“It was a Black and blackly night…”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as a lifelong lover of satire, I was annoyed at missing American Fiction when it played the Heartland Film Festival months ahead of the current Oscar season, but its one and only showtime and location were lousy for me. The drive would’ve been a nearly-hourlong construction-zone slog to Central Indiana’s most upscale area, arguably a breeding ground for the very crowd that the film’s most withering commentary targets.
“Now I am become Oscar, the booster of careers.”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Everything Everywhere All at Once, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.
Starting in 2020 I upgraded to the Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, in which I see how many nominees I can watch in all categories before the big ceremony. Thanks to the expansion of streaming services I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short for the years 2021 and 2022, even in minor categories like Best Original Song. I enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets. Sometimes I have to wait for smaller nominees to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes I go for a streaming rental. In extreme cases a Redbox disc rental might be warranted. I go wherever the Quest takes me.
Winner of two Golden Globes! Too bad I’ve never cared about the Golden Globes.
Show of hands, who wants to hear opinions from a prude who avoids buying any Criterion Collection releases about “sexual liberation” or “sexual awakening”, who went to see a shamelessly, zealously “sex-positive” film?
No? No one? Understood. G’night! See you next entry! I’ll let y’all know when I post some more Disney World photos!
Time once more to gather the family ’round the appliance of your choice!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: : in 2023 I made 24 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. Meanwhile at home, I kept up with select new releases depending on what was conveniently available through our family’s streaming subscriptions, what sounded most watchable, and/or what felt like potential future Oscar nominees that should be gotten over with in advance to ease my annual Oscar Quest time crunch. For value-added fun, as an anniversary gift from my lovely wife Anne we now have Amazon Prime, which expanded our options without expanding my available TV free time. I did what I could within the time slots allotted.
Hence the fourth annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release. Sure, they could’ve been 24 separate entries written in real time as I consumed them, but that’s not how I roll. The Academy Award nominations announcement is coming up January 23rd, which I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind as the deadline for this listicle, so that incentive to get these done clearly worked. On with the countdown!
No, I mean this kind of Disney Easter egg.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…
During the late afternoon of my one-man tour through the Grand Floridian grounds and around the Disney Resorts’ monorail track, in their main lobby I came across what’s apparently an annual Easter feature in their Main Building: an exhibit of egg-shaped sculptures honoring their companies’ films and theme park rides. Some weren’t egg-shaped, instead containing egg motifs. Some were new for 2023; some were holdovers from the past. A few were works-in-progress. All were a gentle admonishment to myself that, yes, I’m sharing these pics well outside the Easter 2023 season when we took them, but in plenty of time for Easter 2024, skipping right over Valentine’s Day and getting ahead of Hallmark for once.
Not all the pics are mine; Anne finally got a chance to peruse the Grand Floridian for herself Wednesday afternoon when she found some unexpected free time between activities and I was several miles away. Between the two of us, we found most of the Easter eggs, which of course weren’t really “hidden”.
Over 300 films stepped into the 2023 arena. Ten step out.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
Of those 24 releases, 15 were sequels or chapters in an ongoing universe or venerated popcorn-flick IP. Eight were superhero films. Two were animated. Two were entirely subtitled. Ten had scenes during or after the end credits. Four were screenings at the 32nd annual Heartland Film Festival, not all of which have received wide U.S. runs as of this writing.
Here’s the annual rundown of what I didn’t miss in theaters in 2023, for better or worse. Links to past excessively wordy reviews and sometimes bizarrely construed thoughts are provided for historical reference…
And now, on with the Year’s Best Movies countdown:
2023 was the 20th anniversary of the classic “LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!” LARPing video. The future that faux-wizard foresaw has arrived.
It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. 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 24 films in theaters in 2023 that were actually released in 2023, a 33.3% increase over 2022 as COVID-19 retreated slightly into the bushes and folks began making more movies, many of them watchable. That number doesn’t include seven Academy Award nominees that were officially 2022 releases, but which I saw later outside the house as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It also doesn’t include the 2023 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own listicle.
