Tag Archives: entertainment

“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” Presents Baby Yoda: The Motion Picture

May 24, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Baby Yoda stands on sand and salutes you. Standing next to him are Din Djarin's shiny boots.

IT’S GROGIN’ TIME!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: We watch Star Wars movies and shows! My wife Anne and I have kept up with most of the Disney+ series, for better or worse. We aren’t unconditional superfans preaching, “If it says Star Wars on it, it’s A+++!” in a glassy-eyed haze, nor do we hate-watch it and share high-strung “cave-geek shakes impotent angry fist at toy line” harangues for hollow YouTube bucks while our souls decompose into gnarled, oily nubs.

The far-faraway galaxy is large; it contains multitudes. Granted, that’s more of a four-quadrant marketing design than a magnanimous diversity credo. Billion-dollar corporations don’t stay megalithic by catering exclusively to any singular faction. The universe that began with the classic Jedi lightsaber battles of your sacrosanct childhood memories — or your children’s, if you’ve passed down your pop-culture heritage to them! — also includes the protracted Clone Wars continuity, the politically charged Andor, the kiddie-cartoon-to-steely-drama evolution of Star Wars Rebels, the cosmopolitan artistic experiments of Star Wars Visions, the books and comics that can matter but usually don’t, in-story toyetic adverts, nostalgia-pandering, Morals of the Story, super awesome EXPLOSIONS, the aesthetic sins and redemptive apologia of Jar-Jar Binks, spaceships, Halloween masks, clothing lines, infrequent moments of This Is Cinema, and, yes, the character we knew for years as Baby Yoda till The Powers That Be eventually bothered to name him.

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“Mortal Kombat II”: Another Chosen One Inserts Fifty Cents

May 21, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Karl Urban as Johnny Cage manning a comic-con table covered in his own merchandise, mostly awful DVDs.

Alas, Johnny Cage might have an autograph line if only he’d ever done some anime voice-work.

Previously on Mortal Kombat: I’m not a deeply invested fan — even “fan” might be an overstatement — but I’ve dabbled in the franchise. Back in my fast-food management days, after closing time a friend and I would hang out at a local 24-hour grocery that had a Mortal Kombat II cabinet by the front doors. Their overnight crew ignored us while we virtually whaled on each other for a while. I learned the moves for Liu Kang and Jax, just barely enough to get by, but I was never a serious threat. Years later I saw the first live-action MK film on VHS -– Paul W.S. Anderson’s primitive directorial debut that should’ve been irredeemably terrible. It bunny-hopped over the low bar of “better than most direct-to-video martial-arts schlock” for its time. I may have even laughed once or twice at intentionally funny parts. Obviously one game plus one B-movie doesn’t quite add up to MK geek-cred.

I didn’t bother with TV-commercial director Simon McQuoid’s 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot in its COVID-era release. Reviews weren’t encouraging, but audiences — not at the American box office, but somewhere out there — apparently plunked down just enough quarters to continue the game anyway. I would’ve ignored Mortal Kombat II just as hard if the trailers hadn’t thrown in a new, confusing element that begged the question: what is Karl Urban doing in there? Curiosity got the best of me. I even prepped for the occasion by watching the last film (streaming on Max), mostly regretted it, and committed to letting the sequel pummel me on the big screen, for better or worse.

Really, though: Karl Urban? Eomer? Billy Butcher? Skurge? Dr. McCoy? Judge Dredd? THAT Karl Urban?

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Indianapolis Welcomes “Airplane! Live” With Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty

May 17, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Airplane logo backdrop behind Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, and just me doing jazz hands.

Robert Hays! Julie Hagerty! And in the middle, Leon is getting laaaarger!

Dateline: Friday, May 15, 2026 — Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I do stuff for each other’s birthdays! Usually it’s a road trip somewhere outside our hometown of Indianapolis. This year for my birthday, we attended something completely different: the very same weekend, Indy would be the first stop on a repertory roadshow tour for Airplane!, that 1980 parody classic from the young directing team of Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams. I trust it needs no introduction regarding the incessant goofiness and wall-to-wall gags that cemented its legacy as a critical comedic ancestor to The Simpsons and all the works it influenced in turn, to say nothing of its mythic status as a touchstone to today’s retro Dad-Joke culture.

