Horror Icarus File No. 36: Mindhunter (by Joe Penhall)

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Arleigh

“Butchering people is hard work. Physically and mentally.” — Ed Kemper

The scariest thing in Mindhunter isn’t a crime scene. It’s how quickly a conversation with a murderer can start to feel normal. Someone makes a joke, offers an observation, or answers a question with surprising thoughtfulness, and for a moment you settle into the exchange. Then comes a detail that makes your stomach turn, delivered in exactly the same conversational tone. Across its two seasons, the Netflix series repeatedly catches you making that adjustment. You become comfortable listening to people whose actions should make comfort impossible. That’s where the show finds its particular kind of horror: not in making monsters seem alien, but in showing how easily they can sound like anyone else.

Created by Joe Penhall, with David Fincher serving as an executive producer and a defining directorial presence, Mindhunter draws from John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. It follows the early development of criminal-profiling research within the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit through agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench and psychologist Wendy Carr. We’ve watched countless investigators study killers and connect behavioral patterns, but what feels different here is the uncertainty. These characters aren’t applying an established formula. They’re trying to determine whether their questions can produce anything useful at all.

That gives the procedural material an unusual texture. Holden and Bill travel, negotiate access, conduct interviews, and deal with colleagues who don’t necessarily see the value in their work. Wendy wants to turn their encounters into research rather than a collection of gruesome anecdotes. The process can be repetitive, awkward, and bureaucratic, which makes it convincing. Instead of treating profiling as a supernatural gift possessed by the smartest person in the room, Mindhunter presents it as a developing discipline shaped by observation, disagreement, and mistakes. Getting someone to talk is only the beginning. Knowing what to do with the answers is another problem entirely.

Unlike Se7en, Mindhunter doesn’t surround its characters with a grimy, nihilistic atmosphere that makes the entire world feel rotten. Nor is its main driving force the obsessive, cat-and-mouse pursuit that consumes the investigators in Zodiac. Its horror comes from somewhere quieter: the suggestion that beneath everyday normalcy lurks a darker, much darker world. Ed Kemper, Dennis Rader—the BTK killer—Wayne Williams, and Charles Manson weren’t inventions designed to populate a nightmare. They existed and walked among the masses. Their histories aren’t interchangeable, but their presence throughout the series punctures the comforting idea that dangerous people must somehow announce themselves as dangerous.

Calling Mindhunter a crime thriller or police procedural, then, only gets you so far. It has horror in its DNA and both feet firmly planted in the genre. That isn’t simply because it deals with murder and sexual violence. It makes normalcy itself feel unreliable. A calm voice, a familiar routine, or an apparently reasonable explanation tells you remarkably little about the person behind it. These people occupied ordinary spaces, held conversations, and participated in a world that didn’t always recognize what they were. There’s no supernatural threat to identify and no reassuring boundary separating their world from ours.

The use of the killers’ own recorded words makes that realization harder to shake. Although Mindhunter dramatizes its encounters rather than reconstructing them as a documentary, portions of its interview dialogue draw from actual statements. You aren’t simply hearing a screenwriter invent something horrible for a villain to say. There’s a real person behind the language, someone who found ways to describe, explain, or rationalize appalling acts. The matter-of-fact presentation makes it worse. The show rarely needs to insist that you be disturbed. It simply gives you enough time to understand what you’ve just heard.

Cameron Britton’s Ed Kemper is the clearest expression of that approach. He’s articulate, conversational, and seemingly pleased that someone wants to listen. Britton doesn’t play every exchange as a warning that violence is about to erupt. He lets Kemper be engaging, which creates a more uncomfortable response than constant menace would. You understand Holden’s fascination even while recognizing the danger in it. Kemper’s willingness to talk doesn’t mean he has surrendered control. Sometimes it means he has found another way to exercise it. Britton makes the difference between access and understanding frighteningly easy to miss.

Fincher’s influence is apparent in how patiently these encounters unfold. The controlled framing, subdued interiors, and measured pacing encourage you to notice small changes: a pause, a look, a shift in posture. A room can remain physically unchanged while the balance of power inside it moves somewhere unpleasant. These are horror sequences built around conversation. Nobody needs to jump out of the shadows. The tension comes from proximity and the possibility that the investigators have become more exposed than they realize. They can leave the room, but that doesn’t mean everything they heard stays behind.

