Tag Archives: reviews

The Heartland International Film Festival 2024 Season Finale

October 21, 2024 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana, Meta, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Black pin with yellow border and lettering, "Audience Choice Jury Member, Heartland International Film Festival".

Woo-hoo! Free pin!

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 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…

Heartland’s 33rd edition ran October 10-20 — over 100 films, at least seventeen of them with cast/crew Q&As afterward. I took a week’s vacation from my day job and posted for nine consecutive days about the seven films I saw at five theaters in ten days, one virtual screening we’ll get to in a moment, plus a few other overdue, mostly unrelated entries. I doubt anyone out there read every single word, but I’m not even done yet!

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #7: “We Strangers”

October 20, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Kirby sitting alone at one end of a fancy table in front of a large, banal still-life fruit painting. She stares at unseen people on the opposite end, an untouched teacup beside her.

This scene near the end should tell you a lot about what she puts up with from the other characters.

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

…and we come at last to the final theatrical recount in this very special MCC miniseries: We Strangers (not to be confused with last year’s All of Us Strangers), a dramedy that premiered at South by Southwest back in March and caught my eye in Heartland’s listings on the strength of its star Kirby Howell-Baptiste (whose recent roles, including this one, have been billed mononymously as just “Kirby”). Best known to geeks as Dream’s big sister Death in Netflix’s Sandman, I’ve also seen her in Veronica Mars season 4 (as a bartender who doesn’t appreciate being a murder suspect), the Apple TV+ series Sugar (as Colin Farrell’s handler), the Cruella prequel (as young Anita Darling), HBO’s Barry (blink and miss her as a recurring student in Gene Cousineau’s acting class), and so on and so on. Okay, I’ll stop now.

Suffice it to say she’s no stranger to me in that sense, though “stranger” can mean different things, and switch context at any moment without notice, even when you’re finally #1 on the call sheet.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #6: “Sheepdog”

October 19, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A young white veteran and an old Black veteran, both in autumn outerwear, sitting and feeling chummy on a movie poster.

It’s extremely tough finding screen shots of films that don’t yet have a distributor, an official site with a gallery, or a trailer available for Fair Use purposes…

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Nowadays films about veterans poorly adjusting to post-deployment civilian life (apart from five whole minutes of The Hurt Locker) tend to get made only if the afflicted veteran becomes a bad guy for the heroes to defeat or an antihero to put down like a rabid dog — twisted by their combat traumas into a serial killer, a terrorist, a super-villain, or a politician scheming himself an evil long game. We used to have a smattering of modestly budgeted adult dramas back in the day when Americans first began feeling ashamed of how Vietnam veterans were treated. (Anyone else remember Unnatural Causes, a 1986 TV-movie starring John Ritter and Alfre Woodard, about vets stricken by side effects of Agent Orange?) It’s not like society actually solved that problem and all our veterans feel great now — filmmakers just stopped attempting any serious explorations.

Sheepdog is the sort of movie the major studios believe isn’t worth their time or effort anymore. Its writer/director/producer/star Steven Grayhm (from a Canadian SF series called Between) spent over a decade putting it together anyway. It premiered at the Boston Film Festival last month (the event nearest to where it was filmed) and is currently traveling the circuit, including two showings at Heartland. (We missed its first showing last Friday, which concluded with a post-screening Q&A with Grayhm and two other producers, but that was the same night as ReEntry‘s World Premiere and Q&A.) I have aesthetic quibbles, which tend to be my thing, but Grayhm’s heart is absolutely in the right place.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #5: “Small Things Like These”

October 18, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cillian Murphy glowering from within the darkness of a coal shed.

What evil lurks within the coal shed?

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Academy Award Winner Cillian Murphy is back! The Irish historical drama Small Things Like These, his first film since Oppenheimer, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival back in February and will be rolled out to U.S. theaters in November. Its special exhibition as a Heartland “Centerpiece Screening” (read: highly promoted and tickets cost a tad more) represented its second-ever showing here in the States. Though it boasts a couple bigger names than some of the other festival films I’ve seen so far, its minimalist aesthetic and hushed ambiance make it feel smaller and more intimate than the rest — in many ways the opposite of Murphy’s last gig. It’s also a Christmas movie!

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #4: “Superboys of Malegaon”

October 17, 2024 By in Comics/Lit, Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Young filmmaker holding a digital camera, watching forlornly as the woman he loves is driven away offscreen.