I rarely see old films in theaters — as I recall, the only other time I’ve done so in this blog’s 14-year existence was the 4K re-release of Die Hard — but this event sweetened the pot: following the screening would be a Q&A with stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, who so wondrously brought to life the roles of disgraced war pilot Ted Striker and sweet-natured stewardess Elaine Dickinson. We said to each other, “Surely they can’t be serious.”

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“Fuze”: 4 Guys Walk Under a Bank

May 15, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Military man Aaron Taylor-Johnson lies on ground, stares at two snaking black wires.

“Wait, which do I snip first, the black wire or the blacker wire?”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Sometimes I go to the movies and write about it! After the dense Oscars season ran me ragged through early March, I was okay with taking a break. It wasn’t completely by choice, mind you. The April release calendar seemed sparse except for a trio of populist colossi that toppled all competitors at the box office and had nothing to do with me: two sequels to films I hadn’t seen yet, and a sugarcoated pop-music hagiography that was all its subject’s undiscerning superfans really wanted, the better to revivify the estate’s merchandise sales and back-catalog earnings. Theater owners shoveled plenty of money into their coffers without me thanks to…well, to the average crowds who almost never step inside theaters anymore, really. Cinema is back, baby! I guess!

Remember last century when folks would pick a night and time to go to the movies, show up, then see what’s showing and decide what they wanted to see? No, really, this was a common activity for friends, family, and dates. I tried it a few times — sometimes to happy surprise (My Best Friend’s Wedding!) and sometimes to deep hurting (Problem Child 2). I haven’t done that in ages, but I toyed with the modern equivalent: I kept checking the AMC app every week and waiting for something — anything — to jump out at me and whisper, “Don’t let your entire AMC Stubs monthly fee go to waste!” Exactly once in April, I spotted a listing with just enough pedigree to earn a “sure, why not” outing: a short, twisty British heist thriller called Fuze that hardly garnered any public notice. It didn’t crack the U.S. Top 10 in its first week and was yanked from all local screens the next weekend. It’ll be streaming at the end of May, and probably discounted before autumn, but its thoughtful approach to well-trodden ground deserves a mention.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: The Brave and the Bold Starring Batman and the Tick!

May 10, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
us doing jazz hands with Diedrich Bader, who's wearing glasses and awesome.

Hi, it’s Diedrich Bader! You might remember him from The Drew Carey Show, Office Space, and plenty more!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice. We attended their first three shows (2014-2016), but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics. Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”…

…not to mention “meet new faces” and “buy stuff”. For extra credit, we also attended a panel! Hopefully that makes up for us losing an entire letter grade by eating lunch at the convention center even though we know better.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Tiny Cosplay Gallery!

May 9, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
John Jones cosplayer with accurate detective clothing and very specific sunglasses, carrying cardboard replica of psychedelic Absolute Martian Manhunter

Detective John Jones and the psychedelic alien in his head from DC Comics’ deeply trippy Absolute Martian Manhunter.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. Their inaugural 2014 shindig (under the original moniker “Indy PopCon”) was a massive undertaking and a phenomenal experience, where we met actors from some of our favorite works and were pretty impressed at a first-time comic-con being so well-run. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice.

We also attended the next two years’ shows, but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics — fewer actors under 50, far more anime voice actors, YouTubers, and other influencers and fields outside our Gen-X spheres. We can’t blame them for giving the people what they want, especially after 2015’s special guest Markiplier brought in, by my conservative estimate, 630 million fans dying to meet him and willing to wait the rest of their lives in line if necessary. Some of them may still be there to this day, perhaps a bit miffed that he took such a long break to go film Iron Lung for a while before he resumed signing. His lines were quite the rodeo to witness from the outside, but it wasn’t our rodeo.

