Paul Giamatti! Julianne Moore! You’ll be surprised which one is the scariest!
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. Heartland’s 35th edition runs October 7-18 and will be my fourth time diving in. I’ve made plans to catch at least six films in all, maybe more if time permits…
Last but not least: the festival’s Closing Night selection The Debut, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last month. It’s the third film from actor-turned-writer/director Jesse Eisenberg, whose Poland group-tour dramedy A Real Pain played at HIFF 2024 and won an Academy Award for costar Kieran Culkin. Not ready to slow down, Eisenberg nimbly switched gears for this comedy-about-musicals — wrote several all-new songs for its play-within-the-film and prerecorded a short, Heartland-exclusive thank-you that ran in front of our screening.
The trailers for Now You See Me telegraph up front that you should expect a twist along the way. You’re teased and beguiled by the possibility of having the wool pulled over your eyes, and taunted for daring to look too closely. Sooner or later, this movie swears it will fool you.