Movies will break your heart, kid.

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Full disclosure: Superboys of Malegaon was a last-minute addition to my festival itinerary, made possibly by one of my patented “six degrees” rabbit-hole investigations of the seeming interconnectedness of all cinema. Follow:

After loving Andrew Garfield’s back-to-back performances in The Social Network and the first Amazing Spider-Man (disregarding this judge’s low score for the second), I followed him to his next project, 99 Homes, which was the first film I ever saw by director Ramin Bahrani, whose most recent feature film was Netflix’s The White Tiger, which shined thanks in large part to its young leading man, one Adarsh Gourav. Fast-forward to this past September, when I spent a good hour or more reviewing the descriptions and cast/crew listings for every single Narrative Feature on Heartland’s site to check for familiar connections. Eventually I got to Superboys, which also stars Gourav.

Between his name and its capsule summary’s strong resemblance to the warm-hearted Be Kind Rewind…well, here we are. It’s funny how many roads lead to and from superheroes. Little did I know the Rewind similarities would end after a time, while the final twenty minutes would reveal strong ties to another, much larger pop-cultural touchstone — one of the all-time greatest, at least according to my generation of geeks.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #3: “Jazzy”

October 16, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two Lakota girls looking at the camera.

THEY FIGHT CRIME! THEY SOLVE MYSTERIES! THEY…wait, no, this isn’t that kind of film.

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Last year one of my favorite Heartland entries was Fancy Dance, a Native-focused drama co-written and directed by Erica Tremblay, who’d worked on the most excellent TV series Reservation Dogs (11/10, among the best ever) and Dark Winds (whither season 3?). Its star Lily Gladstone had appeared in a few Rez Dogs episodes, but commanded wider attention as the Oscar-nominated costar of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, where she had to put up with being surrounded by powerfully attention-grabbing white men, and so did her character.

Once an artist emerges from such overshadowing as an independent force on their own terms, it’s absolutely cool seeing them use their newfound fame to encourage and enable other storytellers to come forward and take a shot at reaching a wider audience. Just as Taika Waititi “co-created” Rez Dogs and directed its pilot, thereby launching it with an extra little push (though the show was obviously, lovingly Sterlin Harjo’s baby), I braked while reading Heartland’s Narrative Feature roster when I spotted the listing for Executive Producer Lily Gladstone affixed to Jazzy, an adorable coming-of-age drama that premiered at Tribeca Festival last June and might’ve gotten overlooked among Heartland’s voluminous offerings if not for her name standing out to me.

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Yes, There’s a Scene After “The Wild Robot” End Credits

October 15, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The Wild Robot nuzzling a gosling in its palm.

Concept art for my upcoming fanfic, “Atomic Robo Meets Henery Hawk”.

Today all animated films are guaranteed a release on popular streaming services pretty quickly after completion, whether the studios think they’re worth the effort of a few weeks’ theatrical run first or they’re quitters who send them direct-to-video, which isn’t quite as stigmatizing as it was in the Blockbuster Video era. In happier times my year-end movie-going lists used to be filled with animation, often ranking near or at the top. Nowadays, not so much — trailers and pro reviews aren’t dissuading my middle-ager’s skeptical inertia even when those films do become available for my streaming convenience. I haven’t bothered to add Strange World or Wish to my Disney+ queue, let alone watched them. Whether it’s rampant sequelitis or the innate mediocrity of jukebox musicals or a studio satisfied with selling half-hearted results, don’t hold your breath waiting for my opinions on Kung Fu Panda 4, the Trolls series, or anything containing a Minion after their debut.

Last time I paid full price for a DreamWorks Animated joint, it was in 2019 when the third How to Train Your Dragon proved the weakest of the trilogy. I largely ignored their subsequent, determinedly populist fare till I “had to” watch 2022’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish as part of my annual Oscar Quest and was astonished at the results. I was therefore a little more receptive when DreamWorks announced their big 2024 release, The Wild Robot, would be directed by Chris Sanders, whose past works include Lilo & Stitch and the first How to Train Your Dragon — two all-ages spectacles he co-directed that I went into with low expectations only for my heart to grow three sizes too big by the end. With The Wild Robot, Sanders has now gone three-for-three with said enlarged heart.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Transformers One” End Credits

October 14, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Young Optimus Prime and Megatron sitting on a couch and smiling.