Jonathan Groff makes Holden’s confidence both understandable and irritating. His curiosity opens doors, but he starts confusing his ability to provoke a response with an ability to control the encounter. Groff preserves the earnestness beneath that arrogance. Holden wants the work to matter, but he also wants to be right. His frightening encounter with Kemper exposes how little professional enthusiasm can do when intellectual curiosity becomes physical vulnerability. Understanding danger isn’t the same thing as feeling another person take control of your safety.

Holt McCallany’s Bill Tench supplies the weary perspective Holden lacks. He’s practical, skeptical, and more aware that a useful interview can still leave damage behind. His dry humor keeps the series from becoming suffocatingly solemn, but exhaustion always feels close to the surface. The second-season situation involving his adopted son and a toddler’s death brings his professional anxieties home. The parallel sometimes feels overly arranged, yet McCallany grounds it in a father’s helplessness. Anna Torv’s Wendy provides another necessary counterweight, insisting on methods and conclusions that can withstand scrutiny. Her personal story integrates less smoothly, but her presence keeps the project from becoming a celebration of Holden’s instincts.

The Atlanta child-murder investigation pushes those instincts against a reality that refuses to accommodate them. Behavioral patterns collide with racial distrust, political pressure, institutional priorities, and families whose grief cannot be answered by an interesting theory. Holden’s certainty becomes harder to admire when the stakes extend beyond proving his approach works. Meanwhile, the glimpses of BTK quietly undermine any comforting sense of progress. Whatever knowledge the team acquires, other lives continue beyond its awareness. Understanding some offenders doesn’t mean the investigators can recognize or stop them all.

The lack of a third season makes that expanding scope especially frustrating. Fincher has declared Mindhunter finished, citing the difficulty of justifying its production costs against its audience. Instead of reaching a deliberate conclusion, the series stops with important threads still hanging. The recurring glimpses of BTK suggest a longer game that never gets played out, while the futures of Holden, Bill, Wendy, and their developing work remain unresolved. For fans and critics who championed the series, that’s more than the disappointment of losing a favorite show. It’s the frustration of watching something grow more ambitious only to have its possibilities cut short. There’s a difference between deliberately withholding easy answers and losing the opportunity to continue asking the questions.

Still, its unfinished state doesn’t erase what those two seasons accomplished. You can admire the performances, the filmmaking, and the intelligence of its procedural detail, but its lasting effect is less comfortable than admiration. It leaves you thinking about pleasant exchanges and ordinary faces that gave nothing away. Other crime shows let the solution create distance between us and the horror. Mindhunter keeps taking that distance back. By the end, the troubling question isn’t how anyone could sit across from these men and listen. It’s how many people sat across from them before anyone knew what they had done.

Previous Icarus Files:

Horror Film Review: Zodiac (dir. by David Fincher)

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Arleigh

“Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it’s not true.” — Robert Graysmith

There’s a particular kind of dread in watching capable people do everything they can and still come up short. That’s the feeling David Fincher taps into throughout Zodiac, a movie where a promising lead can be almost as unnerving as a dead end. Every possibility raises hopes, invites scrutiny, and threatens to pull someone deeper into a mystery that refuses to settle. Released in 2007, it’s a remarkably absorbing thriller about a serial killer, but it’s just as interested in the people left sorting through his damage. Catching him is the goal. Living with the failure to catch him becomes the story.

The film approaches the Zodiac investigation through three men with different relationships to the case. Newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, becomes fascinated by its puzzles. Crime reporter Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr., follows it professionally, while police inspector Dave Toschi, played by Mark Ruffalo, works to build a prosecutable case. James Vanderbilt’s screenplay, adapted from Graysmith’s books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked, lets their paths overlap without making them a conventional crime-solving team. They share information and frustrations, but their responsibilities, methods, and personal stakes aren’t interchangeable. That distinction gives the investigation texture.

Although Zodiac isn’t a typical horror movie, its story and themes firmly belong in serial-killer horror. The fear comes from more than what happens at individual crime scenes. This is an entire region being terrorized by someone whose next move nobody can reliably predict. His letters extend that fear into homes and workplaces, keeping the possibility of another attack alive. The authorities appear almost helpless to provide reassurance, despite their efforts. Fincher doesn’t reduce that helplessness to incompetence. The disturbing point is that people can work diligently, follow procedures, and pursue credible leads without gaining the power to prevent another killing.

