Tag Archives: movies

“Robot Dreams”: You’ve Got a Friend in Me (for Now)

March 7, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A cartoon dog and a robot on a skyscraper's observation deck playing around on coin-op binoculars. Other cartoon animal tourists are scattered around the deck, including a yak.

If you love pointing at ’80s stuff or iconic NYC places, have we got a film for you!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 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.

Each year there’s at least one nominee for Best Animated Feature that’s completely unknown to mainstream audiences because they don’t come with a massive corporate brand stamped on the front. This year is no exception: Pablo Berger’s li’l Spanish dramedy Robot Dreams kept me waiting for any kind of release, whether streaming or in theaters. My patience finally paid off: Indianapolis’ own Kan-Kan Cinema was among the few theaters holding exclusive, one-night-only screenings the Wednesday before the Oscars. I showed up alongside three or four dozen other folks at various stages of their own Oscar Quests. Oscar Quest is often such a solitary activity for me that it was nice not to be alone for a little while.

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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 Teachers’ Lounge”: The Case of the School Sleuth Snafu

March 2, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A teacher wearing a scarf and holding a Rubik's Cube stands in her classroom, empty except for a single student she's talking to offscreen. Subtitle reads, "It's about mathematics not magic."

In my day, teachers could rest easy knowing Encyclopedia Brown would solve all their mysteries for them.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our fourth annual 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. Every year the most challenging category for attaining a 5-for-5 viewing score is Best International Feature. Every single year, three-to-five out of five honored films haven’t even been released in the U.S. before their nominations are announced, so I have to contain myself as they slowly enter the national art-house circuit. Weeks can pass before they reach our Indianapolis theaters. Sometimes my patience pays off; sometimes a straggler or two misses the deadline.

Of this year’s lineup, I watched Society of the Snow on Netflix in early January, and The Zone of Interest arrived here a month ago. Whereas Society was a Spanish film about an Uruguayan ensemble and Zone was a U.K. film entirely about German characters, our next nominee The Teachers’ Lounge (oder “Das Lehrerzimmer” auf Deutsch) was Germany’s official submission for the category, but its main character is Polish and she’s fluent in German and English. ‘Tis truly a solid year for cosmopolitan cinema.

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“To Kill a Tiger” and the MCC Best Documentary Feature 2024 Revue

February 25, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Closeup of a solemn Indian father in front of a courtroom where many motorcycles are parked out front. Subtitles read, "A father fighting for his daughter in a rape case..." and trail off.

…is apparently a rarer specimen in India than unicorns.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our fourth annual 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. Oscar Quest means seeking out every studio feature we didn’t already watch for fun on our own, every art-house film we underestimated the first time around, every short we’d never heard of, and each and every last-minute procrastinator released on New Year’s Eve in New York or L.A., America’s only two cities. I understand a recent rule change will negate the latter cheaters in the future, a limitation I wholly approve.

Relevant to this entry, the Quest of course also covers the documentaries — long or short, foreign or domestic, cheerfully uplifting or fatally dreary. (Uplift was in short supply worldwide this year. I blame humanity.) Most years, the Best Documentary Feature category divides two ways: those readily available to stream versus those frustratingly sat-upon until after the season ends and my Oscarmania has subsided. This is the first year I’ve caught all five nominees on time, though one of them required a little extra effort.

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“Madame Web”: O, What A Mangled Web We Grieve

February 23, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
IMAX poster for Madame Web in a theater hallway. Visual elements include five eyes in separate circles surrounding a falling body. In the middle there's a tiny spider. There are concentric circles and some cluttered webbing.

Note the use of classic spider elements, such as webbing, multiple unmatched eyes, and someone falling down a waterspout.

We interrupt our annual Oscar Quest for this breaking announcement:

“If you take on the responsibility, then will come great power.”

Is your mind blown yet? Your life irrevocably changed? Your latent Spider-powers activated? Your craving for scrambled Marvel Easter eggs whetted?

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The MCC 2024 Oscar-Nominated Short Film Revue

February 18, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tenebroso illustration of a giant pink pig with pinprick eyes looming in the shadows over a girl rendered in black-and-white.