Just hanging out after work, two buddies who have each other’s backs and will never, ever, ever lead separate sides in a planetary civil war. Friendship!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Seeing every Transformers film in theaters, no matter how much we’ve come to dread them, is among our few enduring father/son traditions. He grew up as they grew bigger and dumber. Nevertheless, the boy and I would suffer each canned serving of Cinema In Name Only and always spend the car ride home dissecting them together…

After Michael Bay ruined toy robots for several generations of kids to come, damage control efforts have varied. Some gave it a nice try; some made things worse. We nearly excused ourselves from seeing Transformers One because the first trailer’s so-so kiddie-comedy vibe felt aimed at complete newbies with no Transformers experience because their parents shielded them from such harmful matter. Then came the showier, more dramatic second trailer, along with the surprisingly positive buzz from early screenings. Those factors convinced us to give the Robots in Disguise yet another chance. To our shock, T1 may in fact be one of the best Transformers feature films of all time, if partly by forfeit.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #2: “Micro Budget”

October 14, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Four young actors looking really helpless

Imagine if Don’t Look Up were made with nearly no money and its only agenda were “make ALL the money!” Now imagine the behind-the-scenes featurettes about that.

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 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.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Next up on our to-do list is Micro Budget, an uproarious film-about-filmmaking, which of course means it’s legally guaranteed a Best Picture nomination. The uproarious satire’s skewering of indie movie production might seem offensive to other Heartland participants if they, like its witless fictional auteur, lacked any measurable integrity, artistry, or intent to at least watch a few “How to Make a Movie” YouTube tutorials, let alone see some actual movies while they’re at it.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #1: “ReEntry”

October 13, 2024 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tentative movie poster for "ReEntry with Emily Deschanel and Sam Trammell in profile separated by a science fiction suit in an arched doorway.

Yes, our first film up is sci-fi. I gotta be me. But not all of them will be!

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 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.

After a few brief dalliances with the festival in the past, last year I dove in a bit deeper and caught six movies in all. The fates of those films have varied in the months since — The Promised Land went on to make the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature; Fancy Dance is now on Apple+ and remains a must-see for fans of Reservation Dogs or Dark Winds; the even tinier Avenue of the Giants has yet to find a distributor and was still assiduously touring as of this past spring; and so on. I appreciated the chance to see new features before they’re released to the world-at-large, and without waiting for pro critics to weigh in first.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry. We kick things off with one of this year’s science fiction contestants, which held its official World Premiere right here at Heartland: a small-scale science fiction drama called ReEntry.

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Best CDs of 2023 According to an Old Guy Who Bought 7

September 23, 2024 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
The covers of all seven albums reviewed in this entry, laid out on my kitchen table.

Alphabetically arranged by artist, the nominees were…

Hi, I’m Fat Casey Kasem and welcome to another Top Less-Than-Ten list! And no, that isn’t a coaster that got sorted into the middle row by accident.

As part of my annual series of year-in-review entries, some of which I procrastinate much longer than others, I remain one of six people nationwide who still prefers compact discs to digital downloads. My hangups about vinyl would require a separate essay unto themselves. My new-album splurges are rare because: (a) it’s increasingly tougher for new music to catch my ear as I grow older and more finicky; and (b) my favorite yesteryear acts died, stopped recording, or swiveled in directions away from me. That usually means missing out on what majorities loves, thus further dropping me down the bottomless wishing well into total irrelevance as chronicled on this very website a couple times per week.

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“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”: The Curse of Repetition

September 21, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Shadowy Beetlejuice's face mugs directly into the camera, bathed in bluish-green light.

Who’s gonna believe the star of such dramas as Dopesick and Clean and Sober could possibly headline a comedy?

Seems only fair if the Ghostbusters can stage a comeback tour decades past their prime, so can one of the biggest ghosts they never caught, right?

I was 15 when a young Tim Burton followed up his feature debut, the wacky and eminently quotable Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (in theaters when he was only 27!), with the even wackier and definitely more expensive Beetlejuice. The first few times I saw it, his hyperactive imagination, his fanciful take on afterlife bureaucracy, his mixed-media creations, and the ensemble’s zest were a welcome escape from reality into fun-house tomfoolery. But the more times I watched it, the more I noticed cracks in the seams and nitpicking got easier. Apart from a few low-key exceptions over the next few decades (Big Eyes, Big Fish) I’d come to accept Burton generally has little vested interest in narrative coherence. Many of his works are thin clotheslines from which he hangs edgy gags, fantastical monstrosities, and non sequitur set-pieces that were fun to draw in his concept sketchbooks and entertain best if you don’t pay close attention to what’s happening. They’re popcorn flicks for us art-class loners.

