Tag Archives: reviews

“The Crown” Season 6, Part 1: Who Killed Princess Diana the Most?

November 21, 2023 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Princess Diana seated at a black piano with a hesitant expression. The open lid is shiny enough to contain her reflection, tilted 90 degrees widdershins. At upper right is the Netflix logo.

“It seems to Elton I lived my life like a candle in the wind…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

At the start of the pandemic my wife Anne and I binged the first three seasons of Netflix’s The Crown and soon caught up with the rest of fandom. One slight hitch: while Anne is a major history aficionado, that was never my forte. Compared to my blissfully ignorant self, Anne is far more knowledgeable of history in general and British royalty in particular. Frankly, I’ve learned more about their country’s storied past from my wife and from Oscar-nominated movies than I ever did from school. So far I’ve enjoyed anyway, and understood most of what’s gone on…

After catching up on the first three seasons in one mid-quarantine lump sum, followed by focused listicles for Season Four and Season Five respectively as they debuted…here we go again! Creator Peter Morgan and returning directors Christian Schwochow and Alex Gabassi bring us the first three-fifths of season 6, a four-part arc devoted to the biggest elephant among Buckingham Palace’s numerous elephant-filled rooms: the Death of Di. (Spoilers ahead. You probably know the ins and outs of her tragedy better than I do, but a few show-specific artifices will come into play.)

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Yes, There’s a Scene During “The Marvels” End Credits

November 12, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Iman Vellani in costume as Ms. Marvel, standing in a spaceship cockpit and smiling starstruck at an off-screen Captain Marvel.

I rarely do entries about Marvel’s TV shows, but I really, really should’ve done one about the cheerfully grade-A Ms. Marvel before now.

Critics in the long run can be a slowly forgiving bunch whenever films break old rules, up until a film breaks one of the rules they happen to like. More than any other series since the end of the Rin Tin Tin canon, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s narrative/marketing design has ceased any and all compliance with their longstanding preference for every film to be a self-contained work unto itself, welcoming any and all newcomers and generously bringing all viewers up to speed on preexisting elements without requiring homework or unconditional obsession. I read four different professional reviews of Marvel’s The Marvels before I saw it for myself, and three of them admitted up front they hadn’t kept up with the Disney+ shows that are now integral to the overall continuity. In possibly unrelated news, none of them gave it five stars or an A++.

To be fair, no one — pro, amateur, or non-writing casual — is obligated to love Marvel, embrace superhero films in general, or keep tabs on it all. The cosmopolitan scholars out there who routinely write book-length essays on the works of Abbas Kiarostami or Apichatpong Weerasethakul may not have much recreational use for “popcorn flicks” or TV shows in general. They may, in fact, want to spend their downtime away from screens. For our family, the MCU is one of our bonding rituals, each new film or episode an occasion in which we all put away our respective devices and gather before a single device for an hour or three. Fans who’ve followed along moment-of-release can tell you it isn’t actually that hard to keep up. Sometimes entire months fly by without new MCU stories. It only piles up if you step away for years. With very few exceptions (Anne, like many, still rejects Eternals) we’ve kept up and we helpfully remind each other of characters or plot developments that we’ve forgotten along the way. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

So I can say with at least a modicum of hobbyist authority that the baffling incoherence of The Marvels‘ first half has nothing to do with forgotten lore or skipped content; its structure is shoddy and wobbly entirely on its own terms. In deference to the intent of director/co-writer Nia DaCosta (the fourth Candyman) to bring the runtime under two hours, she and co-writers Megan McDonnell (WandaVision) and Elissa Karasik (Loki) whittled the proceedings down to 105 minutes, making this 33rd MCU entry the shortest one to date, but tried to economize by front-loading it with action and shuffling too much useful exposition and cause-and-effect basics to the middle of the film.

I’d be more irritated if The Marvels also weren’t so delightfully all-out fun, provided your brain has an MST3K-programmed “You Should Really Just Relax” mode, which comes in handy for 1950s B-movies and for occasions like this. If it helps, I can sort through some of that disjointedness without major spoilers. Not all of it, mind you.

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #2

November 10, 2023 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Hardcover memoirs by Patrick Stewart and Brian Cox. See reviews below.

From the Department of Candid UK Actor Memoirs That Have Been Mined for Clickbait Fodder by Entertainment News Sites.

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…

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Best CDs of 2022 According to an Old Guy Who Bought Ten

November 8, 2023 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Ten CDs released in 2022. Refer to entry for rundown.

Hi, this is Fat Casey Kasem again, and welcome to MCC’s Top Ten!