Far from other tourists, this was my view across Seven Seas Lagoon of Disney’s Contemporary Resort. The glowing blue mountain is Cinderella’s Castle.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…
Our Disney Resort experience had only just begun. We’d been together all day, but wouldn’t be for long. Among the divergences in the four-day itinerary, Anne had to attend an “evening event” for employees only beginning at 5 pm at the Grand Floridian’s Convention Center. We plus-ones were cordially asked to go bug off on our own recognizance. At first I’d worried about possibly spending my solo night sulky and depressed. It’s a thing I do sometimes.
Then I remembered I was at DISNEY WORLD. I had some light exploring to do before my big, big day tomorrow.
Lilibet 1, Lilibet 2, and Lilibet 3 ponder the final fate of the Queen-Verse.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: at the start of the pandemic my wife Anne and I binged the first three seasons of Netflix’s The Crown, soon caught up with the rest of fandom, and kept up ever after. One slight hitch: while Anne is a major history aficionado, that was never my forte, especially not the story of Queen Elizabeth II and her subjects, some of whom were her own trod-upon relatives:
Compared to my blissfully ignorant self, Anne is far more knowledgeable of history in general and British royalty in particular. My interest in their reigning family went dormant for decades beginning on the morning of July 29, 1981, when my family woke up at 5 a.m. — over summer vacation, mind you — to watch Prince Charles marry Princess Diana, two strangers I knew only as frequent costars of my mom’s favorite tabloids. Their wedding lasted approximately six days and was performed in slow motion with British golf commentators prattling through the lengthy silences in between the happenstances of nothingness. For the next 15-20 years I retained nothing of British history apart from their role as the Big Bad in the American Revolution. Frankly, I’ve learned more about their country’s storied past from my wife and from Oscar-nominated movies than I ever did from school. Sad, unadorned truth.
So far I’ve enjoyed “The Crown” anyway, and understood most of what’s gone on…
We watched along as new episodes were released. I tracked our viewing with listicle rankings of season 4 and season 5. Not only were we enjoying the show enough for me to want to write about it, but all three entries also generated unexpectedly massive traffic, sometimes even dwarfing our comic-con cosplay galleries. (As I’m writing this, the Season 5 entry is still one of last week’s Top 3 posts.) I grumbled when Netflix made the very AMC-esque decision to split the sixth and final season into two parts, leading off with a four-episode miniseries-within-a-series covering The Death of Di. I understood the reasons (i.e., they were a self-contained story and Everyone Loves Princess Diana), but I felt the quartet didn’t justify a minuscule listicle. So I broke from the format and stretched my thoughts into a different sort of list. No one cared.
Looks like it’s listicle time again!
Miyazaki hive represent!
The Final Film from Visionary Animator Hayao Myazaki is a phrase that’s been pushed before in marketing, but maybe this time Studio Ghibli totally means it for sure, no take-backs, not a hoax, The Boy and the Heron is absolutely the animation master’s swan song from his beloved medium and then they’re unplugging all his screens and no longer accepting his notes on their future productions, which will merely have to do the best they can without his sage guidance and relentless perfectionism. Hopefully Ghibli’s next phase goes far better than that time Disney ushered in a new artistic era for themselves and the result was Chicken Little.
The author out of his element, by which I mean attempting a selfie.
Hey, there! Welcome, gracious readers and bots, to the twelfth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review! Once again we self-analyze the site’s pinnacles and nadirs among readers, skimmers, search engine gadabouts, and any other casual internet users who come within fifty light-years of this li’l boutique site. Over a twelve-month period those fleeting glances add up to concrete stats that may or may not be reliable indicators of trends, fads, and wins ‘n’ sins on my part.
This virtual hermit cabin opened its creaky wooden door on April 28, 2012, as a place where I could entertain myself by making essay-shaped things out of whatever words and pictures I had at hand, and placing them somewhere I personally owned rather than someplace a capricious third-party moderator or owner could delete on a whim. Often it’s been a fulfilling platform to share galleries, memories, Grandpa Simpson-style rambling jags, and peculiar opinions that might otherwise either languish unwritten in my head or collect endless rejection emails from every professional website ever. At other times it’s been less satisfying, but when I’m awake and the mood permits, I’ll still make room for one of my most time-consuming hobbies anyway. When my head is in the right space, I can enjoy the process and the results, with or without feedback. On rarer occasions, I’m surprised and elated to enjoy any and every response from outside my own head.