The early attacks make that threat feel horribly concrete. Fincher doesn’t treat the victims as disposable figures whose only purpose is to establish how dangerous the killer is. There’s an uncomfortable attention to their vulnerability, especially during the Lake Berryessa sequence. Its daylight setting strips away the familiar suggestion that darkness is what makes a place unsafe. Everything is visible, yet visibility offers no protection. The pacing is agonizing because it allows the situation to become clear without offering an escape from it. Rather than making the violence exciting, Fincher makes it something you want desperately to interrupt.

Once the film turns toward the investigation, it finds suspense in the distance between a discovery and a usable answer. Handwriting comparisons, witness descriptions, phone calls, and jurisdictional obstacles become compelling because their consequences are clear. A detail might matter enormously, but only if someone can verify it or connect it to something stronger. Fincher gets you invested in that process without making it look smooth. Information arrives late, recollections complicate things, and apparent breakthroughs lose their shape. The movie keeps generating momentum, then showing how easily that momentum can disappear. Progress is possible, but it’s never secure.

Ruffalo gives that uncertainty a persuasive human center. His Toschi is smart, engaged, and occasionally funny, but he isn’t presented as a detective whose instincts automatically outrank the evidence. He can suspect someone without possessing what he needs to move forward. Ruffalo makes that limitation frustrating without turning every setback into a speech. A tired expression or clipped response often carries the scene. His performance also gives the procedural material an emotional foundation: this isn’t paperwork for its own sake. It’s the work standing between an investigator’s conviction and the possibility of holding someone accountable.

Downey’s Avery brings a looser, more abrasive rhythm to the film. He’s comfortable with a cutting remark, and his humor initially makes him seem insulated from the ugliness he covers. Gradually, that apparent insulation wears thin. Downey lets the character’s wit remain recognizable even as the confidence behind it becomes less convincing. It’s an effective performance because the deterioration doesn’t feel like a separate dramatic subplot pasted onto the investigation. It grows out of his involvement. Avery’s trajectory also makes Graysmith’s increasing enthusiasm uneasy to watch. One man is getting pulled in while another shows the damage that involvement can leave behind.

Gyllenhaal handles Graysmith’s transformation with similar care. His curiosity starts out as something approachable: he likes puzzles, notices details, and wants people to take his observations seriously. Those qualities don’t vanish when his interest becomes obsession. They simply stop having sensible limits. Gyllenhaal makes it easy to understand the appeal of another conversation or another possible connection, even when the cost becomes obvious. The family scenes matter because they expose what the investigation can obscure. Time spent chasing the case is also time taken from people who need him, and being sincere doesn’t make him less capable of neglect.

Fincher’s control is evident in how naturally the movie makes years accumulate. The period setting feels functional rather than decorative, and the changing dates gradually become reminders of how much life this investigation consumes. Even the suspense changes character. Early fear of an attack develops into anxiety about what might have been missed or misunderstood. The basement sequence brings those feelings together beautifully. Graysmith goes looking for information, only to find himself questioning the safety of the room he’s standing in. It’s a genuinely frightening scene built around uncertain knowledge rather than a clear, visible threat.

The deliberate approach does have drawbacks. The volume of names and disputed details can become tiring, and viewers looking for a steadily escalating chase may find the later stretches repetitive. The shift toward Graysmith also sacrifices some of the balance that makes the earlier sections so engaging. There’s another tension worth keeping in mind: the film’s dramatic investment in a suspect isn’t the same as definitive proof. Its storytelling can make an interpretation feel persuasive without resolving every doubt. That distinction matters in a movie so concerned with how easily the desire for an answer can outrun the available evidence.

What makes Zodiac exceptional is that it never lets the investigation become separate from the lives carrying it. The suspense isn’t only about whether someone will find the right clue; it’s about what another year of searching will do to them. Fincher delivers frightening scenes, excellent performances, and an engrossing procedural, but the cumulative effect is more troubling than any single moment. The killer doesn’t need to remain constantly on-screen to dominate the movie. His absence leaves room for suspicion, fear, and unfinished business to spread—and for everyone else to discover how little control they have over where it ends.

