Tag Archives: Demi Moore

Outtakes

Fearless Oscar Predictions 2025

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It is time! And whether you think Wicked was wonderful, Emilia Pérez was overrated or Nosferatu needed more love, one thing is certain. It will be tough for this year’s Oscar broadcast to reach the wild heights of last year. (Please bring back Nicolas Cage, Kate McKinnon and Ryan Gosling!)

In the meantime, here are our predictions for this year’s big winners:

Actress in a Supporting Role

For a while, it looked like Netflix’s big bet this year was going to make a big splash at Oscar. But as the race draws to a close, we think Emilia Pérez will content itself with just one win.

Should win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Will win: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

  • Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
  • Ariana Grande, Wicked
  • Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
  • Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
  • Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Actor in a Supporting Role

What a great field this year. Each actor cut an unforgettable character.

Should win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Will win: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

  • Yura Borisov, Anora
  • Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
  • Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
  • Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
  • Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

There were two real standouts in this field in 2024. We believe one of those two will go home empty handed, but the other will take home the Oscar.

Should win: Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield, Sing Sing

Will win: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys

  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold and Jay Cocks
  • Conclave: Peter Straughan
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard; in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Lea Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi
  • Nickel Boys: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
  • Sing Sing: Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley; story by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield

Writing (Original Screenplay)

What’s the old cliché —the film that should win best picture usually wins best screenplay instead? This year, we predict both awards go the same direction, but we’d love to see one messy piece of female rage get it instead.

Should win: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Will win: Sean Baker, Anora

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
  • A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg
  • September 5: Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum; co-written by Alex David
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Documentary Feature Film

As is often the case, the Academy draws attention to five brilliant nonfiction films, each shining a light on a piece of reality that we would otherwise never see. Vital, brilliant, necessary art, each one of these. Any win is justified.

Should win: No Other Land

Will win: No Other Land

  • Black Box Diaries
  • No Other Land
  • Porcelain War
  • Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
  • Sugarcane

International Feature Film

Here’s another great and wildly varied category.

Should win: I’m Still Here

Will win: I’m Still Here

  • I’m Still Here: Brazil
  • The Girl with the Needle: Denmark
  • Emilia Pérez: France
  • The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Germany
  • Flow: Latvia

Animated Feature Film

This category is such a joy this year, with five of the year’s best features.

Should win: The Wild Robot

Will win: The Wild Robot

  • Flow
  • Inside Out 2
  • Memoir of a Snail
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
  • The Wild Robot

Actor in a Leading Role

Tough call here, but we’re thinking Chalamet’s SAG win gives him the edge over Brody.

Should win: Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Will win: Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

  • Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
  • Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
  • Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
  • Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
  • Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Actress in a Leading Role

Should win: Demi Moore, The Substance

Will win: Demi Moore, The Substance

  • Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
  • Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Pérez
  • Mikey Madison, Anora
  • Demi Moore, The Substance
  • Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Best Director

Would we cry if Fargeat won this? Tears of joy, maybe. But the likelihood is low and, to be honest, the tightrope Baker walked to give his film an almost slapstick comedic tone (given that it’s a film about a group of mobsters who kidnap a sex worker) is a real testament to his mastery of the craft of direction.

Should win: Sean Baker, Anora

Will win: Sean Baker, Anora

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet
  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Best Picture

The Substance has a real shot, with Conclave as the upset possibility.

Should win: Anora

Will win: Anora

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Pérez
  • I’m Still Here
  • Nickel Boys
  • The Substance

The Academy Awards are Sunday, March 2nd, live on ABC and Hulu with Conan O’Brien hosting.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Skeletons in the Closet, 2025

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Maybe our favorite podcast of the year, the annual celebration of all the terrible horror movies that the new crop of Oscar nominees might just want you to forget they ever made. But will we? Never!

Happy to see so much horror appreciated this year: The Substance, Nosferatu, Alien: Romulus. But that’s for another podcast. Today, let’s pry open some closets and see what’s festering in there.

5. Sebastian Stan: The Apparition (2012)

Yawntastic! Ben (Stan) participates in a college experiment with Patrick (Tom Felton), who believes that if you believe hard enough in a spirit even if you know it doesn’t exist, it suddenly will exist.

And if that’s not dumb enough, it will also reappear suddenly many years later. And also hunt you down even if you’re far away, haven’t believed in it again, or I don’t know? And it turns into mold? Because it’s affected by energy? Or something? And it doesn’t like camping? Or it does?

Here’s what I know for sure. It’s boring as hell.

4. Guy Pearce: The Seventh Day (2021)

You know what every Guy Pearce fan should see? You should see Ravenous. It’s so good! Scary, tense, weird in the best way. You know what you probably shouldn’t see? The Seventh Day.

First of all, Justin P. Lange’s follow up to his underseen gem The Dark with an exorcism movie. Yawn. Then he goes on to waste real talent—Keith David and Stephen Lang. Pearce plays a legendary, no-frills, even controversial and brackish exorcist who’s taken on a trainee. But all is not what it seems and none of it’s very interesting. There’s a kind of intriguing premise hidden underneath all the boring whatnot, but it does seem like Pearce is trying to elevate the material.

3. Adrien Brody: Giallo (2009)

Dario Argento made some incredible films. Giallo is not one of them. It fits squarely into the uninspired, visually bland, poorly plotted output we saw from him post-Opera.

Adrien Brody, in duel roles, didn’t seem to care for the film, either. He used the pseudonym Byron Deidra, but you’ll know it’s him. Both times. There was a time when Argento’s films were so stylish, so visually arresting and gloriously weird that no one cared how silly the plot was. But rob a film of that panache and the borrowed, bland, dumb plotting is hard to miss.

Brody’s no stranger to horror, and while none of these are masterpieces, all but Giallo is decent: Wrecked, Predators, Splice, The Jacket, The Summer of Sam. We’re obligated to mention The Village, too, although we’re not fans.

2. Isabella Rossellini: Infected (2008)

What on earth was the tortured ingenue in the masterpiece Blue Velvet doing in Adam Weissman’s 2008 made-for-TV contagion/alien invasion flick? She’s great, actually, and her big-reveal scene is no doubt the reason she took the role. It’s inadvertently hilarious.

Judd Nelson co-stars. He may have been actively in a coma. But it’s worth it just to see Rossellini’s big scene. It’s on YouTube and dailymotion—wouldn’t want you to pay for it!

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2612003353/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

1. Demi Moore: Parasite (1982)

Friend of the show Charles Band directed this treasure of low rent cinema. Demi Moore stars ad spunky, lemon loving Pat in a post apocalyptic desert town. “Sickies” run wild, often topless. Work camp escapees are even worse. Still, somehow Pat trusts the stranger (Robert Glaudini), a doctor who used to create parasites for the government and is now infected with one. She’s just helpful like that.

Moore does not embarrass herself, and that’s tough given the terrible writing and stiff scene partner. Best part is the creature, which we believe inspired the look of the beast in Killer Condom. High praise!