Poor King of Atlantis, waiting in vain for all his DC fans to come high-five him again in theaters.
R.I.P., DC Extended Universe. I wouldn’t call theirs “a good run” through-and-through, but it had worthy moments. It’s a shame only a handful of us attended the farewell party in theaters, a.k.a. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. It’s also a shame this rather expensive, mostly underwater half-CG-cartoon sequel was only the year’s second-best DC film.
One of many outtakes from my recent visit to the annual Festival of Trees exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society. This one was brought to them by Circle Centre Mall.
Hey, kids! It’s that beloved holiday tradition where we just post a few recent Christmas-themed photos with some short yet sincere seasons’ greetings, and we give readers a break from my usual self-indulgent verbosity. It’s the most wonderful time of the MCC year! Click, scroll, ooh, ahh, and keep on frolicking down the internet superhighway!
My wife Anne amid the reimagined snowscape of Victorian London.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we don’t patronize live theater nearly often enough. Sure, we’ve visited New York City twice and strolled among those bright Broadway lights to catch popular favorites like The Lion King and Wicked. As for local theater here in Indianapolis…we’ve been shamefully negligent. My high school English classes took the occasional field trip to the Indiana Repertory Theatre — our most celebrated performance venue, but hardly our only stage — where my poor teenage self (whose family otherwise could never afford such extravagances) had the permission-slipped privilege to see productions of Macbeth (in minimalist postmodern with translucent walls), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (original source of “malapropism”, a useful word to fans of The Office), and Julius Caesar (starring no less an American celebrity than Family Ties‘ Michael Gross). My last engagement was thirty-three years ago.
Fast-forward to today: Anne and I had been discussing our omissions of local cultural experiences when an opportunity came up this holiday season: free tickets to the IRT’s annual performance of A Christmas Carol, courtesy of my employer (one of their nonprofit organization’s longtime sponsors). We kept our calendar clear, took advantage of the offer, and enjoyed a Christmas activity that for once had nothing to do with crowded family gatherings or big-screen movies with snow in them.
David Addison takes time off from breaking the fourth wall to have fun breaking the other three.
I dug through my archives and checked: somehow this blog has existed for eleven years and I’ve never mentioned the original Die Hard is my all-time favorite movie. Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, against my better judgment I subjected myself to the fifth, final, worst entry in the series. Later that same year I tried a new angle on an exhausted joke by presenting my argument that Die Hard 2 is a Christmas movie — in some respects more Christmassy than the first one. But I’ve never simply devoted an entry to the one that started it all and begat an entire subgenre: “Action Films That Are Die Hard on/in a Something”.
At long last I have an excuse to bring it up: two weeks ago the powers-that-be at Fox put it back in theaters just in time for the Christmas season, presumably to celebrate its 35½th birthday in January. I almost never attend repertory showings of films that I could rent or buy. Not counting Disney re-releases during my childhood, my complete Every Repertory Showing Ever adulthood list is short: Aliens, My Fair Lady, Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, North by Northwest, and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Also, I attended all of those in the 20th century. Now I can add an old film this century: DIE HARD.
Portrait of a man and a wingless angel peering into the Twilight Zone 13 years before it was created.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Frank Capra’s beloved classic It’s a Wonderful Life is my wife Anne’s favorite Christmas film. One of the stops on our 2022 road trip was the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls, NY. A full decade ago we were horrified at the news that someone was sincerely planning a sequel, then relieved when it was canned a year later, though I had thoughts on where the franchise might’ve gone next. Thankfully no one was listening to me, but there was so much more to explore in Bedford Falls.