Some pigs are nice, like Wilbur or Arnold Ziffel. Some pigs are made of rage.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my annual Oscar Quest continues! I’m still trying to catch all the Academy Award nominees I can before the big ceremony 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 will care in the least bit.

Each year since 2009 (except for 2021’s pandemic lockdown marathon) I’ve ventured out to the few Indianapolis theaters carrying the big-screen releases of the Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film. Results vary each time and aren’t always for all audiences, but I appreciate the opportunities to sample such works and see what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of celebrating, whether I agree with their collective opinions or not. My wife and adult son usually accompany me on the journey and we make a family outing of it, even though Oscar Quest is not their problem. Since 2019 I’ve also given myself extra credit for catching as many nominees for Best Documentary Short Film as possible, depending on their availability online, for the most complete shorts experience possible.

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“The Zone of Interest”: Where the Grass Is Not Greener

February 3, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The wife of Auschwitz's commandant shows off her massive garden. At the backyard's edge is the ten-foot stone wall surrounding the concentration camp.

A tour through a spacious, beautiful backyard garden. Meanwhile out of sight, thousands are murdered.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my Oscar Quest continues — that annual ritual where I catch as many newly Academy Award-nominated features and shorts as I can before the big, fancy, low-rated TV ceremony. In the case of The Zone of Interest, though, as soon as I learned of it from last autumn’s professional film-festival write-ups. I’d already decided I’d see it once it was available to us commoners, with or without the compulsory power of statuettes. Back in 2000 its writer/director Jonathan Glazer first made his mark with Sexy Beast, in which Sir Ben Kingsley terrified one and all as a gangster whose supernova force-of-will nearly pulverized every other actor in frame. If Glazer could coax the Gandhi Oscar-winner of all people to go there, I figured the sky would be the limit for him.

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In a Field Somewhere, Noticing “The Color Purple”

February 1, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Movie poster for "The Color Purple" focusing on its three proud Black leading actresses.

Remember what happens when you walk past purple in a field and don’t notice it.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest 2024 continues! I’m still seeing how many of this year’s Academy Award nominees I can watch before the big night on March 11th. Used to be, I’d only hold myself accountable for the Best Picture nominees, but this is my fourth year trying to track down all works from all categories, even those with a single nomination to their credit. If I left the house to catch them in an actual theater, they get their own entry. That’s the MCC rule, no matter how much I might end up rambling.

That brings us to The Color Purple, the movie based on the musical based on the novel, not a movie based on the musical based on the movie based on the novel, because that would just be silly. The 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel, directed by Steven Spielberg and written for the screen by a white Dutchman (one of three guys credited for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), was nominated for 11 Oscars but left the ceremony statueless. The latest version, from first-time feature-length director Blitz Bazawule (one of the co-directors of Beyoncé’s Black Is King) and screenwriter Marcus Gardley (The Chi, Foundation), has only a single nomination, tying with several other wannabe-luminaries such as the fifteen short films and Flamin’ Hot. But it’s still in the running.

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“Ferrari”: The Big Race Not in the Oscar Race

January 28, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Adam Driver playing the white-haired Enzo Ferrari, sitting at a dinner table with his hands held out palms-down, staring into the camera as he explains what happens when two particular engine parts don't line up perfectly.

What this pic and movie really need are some Photoshopped 3-D Force-lightning.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I tried starting my annual Oscar Quest three weeks early by catching several potential nominees before the Academy’s official announcement, in hopes of reducing my eventual legwork. Two of those screenings proved useless to my Quest in the end: Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon (which was on the Best Visual Effects shortlist, but got justly bumped by Godzilla) and Ferrari, a vehicle for Adam Driver to explore a matured variation on his House of Gucci accent. Rendered irrelevant like that, this entry could’ve been procrastinated another week or two, but then I realized maybe it’d be a good idea to slot something between the entries for American Fiction and The Color Purple, which really would not work as a double feature.

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I Would’ve Voted for “American Fiction” Three Times If I Could’ve

January 27, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jeffrey Wright as an author sitting at his laptop in a very nice house, thinking hard about his next sentence.

“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.

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