“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.
“Now I am become Oscar, the booster of careers.”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, 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 have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Everything Everywhere All at Once, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.
Starting in 2020 I upgraded to the Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, in which I see how many nominees I can watch in all categories before the big ceremony. Thanks to the expansion of streaming services I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short for the years 2021 and 2022, even in minor categories like Best Original Song. I enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets. Sometimes I have to wait for smaller nominees to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes I go for a streaming rental. In extreme cases a Redbox disc rental might be warranted. I go wherever the Quest takes me.
Winner of two Golden Globes! Too bad I’ve never cared about the Golden Globes.
Show of hands, who wants to hear opinions from a prude who avoids buying any Criterion Collection releases about “sexual liberation” or “sexual awakening”, who went to see a shamelessly, zealously “sex-positive” film?
No? No one? Understood. G’night! See you next entry! I’ll let y’all know when I post some more Disney World photos!
Time once more to gather the family ’round the appliance of your choice!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: : in 2023 I made 24 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. Meanwhile at home, I kept up with select new releases depending on what was conveniently available through our family’s streaming subscriptions, what sounded most watchable, and/or what felt like potential future Oscar nominees that should be gotten over with in advance to ease my annual Oscar Quest time crunch. For value-added fun, as an anniversary gift from my lovely wife Anne we now have Amazon Prime, which expanded our options without expanding my available TV free time. I did what I could within the time slots allotted.
Hence the fourth annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release. Sure, they could’ve been 24 separate entries written in real time as I consumed them, but that’s not how I roll. The Academy Award nominations announcement is coming up January 23rd, which I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind as the deadline for this listicle, so that incentive to get these done clearly worked. On with the countdown!
Over 300 films stepped into the 2023 arena. Ten step out.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
Of those 24 releases, 15 were sequels or chapters in an ongoing universe or venerated popcorn-flick IP. Eight were superhero films. Two were animated. Two were entirely subtitled. Ten had scenes during or after the end credits. Four were screenings at the 32nd annual Heartland Film Festival, not all of which have received wide U.S. runs as of this writing.
Here’s the annual rundown of what I didn’t miss in theaters in 2023, for better or worse. Links to past excessively wordy reviews and sometimes bizarrely construed thoughts are provided for historical reference…
And now, on with the Year’s Best Movies countdown:
2023 was the 20th anniversary of the classic “LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!” LARPing video. The future that faux-wizard foresaw has arrived.
It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
I saw 24 films in theaters in 2023 that were actually released in 2023, a 33.3% increase over 2022 as COVID-19 retreated slightly into the bushes and folks began making more movies, many of them watchable. That number doesn’t include seven Academy Award nominees that were officially 2022 releases, but which I saw later outside the house as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It also doesn’t include the 2023 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own listicle.
Lilibet 1, Lilibet 2, and Lilibet 3 ponder the final fate of the Queen-Verse.
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, soon caught up with the rest of fandom, and kept up ever after. One slight hitch: while Anne is a major history aficionado, that was never my forte, especially not the story of Queen Elizabeth II and her subjects, some of whom were her own trod-upon relatives:
Compared to my blissfully ignorant self, Anne is far more knowledgeable of history in general and British royalty in particular. My interest in their reigning family went dormant for decades beginning on the morning of July 29, 1981, when my family woke up at 5 a.m. — over summer vacation, mind you — to watch Prince Charles marry Princess Diana, two strangers I knew only as frequent costars of my mom’s favorite tabloids. Their wedding lasted approximately six days and was performed in slow motion with British golf commentators prattling through the lengthy silences in between the happenstances of nothingness. For the next 15-20 years I retained nothing of British history apart from their role as the Big Bad in the American Revolution. 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. Sad, unadorned truth.
So far I’ve enjoyed “The Crown” anyway, and understood most of what’s gone on…
We watched along as new episodes were released. I tracked our viewing with listicle rankings of season 4 and season 5. Not only were we enjoying the show enough for me to want to write about it, but all three entries also generated unexpectedly massive traffic, sometimes even dwarfing our comic-con cosplay galleries. (As I’m writing this, the Season 5 entry is still one of last week’s Top 3 posts.) I grumbled when Netflix made the very AMC-esque decision to split the sixth and final season into two parts, leading off with a four-episode miniseries-within-a-series covering The Death of Di. I understood the reasons (i.e., they were a self-contained story and Everyone Loves Princess Diana), but I felt the quartet didn’t justify a minuscule listicle. So I broke from the format and stretched my thoughts into a different sort of list. No one cared.
Looks like it’s listicle time again!
Miyazaki hive represent!
The Final Film from Visionary Animator Hayao Myazaki is a phrase that’s been pushed before in marketing, but maybe this time Studio Ghibli totally means it for sure, no take-backs, not a hoax, The Boy and the Heron is absolutely the animation master’s swan song from his beloved medium and then they’re unplugging all his screens and no longer accepting his notes on their future productions, which will merely have to do the best they can without his sage guidance and relentless perfectionism. Hopefully Ghibli’s next phase goes far better than that time Disney ushered in a new artistic era for themselves and the result was Chicken Little.
Poor King of Atlantis, waiting in vain for all his DC fans to come high-five him again in theaters.
R.I.P., DC Extended Universe. I wouldn’t call theirs “a good run” through-and-through, but it had worthy moments. It’s a shame only a handful of us attended the farewell party in theaters, a.k.a. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. It’s also a shame this rather expensive, mostly underwater half-CG-cartoon sequel was only the year’s second-best DC film.
Warning: objects in reflection may be scarier than they appear.
In 2019 writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s historical-fictional The Great War of Archimedes voiced a younger generation’s righteous anger at the hawkish military statesmen who may have deceitfully goaded Japan into World War II and examined the question, “What if one lone hero had risen up to expose their lies and tried to avert the war? Also, what if he were a math whiz?” After their country’s resignation from the League of Nations, officials who oppose elder colleagues’ proposal to build the ultimate super-battleship — clearly the herald of a forthcoming offensive rather than an ostentatious precautionary defense — recruit an antiwar savant to prove the mega-boat would be wildly more expensive than they’re letting on and hopefully foil their plot. The filmmaker best sums up the hubris of those would-be conquerors in a chilling boardroom debate where one contemptuous admiral dismisses the will of the people that is so beneath him: “Without the state, the people are nothing.”
Currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime and some ad-supported services, Yamazaki’s fast-paced high-stakes calculus melodrama expresses regret over the arrogant leadership of yore and proves their audiences are far more open-minded to supporting niche sub-subgenres than Americans are. But it’s especially striking for its opening set piece, a flash-forward to the final fate of the Yamato — a harrowing, five-minute ocean-disaster modern-CG epic mash-up of Titanic and Pearl Harbor bloodier than both films combined. Viewers will know The End going in, yet watch in escalating horror how some dissenting officers might’ve foreseen that outcome but played along anyway.
Four years later Yamazaki’s American theatrical debut follows the same train of recriminating thought as he shifts focus from pre- to post-war Japan. Amid the remains of its decimated cities — not just the two commemorated in all “NEVER AGAIN” speeches and essays ever since — he reemphasizes the past sins of the ruling class and celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Japanese people who rise up to defend their homeland against a flagrantly aggressive common foe. They band together not with their government but despite their government. As it happens, that foe is a famous giant lizard.
Two books about movies, some of which are based on books. One book technically works as a sequel to the other.
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…
“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.)
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
“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.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 