The film is one of the most famous non-geek precursors to pop culture’s recent glut of tales set in the wild, weird multiverse where one character can meet infinite variants of themselves, learn a little something about What Might Have Been, and appreciate their own screwy timeline a little more…or come away twisted with jealous rage and vowing revenge on their past writers. Way back in 1946 a rookie angel named Clarence let despondent everyman George Bailey suffer ninety minutes of tragic setup followed by a half-hour What If…? episode with an ultimately happy ending (even happier if we accept this 1986 SNL sketch as a canonical coda). Whereas today’s heroes sometimes meet dozens or even thousands of distortions of themselves — all the better to generate new action figures and IP spinoffs — just as Star Trek only has the one Mirror Universe, Clarence only takes George on a single measly tour through the looking-glass. That’s probably because Clarence’s trainee power-levels were several billion gigawatts below the all-seeing gaze of Uatu the Watcher, but still…he could’ve tried to access a few more if he liked George that much. Y’know, just for fun.
Diving polar bears represent for the Special Olympics “Polar Plunge” charity challenge.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree or tree-shaped object with decorations befitting their interests and colors. Last year I checked out the festival for my first time along with my coworkers as we sauntered over on our lunch break. We had so much fun that my boss decided our team should make it an annual tradition.
Last time I created not one, but two separate MCC galleries for the occasion. My wife Anne still doesn’t work downtown or at my company and was therefore once again sadly not included in our field trip, but I took photos to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home. Trees are identified by their trimmers and/or donors. Enjoy!
Warning: objects in reflection may be scarier than they appear.
In 2019 writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s historical-fictional The Great War of Archimedes voiced a younger generation’s righteous anger at the hawkish military statesmen who may have deceitfully goaded Japan into World War II and examined the question, “What if one lone hero had risen up to expose their lies and tried to avert the war? Also, what if he were a math whiz?” After their country’s resignation from the League of Nations, officials who oppose elder colleagues’ proposal to build the ultimate super-battleship — clearly the herald of a forthcoming offensive rather than an ostentatious precautionary defense — recruit an antiwar savant to prove the mega-boat would be wildly more expensive than they’re letting on and hopefully foil their plot. The filmmaker best sums up the hubris of those would-be conquerors in a chilling boardroom debate where one contemptuous admiral dismisses the will of the people that is so beneath him: “Without the state, the people are nothing.”
Currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime and some ad-supported services, Yamazaki’s fast-paced high-stakes calculus melodrama expresses regret over the arrogant leadership of yore and proves their audiences are far more open-minded to supporting niche sub-subgenres than Americans are. But it’s especially striking for its opening set piece, a flash-forward to the final fate of the Yamato — a harrowing, five-minute ocean-disaster modern-CG epic mash-up of Titanic and Pearl Harbor bloodier than both films combined. Viewers will know The End going in, yet watch in escalating horror how some dissenting officers might’ve foreseen that outcome but played along anyway.
Four years later Yamazaki’s American theatrical debut follows the same train of recriminating thought as he shifts focus from pre- to post-war Japan. Amid the remains of its decimated cities — not just the two commemorated in all “NEVER AGAIN” speeches and essays ever since — he reemphasizes the past sins of the ruling class and celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Japanese people who rise up to defend their homeland against a flagrantly aggressive common foe. They band together not with their government but despite their government. As it happens, that foe is a famous giant lizard.
Your humbled narrator, who’d rarely stayed this close to scenic waters in past vacations.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…
After 90+ minutes of going stir-crazy on the convention center’s patio despite free snacks, we were at last escorted to our room in Boca Chica, the building at the Grand Floridian’s eastern edge on the bank of Seven Seas Lagoon. Renovations were completed in fall 2022 to upgrade the rooms to a Mary Poppins theme, apropos of the resort’s Victorian-chic ambiance. Fortunately we weren’t required to wear Sunday suits or hoop skirts.
This isn’t a setting where people like us hang out. This is where Higgins gives Thomas Magnum his latest case.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”
For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…
After landing at Orlando International Airport, we wandered a bit in search of the exit where Anne’s employers (hereafter referred to as The Company) had arranged for a charter bus to pick us up. We stopped to ask an NPC for directions, but misunderstood and took three passes to spot the turnoff — a down-escalator in a narrow, unmarked passage with no up-escalator twin next to it. At the bottom we found the doors, checked in with company reps, took off our now-superfluous winter jackets, and hung out in the lobby for a bit with a fellow employee Anne knew from another department. Soon our plushly seated chariot arrived and spirited us off to the resort where we’d be staying for the next three nights, which would prove the poshest place we’ve ever stayed in our lives.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 