As part of my annual series of year-in-review entries — which I’m well aware should be posted nearer the beginning of a calendar year as opposed to the end of the subsequent — I remain one of six people nationwide who still prefers compact discs to digital downloads. My weird hangups about vinyl would require a separate essay unto themselves. I don’t splurge too much because it’s increasingly tougher for new music to catch my ear as I grow older and more finicky, and as my favorite acts of yesteryear die, stop recording, or turn toward musical directions that take them beyond my zones of interest. That usually means missing out on what the majority loves, thus further dragging me down the long plummet into total irrelevance as chronicled on this very website a couple times per week.

With the specter of COVID in our rear-view mirrors, or at least lurking in an off-road blind spot and plotting its next sinister mutation, 2022 ended up my biggest CD-shopping year since the 1990s. Of the ten acts represented here, two are bands with passionate voices I only recently discovered for myself by paying closer attention to Pitchfork over the past couple years. (In my defense, one of them is a debut album from a new act. As for the other one: I’ve simply been missing out.) The other eight are established pros preexisting in my collection, many of whom emerged from pandemic hibernation to reveal how they spent all that quarantined free time. Of those same eight, three average 40-plus in age like me. But I don’t like them just because they’re old. I’ve given up on plenty of now-elderly acts who, like, used to be cool.

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“The Creator”: Won’t Someone Please Think of the Robots?

November 7, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tiny robot Asian child places his calming hand upon the head of a faceless, four-legged warrior robot.

Whenever the teaser for this film came up between my rounds of Words With Friends, this was the exact image when the X would finally come up and I could exit the teaser and get back to my games.

“Robots are people too!” all the science fiction stories would plead with the ordinary citizens who dreaded a future where automatons immune both to Repetitive Strain Injury and to poverty might usurp our billions of factory jobs. Fantastical genre tales moved beyond Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws and into the pop culture firmament through the hard-luck journeys of Data, Short Circuit‘s Number Five, the Iron Giant, Chappie, the Westworld staff, the cast of Kubrick and Spielberg’s A.I., and legions of other eminently merchandisable microchipped personalities in between. If season 1 of Picard is to be believed, robots’ reputational status will remain a fragile thing even until the 24th century. All it takes is one malware-addled malefactor or one sinister organic-led false-flag operation, and robot rights can be tossed out the window as we revert to seeing them as our inventions and our property, rather than our friends, neighbors, or lovers.

Or, as we’re learning in A.D. 2023, all it takes is to redefine the parameters of the chat. Robots are out; A.I.s are in. Robots were willing to settle for our blue-collar jobs, but their non-corporeal cyber-brethren are coming for our white-collar and no-collar jobs. They aren’t even truly sentient yet, but limited-perception A.I.s on corporate leashes are being “hired” as journalists, writers and artists — utterly mediocre ones, to be sure, but just barely productive enough to please greedy employers and undiscerning audiences. Now the online citizenry are mobbing the networks with chants of “BURN THE A.I.!” as we’re ostensibly on the cusp of having literary discussions about the oeuvre of writer/director HAL 9000, auctioning off Skynet’s black-velvet paintings, or handing out Grammies and Newbery Awards to the dueling superprograms from Person of Interest.

Co-writer/director Gareth Edwards (2014’s Godzilla, most of Rogue One) doesn’t so much confront our current debates as he sidesteps them with The Creator, a quaint throwback to simpler times when robots, like immigrants, simply wanted to chase their personal ambitions freely in peace, and coexist with (and despite) the flesh-and-blood torch-and-pitchfork mobs at large. The film feigns relevance by referring to all its robots as “A.I.”, which is technically accurate yet may be confusing to anyone with a severe hangup about subgenre labels. To SF geeks, most of the cast are robots. ChatGPT and OpenArt do not in any way enter Edwards’ conversation here.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Blue Beetle” End Credits

October 19, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A wide-eyed, astonished Blue Beetle stands still while the alien energy shield around him shears a bus in half.

If too few people see this action-packed gem in theaters, we fans will never stop calling it “criminally underrated” until the day you die.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’ve name-checked Blue Beetle ten times in past entries over eleven years. Four of those instances referred directly to Jaime Reyes, who inherited the mantle in 2006 from his Charlton Comics predecessors that DC bought in the early ’80s. Of those four, only once have I gratuitously yet heartily recommended Jaime’s original series, which began in the hands of co-creators Keith Giffen (R.I.P.), Leverage co-creator John Rogers, and artist Cully Hamner, and was carried expertly to the finish line by Rogers and Brazilian artist Rafael Albuquerque. I stopped reading subsequent Beetle books from other teams due to letdown. (If there’s been a grade-A Jaime story printed since 2012, I’m open to recommendations.)

