saturday afternoon. At last I can rejoin the cool kids’ kaffeeklatsch, already in progress.

But that doesn’t mean I have to ruin it for anyone else. Thus I’ve split my thoughts into (at least) two entries. First up: the light summary of impressions from my first showing, written in a manner that hopefully doesn’t compromise your own first screening.

Right this way for the short version!

The Small But Mighty “Brooklyn”

December 19, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
Brooklyn!

Capping a banner year for actor Domhnall Gleeson, who was in this and some other high-profile production. Guess which movie his action figure’s based on.

This weekend, thousands of theater screens across America are showing a limited selection of films because a certain unstoppable juggernaut has overtaken the American consciousness and demanded everyone’s full attention now now NOW. It leaves scraps of ticket dollars lying behind in the wreckage for all the other, smaller, less beloved films to fight over — third-rate kiddie films, R-rated write-offs, leftover blockbusters from previous months that everyone’s already seen, and tiny, obscure, dramatic productions forgotten in the pandemonium, wishing for awards or at least someone’s attention. That last category will never sell toys, inspire spinoffs, or have viewers fighting over spoilers, but that’s not their audience or their intent. Sometimes it’s like they live and express themselves in a different world of their own, one where we’re free to visit if we don’t mind that the furniture’s not so polished.

Welcome to Brooklyn.

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“Creed” and the Fight to Mean Something

December 16, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Creed!

You wanna climb to the top, be ready to do the footwork.

It was probably unfair of me to assume Creed would be one of my favorite films of 2015 before I walked into the theater. Previously in the tragic Fruitvale Station, director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan together made my favorite film of 2013. A year earlier, Jordan costarred in Chronicle, a left-field surprise that became my no-contest favorite of 2012. Prior to that, he was in season one of The Wire and thereby granted a lifetime pass for any future catastrophes beyond his control.

On the other hand, I’d only seen three of the six Rocky films — the first one as part of a successful ’90s mission to watch every Best Picture Oscar winner ever; Rocky III at the drive-in, where a furious, pre-laughingstock Mr. T frightened 10-year-old me almost to tears; and the shamelessly jingoistic yet totally engrossing Rocky IV, the only time in my life I’ve ever seen dudes in a theater jumping out of their seats and cheering and fist-pumping at all-American awesomeness overload. Yes, really. I’ve never felt the urge to keep up with the Italian Stallion since then, or to backtrack for the second one.

So in fairness, I had to allow that Creed could’ve gone either way.

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What I Demand to See in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

December 13, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
The Force Awakens!

The Star Wars Cinematic Universe introduces the first three members of its All-New All-Different Avengers.

Every Star Wars fan, whether casual or hardcore, has their mental wish list of stuff they’re hoping Star Wars: The Force Awakens should contain in order to become the greatest Star Wars film of all time. With a modest running time of 136 minutes, J.J. Abrams and company can’t possibly satisfy every single fan on Earth, but it goes without saying that my checklist is the wisest and grandest of them all.

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The Resources After the “Spotlight” End Credits

December 4, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Spotlight.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one.”

As an embittered attorney who represented dozens of Catholic Church rape and sex-abuse victims over the years, Stanley Tucci lays bare the core of Spotlight, a passionate journalism drama based on the true story of the Boston Globe team that uncovered the vast web of lies, cover-ups, bully-pulpit negotiations, and geographic sleight-of-hand that gave dozens of hypocritical monsters the power and implicit permission to use hundreds of their most vulnerable followers as their playthings for decades, with virtually no accountability or consequences.

Innocents and their parents, obedient parishioners all, looked up to them and shouted, “Won’t someone think of the children?” These collared but uncontrolled sinners looked down and whispered “No.”

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“Mockingjay Part 2”: Girl on Fire Burns Out, Fades Away

November 24, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Mockingjay 2!

Even in dystopia, there’s always time for handheld gaming.

At long last, the 1853 book series that was turned into a beloved but unfinished 1970s film series has reached its long-forgotten conclusion! That’s how long it’s felt since this franchise started, anyway.