Now Burton is 66, our ghost-with-the-most Michael Keaton is a 73-year-old Emmy Award Winner, and I’m a middle-aged married loner, but 36 years later, here we all go again with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The old pals and two-time Bat-collaborators have locked elbows for a new nostalgia-fest with much of the same gags, same lines, same makeup ‘n’ wardrobe, same nearly everything.

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“Alien: Romulus”: When the Perfect Killing Machine Stops Evolving

August 30, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Red-and-black poster with a xenomorph face-hugger attached to a buzz-cut Asian actress.

In space, no one complains about eating the same meal rations again and again and again.

I can’t speak for fans of Ghostbusters or of Harry Potter post-Deathly Hallows, but whenever I get attached to an IP, I’m excited whenever that universe shows signs of forward motion or at least simulating it. Granted, when it comes to the Alien movies, my opinions are already warped — James Cameron’s Aliens is one of my Top 5 films ever, which I saw years before I got around to Ridley Scott’s original. I also respected Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s engagingly bonkers Alien Resurrection for pushing the series’ boundaries and actually getting somewhere — anywhere — after edgy pre-auteur David Fincher’s Alien³ ramrodded Ellen Ripley’s story into a literal dead end.

All Alien works since then have treated Resurrection as The End, and/or as a disowned mistake. Directors — not to mention writers of its various transmedia spinoffs — limit themselves to rooting around the limited preceding timeline for unoccupied dance floors where they can twirl in place and try out their freshest moves, never quite distracting from how the club has had the same dusty disco strobe and jukebox since 1997. Double-dates with Predators were one-night stands that no one could maintain eye contact with. When Scott himself barged back in indignantly all, “SEE HERE NOW!” we knew he could make spaceships shinier and creatures slimier, but Prometheus gave us a half-unwritten origin and Alien: Covenant was a cram session to finish the same assignment in as few pages as possible.

27 years later the franchise continues moving nowhere at sub-FTL velocity with Alien: Romulus, a pre-sequel brazenly set between Alien and Aliens in hopes of blending in, in more ways than one. I’ve seen no previous works by Fede Álvarez or his co-writer Rodo Sayagues (though Don’t Breathe is on my extremely long mental to-do list), so I came into this with few preconceptions except a faint awareness that gore is his medium. I saw the first trailer at C2E2 with an exclusive Álvarez intro, which was promising, but the second gave away way too much. I offered benefit of the doubt for as long as I could.

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Deadpool & Wolverine” End Credits

August 5, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Deadpool and Wolverine tied up together in a wasteland.

Now your two favorite Canadian antiheroes come bundled, like cable! (Not to be confused with Cable, not included.)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’m the hypothetical boogey-moviegoer who lurked in the MPA’s hivemind imagination when they invented the PG-13 label! This prudish geek is back for another round of simultaneous enjoyment and irritation flared up from the inner turmoil between my oft-undiscerning appetite for comics-based movies that aim to deliver Something Different, versus my general disdain for F-bombs (with extremely few exceptions) and sex jokes (more adamantly unilaterally). I realize I’m outnumbered millions-to-one among geekdom-at-large, but I find ways to cope, such as typing into the void upon my tiny, mostly nonpaying hobby-job site.

I skipped the first Deadpool in theaters and instead watched it on a Black Friday Blu-ray with variant Christmas cover, where a smaller medium helped minimize its gratuitous indulgences. All the other parts of Tim Miller’s directorial debut were amazing, though, so I upgraded Deadpool 2 to a theatrical outing. The first one was better, but David Leitch delivered far more satisfying renditions of Colossus and Juggernaut than their half-baked mainline forms. I appreciated both films offering pleasures beyond the guilty kind, sometimes to an intentionally daffy extreme, which is not something that automatically bugs me. All told, the Merc with a Mouth’s two misadventures as a headliner were better than most X-films and, fun trivia, outgrossed them all.

Hence more of the same, but no longer confined to a licensed offshoot series that doesn’t “count”. One corporate merger and a few non-superhero films later, Ryan Reynolds and his entourage of masked stunt doubles are back! And this time, it’s more all the way! More fanboy pandering! More fourth-wall breakage! More pop culture references! More overplayed Top-40 oldies from across the decades! More F-bombs! More sex jokes, obsessively specializing in gay-panicky snark! But the more, more, MORE begins with its very title: Marvel Cinematic Universe After Dark! Wait, no, I mean Deadpool & Wolverine!