IPC 2016 held a few highlights for us, such as the only YouTuber I’ve ever wanted to meet, one of the most awkward comics panels I’ve ever asked a question in, and the height of Deadpool variant cosplay mania. But we bowed out for a while after that. It’s not them, it’s us. (Well, mostly us. It also didn’t help that sometimes their biggest guests were actors we’d already met at other cons.) But hey! Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #5 of 5: Graphic Storytelling Finale

May 2, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Five graphic novels, refer to capsules.

Category 1: creator-owned books!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…but at least the following OGNs and trades have been rescued from the unread pile and can move on to their next home, by which I mean the endless stacks in our library/Anne’s office, where they and the past several years’ other finished works wait for us to figure out which major appliance to get rid of so we can make room for a new bookshelf. I mean, do we really need a refrigerator?

Anyway, onward!

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #4: All the Prose That’s Left to Print

April 25, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
The first four books reviewed below.

First up: books with movie connections!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…unless we do as Heracles and Iolaus did with the Hydra: set everything on fire so it can’t regrow. We’re not doing that; consequently, the never-ending literary consumption continues. So far we’ve covered two critical tomes by a premier TV critic, the two comics creators who showed up in my 2025 stacks the most, and a selection of graphic novels and trades that were great and/or tall. Next up: nothing but prose! Novels, memoirs, short-story collections — all words and virtually no pictures, apart from some spot illustrations.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #3: Graphic Novel Highlights

April 19, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
6 Graphic Novels on brown kitchen table, refer to next six capsules.

Some of my favorite reads from last year…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…all of which I convince myself I’ll totally get to someday. Same holds true for writing about ’em. And now, more of the latter! It was nice to finish the second installment earlier, but we’ve dozens more to go before we sleep.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #2: Two Graphic Novel MVPs

April 19, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
7 graphic novels written by Mark Russell, titles written about below.

2025: The Year I Began Tracking Down All the Mark Russell Works.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…and the same holds true for my li’l ramshackle hobby-blog: cross one subject off my to-do list, five more get added to it. We’re long overdue to catch up and I’m tired of staring at all these stacks in our living room next to our PC desk. Let’s do some of this for the sake of spring cleaning! We’ll start with the two creators with more works in those stacks than any other.

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“Ready or Not 2: Here I Come”: Sisters Are Slayin’ It for Themselves

April 3, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two blond women tied in chairs in a mansion ballroom. One is dressed normally and confounded, the other is in a bloody wedding dress and screaming.

Movie Team-Ups present Ant-Man’s daughter AND Bill S. Preston, Esq.’s daughter!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Radio Silence is here for all your action-horror needs! The joint sobriquet for the directing duo of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bellinelli-Olpin, their slickly paced, tongue-in-cheek set-pieces — often flooded in literal gallons of blood — caught my attention with the fifth and sixth Screams and the vampire-kidnapping murder-mischief of Abigail even though rivers of carnage aren’t a go-to for me (…he said in an era when over half the films in theaters are fiscally modest horror flicks). Curious for more, I eventually went back and streamed their 2019 crowd-favorite Ready or Not, in which the impressively put-upon newlywed Samara Weaving learns the truth behind the old joke about how in-laws are the worst and is forced to survive “The Most Dangerous Game” by her new family’s regional variant rules, which include old-timey weapons, demonic rituals, and EXPLOSIONS. She survives to see dawn and overcomes one of modern America’s worst fears: spoiled one-percenters who were totally out to get her.

Weaving, the directors, and the first one’s writers R. Christopher Murphy and Guy Busick (who also worked on Silence’s last three films) are back with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which naturally has to double and triple every quantity: higher stakes, more killers, more recognizable costars, and overall super-sized Hunger Games with larger industrial hoses hooked to those same chemical-factory-sized blood-vats.

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: Jessica Jones, The West Wing, and a Cavalcade of Comics

March 29, 2026 By in Comics/Lit, Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Dule Hill and Martin Sheen from "The West Wing" and two geeks wearing shirts that say "jazz hands enthusiasts".

