Tag Archives: Japan

Heartland Film Festival 2025: “The Invisible Half”

October 13, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Movie poster of a half-Japanese girl with a white baseball bat standing in front of a giant mummy head that has an earbud cord wrapped around it. The earbuds are bloodied.

Funny how wearing lots of bandages always means “scary monster” and not “victim receiving the care they sorely needed”.

It’s that time again! 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. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.

This’ll be my third year diving in and seeing more than just a single entrant. I enjoyed much of what I saw in 2024, though some of my picks have yet to find distribution to this day. Those few that did kinda came and went without much fanfare. The most “prestigious” film I saw, Small Things Like These, at least went well enough for its makers that star Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants reunited for Steve, which just hit Netflix earlier this month. (Highly recommended, by the way.) Numerous other Heartland entries showed up on Oscar ballots, but I failed to catch them at the festival proper. (Eventually I saw Heartland veterans Flow and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, to name a couple.) I’ll be curious to see what happens to this year’s alumni in the months ahead.

Heartland’s 34th edition runs October 9-19, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least six films in all (Lord willing) — maybe more if time permits. Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry, no matter how big or little. We kick things off with one of the only three horror films in the lineup (a genre HIFF has only opened up to within the past few years), and among this year’s few Asian ones: The Invisible Half, in which we learn Japanese teenagers are no more well-adjusted than ours are.

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Disney World! Part 12: EPCOT’s World of Japan

March 29, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A Japanese gate and dragon sculpture in front of a lagoon. EPCOT's fireworks setups are visible on the horizon and would become important later.

Japan’s share of the World Showcase Lagoon shore.

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…

Most of my EPCOT experience was spent dawdling in the World Showcase, a combination outdoor international shopping mall and museum complex, subdivided into eleven nation simulations across four of the seven continents. Guests can learn about their cultures, sample their cuisine, buy their merchandise, and decide for themselves which bits are authentic carryovers and which are fun stereotypes. All the artifacts, curios, and souvenirs were doubtlessly vetted by multiple committees, but opinions will nonetheless vary among subscribers to the “Death of the Curator” interpretive theory.

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Yes, There’s a ‘Word of the Day’ After the “Perfect Days” End Credits

March 3, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sixtysomething Japanese man in a blue jumpsuit labeled The Tokyo Toilet stands in a park in daytime, smiles and waves at someone offscreen.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this cleaner from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest continues! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season. As is often the case, candidates in Best International Feature endure the slowest rollout of any category due to the complexities of overseas finances and/or struggles to get Stateside studios to pay attention to them and give them turns at our box offices, especially cities outside NYC and L.A.

So far in the BIF competition we’ve caught Spain’s Society of the Snow set in South America, the U.K.’s The Zone of Interest set in Nazi Germany, and Germany’s The Teachers’ Lounge, whose protagonist is from Poland and whose director is of Turkish descent. Our next nominee for your Oscar consideration is Japan’s Perfect Days, from German director Wim Wenders. Thus the mixing-and-matching of nationalities among creators and works continues, apropos of its main character’s aesthetic tastes.

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“The Boy and the Heron”: No Sanctuary for Old Birds

January 6, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anime characters march down a path through a grassy yard. One young woman wearing a kimono and carrying a bow leads six shorter, elderly women all carrying brooms and itching to swat someone.

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.

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Yes, There’s Foreshadowing After the “Godzilla Minus One” End Credits

December 17, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Japanese woman on a train looking out the window, which hazily reflects a rampaging Godzilla heading her way.

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.

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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #4: “Monster”

October 14, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A flabbergasted Japanese mother sits across from two unhelpful teachers. Her subtitles: "There was no misunderstanding!"

“Parent v. School System” is sadly a conflict that transcends international boundaries.

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…

Thanks to Heartland I’ve finally seen my very first film by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. Years ago Shoplifters was in my Hulu queue for about ten minutes before it disappeared, because Hulu isn’t the best service for movies. My son saw that one as well as Nobody Knows and After Life, so he had an advantage over me as we watched Kore-eda’s latest drama, Monster. I have no basis for comparison, but my son thinks Monster might be his favorite Kore-eda film yet.

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2012 Road Trip Photos #12: An Hour Inside the Denver Art Museum, Part 2 of 2

September 6, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The other half of our brief visit to the Denver Art Museum was largely spent in the Japan portion of their Asian section, my son’s exhibit of choice. We knew this without even having to ask. He dreams of going to Japan someday so he can confirm in person what he already tells us every other day, that everything they do or have is better than anything we do or have. The “grass is always greener on the other side” argument is useless against him. They probably have an appropriate metaphor that tops that one, too.

My favorite of the collection: a sculpture so intricate, it must have taken the carver’s entire lifetime and/or driven him mad.

Japanese sculpture, Denver Art Museum

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