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

August 2, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Twisters movie poster shows release date of July 19th above the two leads standing on a red ruck and looking at an imminently stormy sky.

So, how about that Singin’ in the Rain reboot?

If you think my usual movie entries suffer from subjectivity, don’t expect an exception here. The original Twister holds a special li’l place in my heart for a variety of reasons. Its director Jan de Bont, fresh off the Speed race, was also the cinematographer on my all-time favorite movie. My mom was (and is) a big fan of disaster films, which had a sort of Golden Age in my childhood, from the natural terrors of Earthquake to the man-made systemic failures of The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Airport, and more. Along a more sensitive vein: in the darkest month of my life, pop culture manifested two welcome distractions to take my mind off my anguish when I needed that most: Rhino Home Video’s very first wave of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes on VHS, and Twister hitting theaters. Setting my baggage aside, their timing was perfect, as the latter would make a great episode of the former.

Fast-forward 28 years and here we go again with Twisters! They’re back, and this time, they’re even windier. My stress levels aren’t as off-the-charts as they were in ’96 (well, as of this minute), but looking around me, I can’t say the same for the rest of the country, if not the world. Leave it to Lee Isaac Chung, director of the 2021 Best Picture nominee Minari and that season-3 hour-long episode of The Mandalorian that focused on reformed Imperial aide Dr. Pershing, to bravely decide it’s time again for humankind to pull together for a shared experience that’s not great, not terrible, just unapologetically crowd-pleasing and thrilling and extremely loud and filled with scenes of unironic smiling…well, when Mother Nature isn’t trying to murder everyone.

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Science Fiction and Alternate Realities at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival 2024

July 28, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sandwich board touting the Indy Shorts Film Festival on a brick sidewalk.

Coming to you not-quite-live from Mass Ave. in downtown Indianapolis!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last year we attended a genuine film festival! For more than a single film! My wife Anne and I enjoyed the Heartland Film Festival experience so much that we’ve resolved to seek more of those opportunities where possible. As it happens, Heartland isn’t the only game ’round these parts.

Indianapolis is also home to the Indy Shorts International Film Festival, which began as a sort of Heartland spinoff but has taken on a life of its own. It’s the largest Midwest festival of its kind, enjoys a lofty status as an official qualifying event for consideration in the three Academy Awards short-film categories, and has indeed seen past participants go on to Oscar nominations (e.g., last year’s The Barber of Little Rock). This year they fielded 5,130 submissions from filmmakers worldwide and whittled them down to 200 selections that have screened over the course of 34 programs across six days up to and including this very weekend.

I scored two free tickets courtesy of my employer, one of the festival’s sponsors, to attend one program of my choice. I’m game for just about any sort of genre or category and didn’t feel beholden to seek the most geek-forward material, but their “Science Fiction and Alternate Realities” program lined up neatly with an open time slot in what’s proven a rather hectic weekend for us, so we leaned into our geek-aesthete side anyway.

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“A Quiet Place: Day One”: The Mega-Muppets Take Manhattan

July 21, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lupita Nyong'o hunched fearfully in an alley, hugging a black-and-white cat.

“I’m not coming out of this alley until you promise Nakia gets more scenes in the next Black Panther.”

Previously on A Quiet Place: Emily Blunt was a heroic mother surviving on a post-apocalyptic farm with her remaining kids and without her Concerned Husband until things once again went awry and they fled to a nearby island, the perfect hiding place from that unnamed alien army who jump-‘n’-slash at the slightest noises but whose fatal weaknesses happened to include bodies of water. Our Family’s happy ending was nice for about ten minutes until one of them learned how to boat. Nevertheless, the day was later saved and human life found a way.

Director John Krasinski kept A Quiet Place: Part II‘s premise simple: “What if the first flick just kept going and was actually three hours long?” The sequel was more an expansion pack than a standalone tale unto itself. It came packaged with a free mini-prequel on the front, needlessly depicting how Day One of the invasion quickly devastated their small town. It was a satisfying course of more-of-the-same, but not in any groundbreaking way that left me yearning for further adventures in the Hyper-Hearing Horror-Horde Cinematic Universe.