Despite DC Comics’ big-screen misfires, their few rousing successes in recent times gave me the hope I needed to raise my expectations for the Blue Beetle film. I was thrilled by the film, and thrilled to be thrilled. Director Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Miss Bala) don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but their combined talents go a long way toward differentiating Jaime from the hundreds of other superheroes who reached the American mainstream first.

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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #6: “Avenue of the Giants”

October 15, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A short-haired Elsie Fisher and a slightly hunched, shabbily dressed Stephen Lang converse in the woods.

With no official site and no trailer online, this is the only image available for this film on any entertainment hub that’s covered its film-festival tour.

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…

We’ve now gone beyond “at least five” into festival overtime. Due to unfortunate circumstances beyond our control at our fifth feature presentation, we wound up with a free pass for one more film. I’d already driven 150 miles this week around central Indiana for cinema’s sake — in the midst of a normal 40-hour work week, mind you — and was burned out on driving, but Heartland also had dozens of new films available for virtual rental at home (our first film was among those). After digging through the entire list, I found a drama in Anne’s historical-aficionado wheelhouse of World War II in general and the European theater in particular.

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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #5: “A Disturbance in the Force”

October 14, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cartoonish poster for the documentary at hand, with various "Star Wars Holiday Special" stars drawn in a pyramid.

NEVER FORGET.

Longtime MCC readers may not be surprised to find this very special miniseries found a path toward Star Wars. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Unfortunately this also led to the worst theatrical experience we’ve had in years. For the record, this was not the filmmakers’ fault, but this entry was unwritable without being candid about that part.

Speaking of unfortunate viewing experiences…

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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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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #3: “Fancy Dance”

October 12, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lily Gladstone's lesbian aunt character Jax, curtly talking to an offscreen relative/policeman. The room is poorly lit, lots of beige.

If you can only see one Lily Gladstone film this year, you now have two choices if someone hurries up and distributes this one.

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…

Erica Tremblay’s name rang a bell when I saw it on Heartland’s website: she’s served as Executive Story Editor for AMC’s Dark Winds (based on Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee novels) and Sterlin Harjo’s Reservation Dogs, and wrote one of the latter’s funniest episodes, “Decolonativization”. One of those shows is great so far; the other is among Best TV Ever and deserves its own MCC entry sometime. Hopefully they lead the way for more Native/indigenous stories to be told across screens great and small. She’s now directed her first feature film, Fancy Dance, which she also produced and co-wrote (with Miciana Alise) and which opened at Sundance earlier this year. Heartland’s artistic director who introduced our showing mentioned Tremblay has had several shorts previously at this festival. I’m kicking myself for having missed out, more so after watching her heartfelt, heartbreaking results here.

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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #2: “The Promised Land”

October 9, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Period-piece farmer Mads Mikkelsen standing over a burning field at night.

What if Little House on the Prairie but Charles Ingalls is a retired badass?

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…

During his downtime between playing villains in four out of every five Hollywood films, Mads Mikkelsen enjoys the occasional smaller production back home in Denmark. Last time we saw him at this level was for the Oscar-winning Another Round, in which he played a gregarious family man who turns frivolously alcoholic with his buddies For Science, only to have things spiral out of control. He starts in a completely opposite corner yet descends into chaos once more in his latest film, a historical farming drama called The Promised Land that one could argue is a Western with smaller hats.

(Minor housekeeping trivia: The Promised Land is no relation to Promised Land, the 2012 Gus Van Sant film that starred Matt Damon and John Krasinski, which I totally forgot existed. It’s blander than the original Danish title, Bastarden. I get why the renaming, but they could’ve kept brainstorming.)

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Heartland International Film Festival 2023 Screening #1: “Jailhouse to Milhouse”

October 8, 2023 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Pamela Hayden smiling while holding on to a large cardboard standee of Milhouse, who looks confused as usual.

“My mom thinks I’m cool!”

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. Last year’s big names included future Oscar nominees The Whale and The Banshees of Inisherin; past years featured films that I later ended up catching during their scheduled theatrical runs, such as Room and Lion.

For years my wife Anne and I have talked about getting into the spirit of the festivities. We attended our first Heartland showing in 2011 (a tale I’ve yet to share here on MCC), attended Heartland’s sneak preview nights in 2015 and in 2016, and attended merely one of last year’s showings…which turned out to be a film that’d already been on Hulu for months. We’ve always been afraid of overcommitting during our usually busy Octobers, but we knew we could do better than that.