Horror Film Review: Se7en (dir. by David Fincher)

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Arleigh

“I just don’t think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.” — William Somerset

The nastiest thing about David Fincher’s Se7en is how quickly its horrors start to feel like part of the landscape. A gruesome murder should bring the world to a halt, but here it’s another room to enter, another report to write, another terrible thing happening while the rain keeps falling. Released in 1995, the film takes a serial-killer investigation and builds an atmosphere so oppressive that simply spending time in its unnamed city becomes uncomfortable. Yet the ugliness never feels entirely like an exercise in shock. Underneath it is a troubling question: what happens when people get used to looking away?

Morgan Freeman’s William Somerset has spent a career fighting that impulse, and he’s tired. Days away from retirement, he gets paired with Brad Pitt’s David Mills, a younger detective whose enthusiasm comes with a generous helping of impatience. Their investigation centers on a murderer arranging killings around the seven deadly sins. It’s a strong hook, but the movie doesn’t coast on the ingenuity of its crimes. Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay makes the detectives’ reactions just as important as the evidence. They’re looking at the same awful things while drawing very different conclusions about what their work can accomplish.

Freeman is terrific at suggesting how much effort Somerset’s composure requires. His quietness isn’t an absence of feeling; it’s a way of keeping feeling manageable. He asks questions carefully, studies details other people dismiss, and seems painfully aware of how easily a victim can become an inconvenience to everyone else. The familiar retiring-cop setup could have made him predictable, but Freeman gives his weariness a personal texture. Somerset still cares enough to be hurt by the job. Leaving is less a triumphant escape than an admission that he no longer knows how to keep doing it.

Pitt gives Mills an emotional openness that both challenges Somerset and exposes his own limitations. He’s cocky, easily irritated, and eager to interpret caution as defeatism. Sometimes he’s right to push back; sometimes he clearly needs to stop talking and listen. Pitt lets both sides exist without turning Mills into either a lovable hothead or a complete fool. His belief that police work should make a difference feels genuine. The tension comes from watching that belief encounter situations it can’t easily absorb. Together, the actors make a familiar mismatched partnership feel like an ongoing argument rather than a screenwriting obligation.

Fincher surrounds that argument with a city that seems to encourage surrender. The rain, clutter, cramped rooms, and dirty light create a place where basic comfort feels unavailable. Even spaces that should provide privacy seem invaded by noise or unease. What matters isn’t simply that everything looks miserable. It’s that people move through this misery as though it barely registers anymore. The setting gives Somerset’s exhaustion a believable source while making Mills’s confidence seem increasingly precarious. Neither man is investigating from a position of safety; they’re already living inside the atmosphere the killer exploits.

That’s also why the horror works beyond the immediate disgust of the crime scenes. Se7en often makes us confront what happened after the fact, with the detectives trying to reconstruct suffering from its remains. Fincher understands how disturbing a delayed realization can be. A room initially presents one terrible image, then a detail or explanation makes it worse. The film doesn’t need to show every act of violence because the aftermath supplies enough information for the imagination to take over. The dread comes from knowing that looking more closely will probably reveal something you would rather not understand.

Despite that relentless mood, the investigation stays engaging. There’s satisfaction in watching Somerset and Mills read, argue, follow leads, and gradually assemble a clearer picture. The library sequence is especially effective because it changes the film’s texture without breaking its spell. Somerset finds a measure of calm among books and music, using thought rather than momentum to approach the case. It’s a small reminder that the world contains more than brutality. Those quieter passages also make the shocks hit harder. Fincher knows that an audience needs time to anticipate the next discovery, not just recover from the last one.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Tracy provides another necessary interruption. As Mills’s wife, she has a different relationship with the city: she isn’t trying to solve it, just work out whether she can live there. Her scenes bring out the personal cost of the detectives’ opposing attitudes. The dinner sequence allows some awkward humor, while her private conversation with Somerset reveals tenderness beneath his guarded manner. Paltrow makes Tracy feel vulnerable without making her helpless. Still, the screenplay gives her less independence than she deserves. She’s emotionally important, but the film is more curious about what she means to its men than about her own life.

John Doe takes that tendency to reduce people to their usefulness and pushes it into monstrous territory. To him, human beings are props in a moral demonstration. His certainty is chilling, but it isn’t the same as wisdom, and the movie works best when that distinction remains clear. There are moments when his elaborate planning feels almost too convenient, as though the screenplay needs him to possess whatever advantage the next development requires. Even so, his vanity keeps him from becoming merely an all-knowing villain. Beneath the preaching is someone desperate to force the world to acknowledge his importance.

