Pre­dic­tions by Paul Stathakis | March 2, 2014: BEST PICTURE 12 Years a Slave Amer­i­can Hus­tle Cap­tain Phillips Dal­las Buy­ers Club Grav­ity Her Nebraska Philom­ena The Wolf of Wall Street BEST DIRECTOR Alfonso Cuarón, Grav­ity Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave Alexan­der Payne, Nebraska David O. Rus­sell, Amer­i­can Hus­tle Mar­tin Scors­ese, The Wolf of Wall Street BEST ACTOR Chris­t­ian Bale, Amer­i­can Hus­tle Bruce Dern, Nebraska Chiwetel…

Selec­tions by Paul Stathakis | March 1, 2014: A year of intense deter­mi­na­tion. A year of scams. A year of brav­ery. A year of slav­ery. A year of racial prej­u­dice. A year of argu­ing in the name of love. A year of youth mis­un­der­stood. A year of apoc­a­lyp­tic pro­por­tions. A year of fan­tasy. A year of a father, a son, and their spe­cial jour­ney. A year that would…

Sail­ing 1,700 nau­ti­cal miles from Suma­tra Straits in a small yacht by his lone­some is Our Man (played by Robert Red­ford). His open­ing mono­logue is nar­rated and hints at a per­sonal con­flict. Sur­pris­ingly, that is one of the rare bits of dia­logue in “All Is Lost.” Mostly word­less, the feel­ing of alone­ness is inescapable. A col­li­sion with a float­ing cargo con­tainer leaves the yacht in…

Mar­tin Scors­ese is one of the bravest direc­tors work­ing in Hol­ly­wood today. Some­how, with each film project he under­takes he finds a way to test his abil­i­ties as a film­maker by push­ing him­self to new lim­its. As critic Roger Ebert once noted, “Scors­ese is never on autopi­lot, never pan­ders, never sells out, always goes for broke; to watch his films is to see a man…