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. Anne volunteered to accompany me to two of them; my son is on board for one; still another will be a solo outing to a theater 35 miles from home that I’d never heard of, let alone knew existed. Lord willing and if my family will let me, I’m hoping to write about each experience as quickly as I can throughout the week, hopefully in shorter entries than my usual overlong amateur film essays with anti-casual word counts. We’ll see how that goes.

Our first HIFF entrant was screened at home, apropos of its subject and how we’ve known of her talents for decades. But we never knew her story till now.

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I for One Welcome Our New “Barbie” Overlords

August 28, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Margot Robbie as a happy Barbie in a cute pink hat, driving away from Barbie-Land while singing along to Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" on the soundtrack.

It’s Stereotypical Barbie With New Hat! On sale now!

One of the cool benefits of having your “man card” revoked (a hoary internet phrase that hasn’t amused in years) is you’re under no macho mandate to throw a grizzly-postured tantrum whenever someone in the world dares tell a gynocentric story in which males just might have a lesson to learn about not making manhood their religion and sole personality trait. Mine was plucked away decades ago without a fight and without regrets, which might explain my uncanny superpower to make any dudes-only group disband merely by joining them. I’ll concede masculinity has some uses, such as in my household roles of Chief Spider Hunter and Crabgrass Appeasement Negotiator, but what few signs of ostensible manliness I ever bother to exhibit aren’t really a source of chest-thumping pride, nor are they a weak spot with fontanelle sensitivity whenever they’re justly and sharply skewered.

From over here in the wallflower seats in the corner, the Barbie movie was 98% brilliant. I’d enjoyed director/co-writer Greta Gerwig’s last two films, Little Women and Lady Bird, as well as the insightful Frances Ha, which she starred in and co-wrote with her partner/director Noah Baumbach, who in turn co-wrote Barbie. I hoped they’d be up to the challenge of crafting a big-budget battle-of-the-sexes satire that also had to double as a feature-length ad for a major corporation’s massive merch-line, after Jon M. Chu failed to achieve this dream of mine with Hasbro’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #1

August 6, 2023 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A copy of Mauren Ryan's book "Burn It Down". See review.

Anne reserved this one through our local library at the beginning of June. Two weeks ago, it was our turn at last.

It’s back! 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.

I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them. In the meantime, here’s a new start for me and my reading results, which we’ll begin modestly for brevity’s sake, or what passes for same in my head.

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“Oppenheimer”: In the Shadow of Manhattan

July 30, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cillian Murphy with hair slicked back, sitting with a lit cigarette and staring wide-eyed into the distance as an offscreen General Matt Damon asks important questions that annoy him.

J. Robert Oppenheimer lit up more cigarettes than nuclear bombs. Believe it or not!

It’s 1986. DC Comics has begun publishing Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen in monthly installments. It is one of several contemporaneous works that change the medium, for better or worse. Its most powerful character is Jonathan Osterman, a nuclear physicist turned by a freak laboratory accident into the nigh-omniscient, nigh-omnipotent Dr. Manhattan fourteen years after the end of World War II. Although the word “quantum” is never used in-story, his origin and intimidating powers are directly tied to the Atomic Age and the emergence of quantum mechanics. The American government employs him as an ultimate weapon, wins the Vietnam War, and changes the world and its timeline, for better or worse. As extrapolated by Moore as a sort of offshoot from quantum superposition, Dr. Manhattan perceives everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen to him all at once, rather than in chronological order, within/outside of each and every second that ticks by for us mortals (up to a pivotal event in the concluding chapters):

“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”

It’s 2023. Oppenheimer is the new film from Christopher Nolan, the celebrated writer/director whose works often play with time-shifting and experiment with our perceptions in their storytelling construction, for better or worse. Tenuous connections stretch between the leapfrogging reminiscence of the fictional Dr. Manhattan and Nolan’s narrative of the real-life Mr. Manhattan Project himself, theoretical physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Much as Dr. Manhattan’s life is portrayed as a series of flashbacks that are out-of-order to us mortals yet interlock conceptually by the end, Nolan likewise eschews the standard Hollywood biopic formula (this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then The End), with a slightly modified form of the other standard Hollywood biopic formula (ordinate flashbacks within an end-of-timeline story frame) to chronicle the lives of the masters of the atom from interwoven character arcs. Certain images recur from one era to the next for foreshadowing and epiphanies and so forth. Ultimately the audience needs to experience the whole tapestry before they can truly see each component for what it is.

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“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”: IMF MVP + BFFs v. AWOL AI

July 23, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson sharing a warm, quiet moment on a Rome rooftop with some basilica in the background.