Without detailing the final revelations, the closing stretch brings the film’s ideas into brutally personal focus. The shift into daylight feels wrong in a way that’s difficult to shake. After so many shadowy interiors, open space should offer relief, yet there’s nowhere emotionally safe to stand. The suspense becomes less about discovering another clue than watching people recognize what is happening and struggle to respond. That distinction gives the ending its force. Knowledge doesn’t automatically create control, and professional experience doesn’t make anyone immune to being overwhelmed. The case stops being something the detectives can hold at a distance.

What lingers after Se7en isn’t just the memory of its worst images. It’s the uncomfortable distance between noticing suffering and knowing what to do about it. Somerset has experience without much hope; Mills has conviction without enough restraint. Neither can offer a complete answer, but their struggle gives the film something more substantial than stylish despair. Fincher makes looking away seem tempting, even sensible, before leaving us with the cost of that choice. This is a grim, occasionally contrived, remarkably controlled thriller whose deepest horror is also its most recognizable: the fear that the world can wear down our willingness to care.

Song of the Day: 6th Avenue Heartache by The Wallflowers

Posted on September 14, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ve always liked this song, perhaps even more so than The Wallflowers’s best known song, One Headlight. Jakob Dylan (who certainly has the talent necessary to be worthy of being known as something more than just “Bob’s son”) was inspired to write this song by a homeless man who he used to see on 6th Avenue. One day, the homeless man was gone but all of his possessions were still sitting on the sidewalk. As the days passed, the man’s possessions disappeared one-by-one. Jakob considers this to be the first true song that he ever wrote.

This music video was directed by David Fincher, who you may have heard of.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special David Fincher Edition

Posted on August 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 64th birthday to David Fincher! It’s time for….

4 Shots from 4 David Fincher Films

Seven (1995, dir by David Fincher. DP: Darius Khondji)

Fight Club (1999, dir by David Fincher, DP: Jeff Croneweth)

Zodiac (2007, dir by David Fincher, DP: Harris Savides)

Mank (2020, dir by David Fincher, DP: Erik Messerschmidt)

Lisa Marie’s Oscar Predictions For July

Posted on July 31, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As you look over my latest Oscar predictions, you may notice that I’ve dropped two films that I originally had listed as major contenders. Disclosure Day opened to mixed reviews and it really seems to have vanished from the cultural conversation in the wake of the release of The Odyssey. Digger has not opened yet but I just get the feeling that this is going to be another pretentious Alejandro Iñárritu film. Whenever anyone mentions the previous victory of Birdman, it always seems to be done with a slight bit of embarrassment. I think Iñárritu’s time as an Oscar favorite might be over.

These predictions below are based on what’s been released, what will be playing at the major festivals, which trailers generated excitement (hello I Play Rocky!), which films are most likely to appeal to the Academy’s political biases (hello Ink and The Social Reckoning) and, as always, a lot of wishful thinking on my part. (Hello I Play Rocky again!)

To see how my thinking has or has not evolved, check out my picks for March, April, May, and June!

Best Picture

The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Being Heumann

The Debut

Dune: Part Three

Fjord

Ink

The Odyssey

Project Hail Mary

The Social Reckoning

Wild Horse Nine

Best Director

David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary

Cristian Mungiu for Fjord

Christopher Nolan for The Odyssey

Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Three

Best Actor

David Corenswet in Mr. Irrelevant

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary

Anthony Ippolito in I Play Rockly

John Malkovich in Wild Horses

Robert Pattinson in Primetime

Best Actress

Ellen Burstyn in Place To Be

Sandra Huller in Fatherland

Ruth Madeley in Being Heumann

Julianne Moore in The Debut

Renate Reinsve in Fjord

Best Supporting Actor

Steve Buscemi in Wild Horse Nine

Matt Dillon in I Play Rocky

Paul Giamatti in The Debut

Guy Pearce in Ink

Jeremy Strong in The Social Reckoning

Best Supporting Actress

Pamela Anderson in Place To Be

Anne Hathaway in The Odyssey

Samantha Morton in The Odyssey

Parker Posey in Wild Hose Nine

AnnaSophia Robb in I Play Rocky

Lisa Marie’s Early Oscar Predictions For June

Posted on June 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

These predictions are still too early to be taken seriously. The year is getting off to a slow start as far as the Oscars are concerned. That said, here are my predictions for June!

