What if Little House on the Prairie but Charles Ingalls is a retired badass?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Since 1992 Indianapolis has held its own celebration of cinema with the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater marathon every October of documentaries, shorts, narrative features, and animated works made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience, usually with an emphasis on uplift and positivity. Ever since the “International” modifier was added in recent years, their acquisition team steadily escalated their game as they’ve recruited higher-profile projects into their lineups. For years my wife Anne and I have talked about getting into the spirit of the festivities. This year we will do better. The festival’s 32nd edition will run October 5-15. I’ve committed to at least five different Heartland showings — one of them virtual in-home, while the others will screen at four different theaters throughout central Indiana…

During his downtime between playing villains in four out of every five Hollywood films, Mads Mikkelsen enjoys the occasional smaller production back home in Denmark. Last time we saw him at this level was for the Oscar-winning Another Round, in which he played a gregarious family man who turns frivolously alcoholic with his buddies For Science, only to have things spiral out of control. He starts in a completely opposite corner yet descends into chaos once more in his latest film, a historical farming drama called The Promised Land that one could argue is a Western with smaller hats.

(Minor housekeeping trivia: The Promised Land is no relation to Promised Land, the 2012 Gus Van Sant film that starred Matt Damon and John Krasinski, which I totally forgot existed. It’s blander than the original Danish title, Bastarden. I get why the renaming, but they could’ve kept brainstorming.)

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