Nevertheless, here we go again with some more prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One. With Krasinski off doing other things (i.e., IF, which I skipped), apparently any new AQP extensions are forbidden from moving the main characters forward, much like the Star Wars universe’s treadmilling-in-place spinoffs. Within that common yet exasperating genre-series boundary, what were the odds of a substitute filmmaker steering away from more-of-the-sameness?

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Inside Out 2” End Credits

June 23, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Joy stands excitedly at the control panel with Anxiety, who looks sheepish and very orange. The room is all purple with rows of yellow light bulbs.

Manic Pixie Dream Joy welcomes Frazzled Rock!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Pixar made an entire movie about feels feeling feels! As someone who responds well to films that probe deeper emotions than “wheeeee”, I named Pete Doctor’s Inside Out my favorite film of 2015 – against the heavyweight competition of Creed, Spotlight, and Fury Road — after its in-depth examination of baseline emotions via cutesy anthropomorphization, as well as its complicated theses about the importance of sadness and the beginning of the end of childhood, wrecked me in the theater twice, back in that bygone era when I’d go see a film in theaters more than once if I thought it was that awesome.

Nine years later, Pixar has the blemished scorecard of any ordinary animation studio. I’ve had such mixed reactions that I only saw one of their last five films in theaters (and regretted giving in to the cash-grab). Nevertheless, I agreeably let them redeem Inside Out‘s stack of goodwill chips and left the house to catch the new Inside Out 2 while my inner voices of Skepticism and Hope squabbled with each other like Siskel and Ebert. Each of them scored points off the other, leaving me wrecked and nitpicky.

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #4: The Ludicrously Delayed Triple-Sized Wrap-Up

June 16, 2024 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Bunch of books piled on our dining table, mostly graphic novels.

I usually prefer showing off all the covers, but we are waaaaay past the deadline that nobody gave me.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read 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 Anne 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-five 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…

Yeah, this is beyond late and into the realm of “why bother now?” It isn’t even the only “year in review” post still on my to-do list. The stacks have cluttered the area around our computer desk this entire time and really need to be moved so I don’t start mixing them up with the books I’ve read so far in 2024, but in my mind they can’t be moved till their capsules are finished. I hate to post an abbreviated entry simply to get something “over with”, but the time has come, gone, lapped around and come again. In the spirit of spring cleaning before summer begins this very week, here’s everything else I read last year but with (mostly) shorter capsules than usual. Longer capsules could be provided upon request, I guess?

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“FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA” IN SUPER AWESOME DOLBY CINEMA ALL-CAPS-O-RAMA! (Well, Kinda!)

June 1, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Post-apocalyptic warrior woman with black paint around her eyes gets out of a monster truck holding a sawed-off shotgun.

GET IN, LOSER! WE’RE GOING TO THE MOVIES!

PREVIOUSLY ON MIDLIFE CRISIS CROSSOVER: MAD MAX FURY ROAD WAS THE WINNER OF SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, A BEST PICTURE NOMINEE, ONE OF MY TOP 5 FILMS OF 2015, AND THE GREATEST MAD MAX MOVIE OF ALL TIME! I WATCHED IT AGAIN THE OTHER NIGHT AND IT WAS STILL LIKE BOBBING FOR GRENADES IN A BARREL FULL OF ADRENALIN! IT WAS EXTREMELY LOUDLY MIND-BLOWINGLY EXTREEEME! I WISH I COULD LEGALLY DRIVE LIKE THAT! AND I WROTE MY REVIEW IN SCREAMING MODE JUST LIKE THIS! IT WAS ONE OF OUR TOP 5 MOST POPULAR POSTS THAT YEAR! SO HERE WE GO AGAIN!

EVERYONE LOVED FURY ROAD SO MUCH, GEORGE MILLER MADE A PREQUEL! FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA IS NOW IN THEATERS! BUT THERE’S NO CHARLIZE THERON OR TOM HARDY OR THE ONE CANCELED GUY THAT HARDY REPLACED! NO ONE REMEMBERS HARDY’S PART ANYWAY BECAUSE FURIOSA WAS AWESOME! SHE DROVE A TRUCK AND HAD A RAD HEAVY METAL BIONICLE ARM AND SHE STOLE THE MOVIE! BUT NOW SHE’S ANYA TAYLOR-JOY! WHO ISN’T CHARLIZE THERON! BUT SHE SURVIVED THE MENU AND SHE WAS MAGIK IN THE NEW MUTANTS, SO SHE’S BEEN THROUGH SOME STUFF!

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