Check out my predictions for March and April and May!

Best Picture

The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Digger

Dune Part Three

Fatherland

Fjord

I Play Rocky

Primetime

Project Hail Mary

The Social Reckoning

Wild Horse Nine

Best Director

David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary

Cristian Mungiu for Fjord

Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland

Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Three

Best Actor

Tom Cruise in Digger

Rami Malek in The Man I Love

John Malkovich in Wild Hose Nine

Robert Pattinson in Primetime

Dominic Sessa in Tony

Best Actress

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Sense and Sensibility

Sandra Huller in Fatherland

Mikey Madison in The Social Reckoning

Julianne Moore in No One Cares

Renate Reinsve in Fjord

Best Supporting Actor

Steve Buscemi in Wild Horse 9

Colman Domingo in Michael

Matt Dillon in I Play Rocky

John Goodman in Digger

Jeremy Strong in The Social Reckoning

Best Supporting Actress

Sandra Huller in Project Hail Mary

Scarlett Johansson in Paper Tiger

Tao Okamoto in All Of A Sudden

Parker Posey in Wild Horse Nine

AnnaSophia Robb in I Play Rocky

Lisa Marie’s Early Oscar Predictions For May

Posted on May 31, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

These predictions are still too early to really be taken seriously. The year is getting off to a slow start as far as the Oscars are concerned. That said, here are my predictions for May!

Check out my predictions for March and April!

Best Picture

The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Digger

Dune Part Three

Fatherland

Fjord

I Play Rocky

Primetime

Project Hail Mary

The Social Reckoning

Wild Horse Nine

Best Director

David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary

Cristian Mungiu for Fjord

Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland

Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Three

Best Actor

Tom Cruise in Digger

Rami Malek in The Man I Love

John Malkovich in Wild Hose Nine

Robert Pattinson in Primetime

Dominic Sessa in Tony

Best Actress

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Sense and Sensibility

Sandra Huller in Fatherland

Mikey Madison in The Social Reckoning

Julianne Moore in No One Cares

Renate Reinsve in Fjord

Best Supporting Actor

Steve Buscemi in Wild Horse 9

Colman Domingo in Michael

Matt Dillon in I Play Rocky

John Goodman in Digger

Jeremy Strong in The Social Reckoning

Best Supporting Actress

Sandra Huller in Project Hail Mary

Scarlett Johansson in Paper Tiger

Tao Okamoto in All Of A Sudden

Parker Posey in Wild Horse Nine

AnnaSophia Robb in I Play Rocky

Lisa Marie’s Way Too Early Oscar Predictions For April

Posted on April 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

These are all pretty much random guesses so take them with several grains of salt.

Check out my predictions for March here!

Best Picture

The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Digger

Dune Part Three

Fatherland

I Play Rocky

Mr. Irrelevant

The Odyssey

Project Hail Mary

The Social Reckoning

Wild Horse Nine

Best Director

David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary

Christopher Nolan for The Odyssey

Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland

Aaron Sorkin for The Social Reckoning

Best Actor

David Corenswet in Mr. Irrelevant

Tom Cruise in Digger

John Malkovich in Wild Hose Nine

Brad Pitt in The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Hans Zischler in Fatherland

Best Actress

Daisy Edgar-Jones in Sense and Sensibility

Sandra Huller in Fatherland

Mikey Madison in The Social Reckoning

Renate Reinsve in Fjord

Michelle Williams in A Place in Hell

Best Supporting Actor

Scott Caan in The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Willem DaFoe in Werewulf

Colman Domingo in Michael

Matt Dillon in I Play Rocky

Jeremy Strong in The Social Reckoning

Best Supporting Actress

Elizabeth Debicki in The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Scarlett Johansson in Paper Tiger

Tao Okamoto in All Of A Sudden

Parker Posey in Wild Horse Nine

AnnaSophia Robb in I Play Rocky

Song of the Day: Who Is Tyler Durden by The Dust Brothers

Posted on March 21, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day comes from the iconic score of 1999’s Fight Club. Director David Fincher wanted a score that sounded unique and original and The Dust Brothers delivered.