Fun times with The West Wing stars Dule Hill and Martin Sheen, plus two operators from the Butterball Turkey hotline.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…although we dragged our feet on committing to this year’s edition as we waited for them to invite actors that we hadn’t already met and who’ve performed in shows and/or movies we really enjoyed. Less than a month before showtime, we were finally feeling it and bought tickets. But we planned for a less epic adventure than usual. It was still fun! We have fewer anecdotes than usual, though. On the bright side, that means less typing for me and a shorter read for You, The Viewers At Home! (Not counting the next several paragraphs.)

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Cosplay!

March 29, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
cosplay: Doctor Strange with impossibly huge head

“DORMAMMU, CHIBI DOCTOR STRANGE HAS COME TO BARGAIN!”

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened our day around the show floor. The jazz-hands photo ops and other details will be shared in the other chapter because everyone loves costumes. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re clearly not professional photographers, journalists, costume designers, or Oscars red carpet commentators. We’re just an aging geek couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun.

Enjoy! Please feel free to identify any characters we failed at recognizing!

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Yes, There Are Mission Patches After the “Project Hail Mary” End Credits

March 27, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ryan Gosling in red astronaut armor with a NASA logo, smiling and standing in a dark foil-lined tunnel.

IRON MAN IIIN SPAAACE!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Solo astronauts are our heroes! Sure, the full crews of Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff are fine, but ever since Stanley Kubrick’s visionary 2001: A Space Odyssey saw Keir “Dave” Dullea pull the plug on Richard Daystrom’s malfunctioning Ultimate Computer — a full year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon pretty easily because no evil A.I. showed up to stop him — filmmakers have enjoyed pondering the scenario, “What if you had an entire massive spaceship all to yourself and you alone had to save the day or get killed?” In my case it would be a short film: the Dramamine I’d need to overcome my motion-sickness issues would probably get used up before reaching the first million-mile marker and I’d end up dead by dehydration due to nonstop vomiting.

The astro-lone-wolf tradition has come up in such recent sci-fi dramas as Moon, Gravity, Ad Astra, and The Martian. Andy Weir, whose novel was the foundation of the latter, apparently loved the concept so much that he reexamined it from a new angle in his most recent book Project Hail Mary: instead of stranding an astronaut on Mars and forcing him to survive till the scientists back home could rescue him…what if the stranded astronaut had to save the scientists back home? And everyone else back home? Also, what if he wasn’t even an astronaut?

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The Academy Awards 2026 Season Finale

March 16, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Conan O'Brien sitting in am empty theater, marveling at the screen and holding his hands up in surprise.

Oscars jazz hands!

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight the 98th Academy Awards were aired live on ABC and streamed live on Hulu, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and hosted again by beloved funnyman Conan O’Brien, who didn’t screw up last year, or at the very least kept his screw-ups backstage. This year’s soiree clocked in at 224 minutes, five minutes shorter than last year’s and 27 minutes longer than Avatar: Fire and Ash. O’Brien was his usual uproarious self, taking a couple more political potshots than he did last year, before disappearing for much of the second half.

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I Knew “The Bride!” When She Used to Rock and Roll

March 13, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jessie Buckley with blond hair, black 1930s hat and black smudge next to her mouth, screaming into headlights at night.

Not one of Madonna’s better phases.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: After nearly thirty years of acting, back in 2021 Maggie Gyllenhaal stepped behind the camera to write and direct her first feature — a heartbreaking novel adaptation called The Lost Daughter, in which Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman each played the same character at different ages, whose personal issues complicated her unenthusiastic young-adult attempts at motherhood and continued haunting her as life grew increasingly lonelier with age. Both actresses were nominated for Academy Awards, as was Gyllenhaal for Best Adapted Screenplay with such a complicated portrait of a woman in no position to deal with the expectations of everyone around her and The Viewers at Home.

Viewers may feel even more confounded by the writer/director’s sophomore follow-up, a big-budget IP-romp called The Bride! that isn’t a novel adaptation and isn’t quite a remake of James Whale’s iconic Bride of Frankenstein…at least, not all of it. Remember the scene where Elsa Lanchester awakens and screaming at Boris Karloff? Imagine that screaming stretched out to a two-hour runtime, except now she’s screaming at everyone except Frankenstein’s Monster, and somehow the screaming and posturing make her a feminist icon. Or something?