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent pic of Ethan Hunt holding still?

You’ve seen the headlines. You’ve watched Tom Cruise all but jumping on his couch about it for years. You’ve seen the extended trailer that already spoiled the Scariest Motorcycle Jump by an A-List Actor Ever. At long last, Ethan Hunt is back! The series that tops itself every time is back with a sequel that took an entire pandemic to make!

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“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”: One Last Whip-Crack for Us Gen-X Whippersnappers

July 8, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Angry Indiana Jones standing indoors and brandishing his whip.

Funny how Disney’s official movie site gallery has more pics of Imaginary Plastic Surgery Indy than of Keepin’-It-Real AARP Indy.

Like most of Generation X, I grew up with Indiana Jones as a surrogate uncle. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at the drive-in when I was 9, possibly the perfect venue for a thrill-ride throwback to the Saturday-matinee serial era that outraced every action flick ever made up to 1981 and for decades after. I’d just turned 12 when I was awed by the breakneck speed-runs of Temple of Doom at an indoor theater (the perfect age to fall for it), though my grandma walked out at the heartectomy scene and waited in the lobby for the rest of the runtime. I was 19 when our family skipped Last Crusade in theaters, but I bought it years later when one of McDonald’s bizarre ’90s merch experiments had them selling the entire trilogy on VHS alongside their Extra Value Meals. I finally got to watch Our Hero reunite with his dad as I reunited with Fun Uncle Indy.

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All Five “Black Mirror” Season 6 Episodes Ranked

July 2, 2023 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A pale young filmmaker and his cooler girlfriend boggle at an open laptop.

Down in the dales of “Loch Henry” everyone gathers ’round the ol’ viewing device for another round of tales of terror.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: four years ago I finally took the plunge into Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror dystopunk series well after the rest of the world had already finished it and moved on. I wrote an untimely listicle seven episodes into my binge, more of a writing exercise than a useful post, but never circled back around once I’d finished everything available, up to and including the gamified “Bandersnatch”, which to this day remains the only feature-length I’ve ever watched entirely on my phone. (A clever experiment, granted, but our TV is large and current-gen enough that I hate watching anything longer than a .gif on a screen the size of a deck of cards.)

In their vast selfishness, Netflix released Season 6 a week before Anne and I went on vacation. I had time for only one episode before takeoff, made time for one more while we were out of town and supposed to be relaxing together (edgy bleakness is not her thing), and sped through the rest after we returned home. Now I’m caught up with the BM fandom that’s only two weeks ahead of me this time.

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

June 18, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Michael Keaton as Batman in the Bat-Cave, with his costume on except no mask.

…a.k.a. Batman III, as far as Warner Bros. and nostalgia addicts are concerned.

Weaksauce disclaimers up front. Your Mileage May Vary.

Sometimes we spend money on things you wouldn’t. Sometimes it’s for stuff we don’t endorse, like that time we paid to see the largest inherently racist monument in America, or when we watched House of Cards during the pandemic. Sure, we’re happier when our expenditures are a wholehearted vote for the parties responsible for the thing we’re about to experience or consume, but sometimes we pay the price because we want to see the flawed thing for ourselves and formulate our own impressions, for better or worse or worst. Any personal reservations and/or revulsion are then taken into consideration when expressing our opinions and/or regrets in the final analysis. Interpret it however you will, but we define it however we will.

In a sense, we compromised: my son and I went to see the latest superhero film starring an actor accused of felonies, misdemeanors, and misdeeds ranging on a scale from obnoxious to irresponsibly gross. Anne stayed home, enjoyed a free afternoon, and gave me permission to share all the spoilers later at dinner, from the funniest to the stupidest.

The TL; DR version: The Flash was better than I expected, which is more than I can say for some of this year’s other sequels. That’s neither a justification nor an unconditional thumbs-up for it. Onward we press with the usual wordiness.

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My Ten Favorite Spider-People in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

June 18, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen sitting upside-down on the underside of a ledge, looking out on New York City.

Two Spider-friends chatting about their tangled webs.

It isn’t writer’s block exactly, but jovially verbose movie entries that amount to “WOWIE WOW WOW WOW 11/10 no complaints!!!!1!!” take far longer to coalesce in my head than irritated MST3K-ish nitpickery of a more disappointing flick. Hence why Transformers: Rise of the Beasts got an entry before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse did, even though I saw the latter first on opening weekend. Obviously I can’t simply not write about it, but it took days to turn “WOWIE WOW WOW WOW 11/10 no complaints!!!!1!!” into any kind of fun writing exercise. Hence: pointless listicle time! I haven’t churned out one of those in months.

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