Tag Archives: Nazis

Heartland Film Festival 2025: “Nuremberg”

October 20, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Russell Crowe faces off against Rami Malek while Leo Woodall stands in the background.

Zeus vs. Freddie Mercury! TWO GODS ENTER! ONE GOD LEAVES!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! 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. 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…

Our final theatrical screening of the festival, and their official Closing Night selection, was also the very first entrant I bought tickets for, based on a single selling point: Academy Award Winner Russell Crowe IS Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring IN Nuremberg! And that must be announced or imagined in the deepest possible Epic Voice Guy voice or else why bother.

Same as with the Academy Awards, World War II and the Holocaust are common subjects in Heartland selections, for reasons tragically obvious to anyone who’s seen enough of them and nevertheless supports the important, evergreen “Never Forget” message behind them. Nuremberg wasn’t the only such film on the docket, but it was certainly the highest-profile one. Its writer/director James Vanderbilt has worked on numerous big-budget crowd-pleasers (the last three Screams and both Amazing Spider-Mans, among others) and recruited a strong ensemble to tell this particular story, of which the indisputable highlight is — for those just joining us — Maximus himself as Göring, the bombastic narcissist and highest-ranking Nazi still alive after the war, the sort of boo-able real-life Kingpin in more ways than one, whose every move and every haughty gaze was like a steamroller through every room he entered.

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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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“Final Account”: Minutes from the Nazi-Occupied Neighborhood Association Meeting

June 6, 2021 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
"Final Account" movie poster.

A relic of the Before Times: a movie poster made of actual paper. I remember those!

Anne and I saw the new documentary Final Account in a county where masks were required of all patrons regardless of inoculation levels, in an auditorium where the A/C was on the fritz. Posted signs and the clerk warned us, but we insisted on proceeding anyway despite any consequences ahead. The environment was livable at first, but our comfort levels fluctuated as time went on and the air quality went from breathable to stifling and back again. Eventually we convinced ourselves to overlook our nagging concerns, but at no point could we simply sit back and pretend everything was fine.

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“Operation Finale”: The True Story of the Holocaust Head Honcho Heist

September 5, 2018 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Operation Finale!

That moment between the thought of “What harm could one conversation do?” and the point when your blood begins boiling like a teakettle.

In an era when the word “Nazi” is being overused as an insult to the point of meaninglessness and being cherished as a badge of honor by warped minds with zero sense of morality or history, perhaps it’s a wise time to return to one of the classic Hollywood subgenres of yore: the Nazi-huntin’ adventure flick.

Operation Finale could have taken the crowd-pleasing shoot-’em-up route and very few who matter would’ve complained or been surprised with a mainstream director at the helm like Chris Weitz, whose credits include The Golden Compass, the second Twilight, and the original American Pie. The results are surprisingly low-key, mostly faithful to the original event, and curiously devoid of either bullets or accurately sickening Holocaust violence…which makes sense given that Eichmann wasn’t caught till 1960.

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