It began with The Hunger Games, which brought Battle Royale to the West, adding shaky-cam and subtracting sex. It escalated in Catching Fire, in which the adult characters had to bring their A-game because the Games themselves no longer mattered. In Mockingjay Part 1 it paid homage to Wag the Dog, went behind the scenes at a post-apocalyptic marketing firm, and basically felt like one of those all-talk episodes of The Walking Dead where the stunt crew takes a week off while the characters sit around exchanging feelings so their eventual, horrible deaths will mean something.

And now, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is here to wrap up the character arcs for anyone who didn’t read the books, to finish adapting the remaining 213 pages of the 390-page novel that concluded the original trilogy. Closure is here for one and all, especially for DVD fans waiting to buy the eventual Hunger Games Quadrilogy set for cheap on some future Black Friday.

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“Spectre”: Restoring the Common Bond

November 16, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Spectre!

“How hard would it be to change our Tomatometer rating to 105%?”

In one of the precious few MCC movie reviews ever to draw non-positive responses, I called Skyfall my favorite James Bond film of all time, based on having seen maybe ten or eleven of them in all. Even as a kid I never got excited about the concept of a globetrotting sophisticate who’s more into booze and hook-ups than he is into crimefighting. At least Batman confines his vices and his expensive suits to his off-duty civilian hours. If Bond were an Inside Out character, the simplistic emotions ruling his head would be Sex, Suaveness, Sarcasm, and Slaughter.

After the welcome reboot of Casino Royale and the redundant vendetta of Quantum of Solace, Skyfall struck me as the apex of Daniel Craig’s 21st-century take, which built to a genuine emotional arc for the usually one-note character, supported by stunts genuinely thrilling without resorting to renamed sci-fi Bat-gadgetry, by updated camerawork, and with none of the nonsense of the last two Pierce Brosnan farces. It was a film designed to reach beyond the typical fan base, and for me it worked.

Spectre, in contrast, is less about director Sam Mendes deepening the impact he made on the aging series last time, and more of the intellectual property’s longtime producers giving Bond Classic fans more of what they want. Lucky them, I suppose.

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Former Kickstarter Junkie VI: Reboot MST3K? You Do It, I’m Bitter

November 11, 2015 By in Misc. Media, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Bring Back MST3K!

If you’ve never seen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I’m really sorry that you’ve been deprived of the pleasure. I missed the first several seasons of its basic-cable run, but the Rhino Home Video releases began in May 1996 at exactly the right moment in my life when, more than any other, I needed powerful reasons to laugh, to overlook emotional pain, and to appreciate sci-fi puppetry. Joel, Mike, Crow, Tom Servo, and the rest of their motley crew were like a shining, snarky beacon through so much real-world darkness. I snapped up every episode as it was released and filled up a few shelves. When I could afford basic cable again circa 1998, I caught up to speed with the Sci-Fi Channel reruns, and the rest is a great time in history for this latecomer MSTie.

Some of its funniest fans were among the first online citizens I met when I discovered the wild world of Internets. My wife and I met several of those odd-fellows in person and quite a few cast members over the past fifteen years — at a St. Louis convention on our 2000 road trip, at Indy Pop Con 2014, and at C2E2 2015. It’s been kind of a wild ride.

Today news broke out across my social circles that MST3K creator Joel Hodgson, with the assistance of the good Samaritans at Shout! Factory (the show’s home-video distributor for the last several years), has obtained the rights clearance to pursue a full-on revival with the same puppets but probably an all-new cast — a bit like the Sci-Fi years in a sense, so some of us are bound to fret and complain till we get used to Tom Servo’s new voice. Rather than rely on modern studio executives to come to their senses and right the wrongs committed by their soulless ancestors, Hodgson has launched an ambitious Kickstarter campaign that will allow fans, newcomers, and hopefully kindhearted deep-pocketed investors to determine whether or not the world’s greatest Cowtown puppet show deserves another chance to live and riff.

As a fan, I hope it succeeds and I wish I could help. I also wish there were a way to do it without Kickstarter.

Right this way for more MST3K info! And for an update on this regretful ongoing MCC series!