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Indiana Man Watches All 50 Academy Award Nominees, Has T-Shirt to Prove It

March 12, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Man wearing gray T-shirt which lists all 50 Oscar nominees on the back.

Cooler than any band T-shirt I’ve ever owned.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscars Quest ’26 is over! I did my best to catch all the Academy Award nominees I could in every single category before the big ceremony Sunday, whether in theaters or on our household’s available streaming services. I do so each year knowing no one will give me a trophy for my amateur hobbyist efforts. My wife Anne was relieved to know our routines could get back to normal, but that’s about it for prizes. Oh, and it was a great excuse to catch some fantastic films I might otherwise have missed.

For my second time ever, I’ve seen all fifty works up for honors this year, comprising 35 features and 15 shorts. Per annual tradition, the following are capsule summaries of the eight nominees I streamed over the past six weeks that I hadn’t previously posted. The services that granted me access to each of them are provided as well, though these might be subject to change without notice.

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“Sirat”: If You Can Still Feel a Beat, Keep Moving

March 8, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sirat movie poster with forlorn man standing in front of Godzilla-sized speakers.

These speakers go to one hundred eleven!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscars Quest ’26 continues! Once again we see how many among the latest wave of Academy Award nominees I can catch before the big ABC ceremony. Pretty much every single time, at least one of the last films on my to-do list is whichever nominee for Best International Feature is the last to open here in Indianapolis.

I wish I could’ve gotten to the Spanish drama Sirat when it screened at last year’s Heartland Film Festival, which was on my shortlist but got cut because their lineup was too impressive for me to get to everything I wanted to in a single week. (Other regretted cuts included Arco and The Secret Agent.) Fortunately its limited-release rollout reached the Midwest just in time for its two big showdowns for Best International Feature and Best Sound. Fans of the latter category are encouraged to see it somewhere with the strongest speakers possible.

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Oscars Quest ’26: My “Kokuho” Road Trip

March 7, 2026 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Kokuho movie poster, with Ryo Yoshizama in a robe, applying red makeup under his right eye.

At last, a rare sighting in the wild!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscars Quest ’26 continues! Once again we see how many among the latest wave of Academy Award nominees I can catch before the big ABC ceremony, often taking unusual measures to collect all those viewing experiences. Sometimes that’s meant catching indie films in their one-week runs here in Indianapolis theaters, using streaming services I’d never heard of before, or lucking into limited-time opportunities through cultural organizations. In the case of Kokuho, all those avenues failed me. I had to go to a new extreme like none I’d committed before: a 160-mile road trip.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Scream 7” End Credits

March 6, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ghostface walks past the side of a brick coffee shop, knife in hand, mask yawning.

Ghostface comes to small-town Indiana! But this was filmed in Atlanta, once again pretending to be Indiana, just like it did in Stranger Things. HMPH.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: The Scream movies stopped sucking for a while! After Scream 3‘s major letdown I avoided the series for years until critics’ morale improved. Once I caught up, I loved the fourth one’s All About Eve ending (costarring future Best Actress Mikey Madison!) and thought the fifth one was the best one since the original. The last one made a few mistakes but ranks fairly near the not-bad second one on my list.

The creative slump returns with a vengeance in the inevitable product that is Scream 7. Studio execs love durable IPs and most studios seem to be making nothing but horror flicks nowadays. After the original plans for this one collapsed and most participants ran away or were fired, the “Billy Loomis’ Haunted Daughter” trilogy was ditched unfinished and the buck was passed back to series creator Kevin Williamson to save the day and the profits. In conjunction with the writers of the last two, Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt (or maybe just cannibalizing whatever scrap papers they left behind), Williamson ran it to the finish line and decided it was time to direct a feature film for his second time ever. His first try 26 years ago, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, is faintly remembered as the answer to the trivia question “What horror film had to change its name because of Columbine?” and not for much else.

(Before we dive in: mild spoilers ahead. I’m pretty sure anyone worried about spoilers already saw it opening weekend and the second weekend’s box office receipts will plummet a good 80% or so. But here’s a courtesy pause anyway, just in case.)

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