Author: Ezra Stead

Time once again for my extremely reliable, one hundred percent accurate Oscar predictions! If you want the short version, scroll right down to the end, where I recap all my predictions in a tidy column. If you want to read about the whys and wherefores and let me hedge my bets a bit, as well…

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities…

Beau is fucked, is what he is. Right from birth, when he is dropped by the doctor delivering him. The doctor denies it, but Beau’s overbearing, quintessentially Jewish mother, Mona (played by Zoe Lister-Jones in flashbacks from Beau’s childhood, and Patti LuPone when he is an adult), knows the truth. This is far from the…

In its opening minutes, the children’s story-themed slasher Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey shows a hint of genuine promise. Obviously this public domain cash-grab was never going to be some masterpiece of the cinema, but in the (barely) animated opening exposition, I was reminded of the camp classic Jack Frost (not the one with Michael Keaton),…

When I was a wee lad, my father tells me, I fell asleep in protest of how long it was taking for the 1976 King Kong to get around to showing the monster. As I’ve grown older and matured in my cinematic tastes, I’ve come to appreciate the suspenseful restraint of classics like Jaws and…

In the wide range of roles played by the great Nicolas Cage throughout his career, it is easy to focus on the iconic, larger than life characters, such as Castor Troy, Dracula, or indeed Nicolas Cage. There was also the era of Cage as unlikely action hero in the 90s and beyond, and he has…