It’s that time of year again – time for my predictions of the winners at the annual Academy Awards. Many of the major honors appear fairly clear-cut at this point, but, even with that said, here are my picks for who will take home statues this year: Best Actor The Field: Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”; Matt Damon, “The Martian”; Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”; Michael Fassbender, “Steve Jobs”; Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”Who Will Likely Win: Leonardo DiCaprio. This appears to finally be DiCaprio’s year after numerous previous nominations. He has won virtually every major award leading up to this year’s Oscars, including the Golden Globe Award, the Critics Choice Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award and the BAFTA Award. I see no reason for this trend not to hold on Oscar night. Unfortunately, however, while DiCaprio’s portrayal here is indeed capable, I don’t believe it’s his best work nor the best lead actor performance this year. Rather, this is one of those “oversight Oscars” being bestowed upon someone who has been summarily overlooked many times before. I would much rather have seen DiCaprio win for several of his other previous efforts, including “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013), “Blood Diamond” (2006) ...

Reviews of “45 Years” and “Where to Invade Next,” along with news about a very special Chicago film festival, are all available in the latest edition of Movies with Meaning on The Good Radio Network web site by clicking here. Photo by Brent Marchant ...

“Son of Saul” (“Saul fia”) (2015). Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Gergö Farkas, Balázs Farkas, Sándor Zsótér, Kamil Dobrowolski, Uwe Lauer, Christian Harting, Márton Ágh, Juli Jakab, László Somojai. Director: László Nemes. Screenplay: László Nemes and Clara Royer. Web site. Trailer. When hell descends on earth, preserving anything that even hints at our innate humanity may seem like an impossible task. Just staying alive under such conditions may require everything we have, rendering the act of saving anything morally worthy a virtually unattainable luxury. But the value of engaging in an act like this may also prove to be the only thing that allows someone to persevere under such trying circumstances, a scenario pointedly depicted in the gripping new Hungarian feature, “Son of Saul” (“Saul fia”). Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) leads a sickeningly ghastly life. As a Sonderkommando in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he’s been consigned to a special prison work crew charged with aiding his Nazi captors in the gruesome task of exterminating his fellow Jews. While he’s comparatively fortunate, having successfully evaded an otherwise-automatic death sentence, Saul must nevertheless face the day-to-day horrors of having to corral his peers into the camp’s gas chamber, scrub down ...

Reviews of “Youth,” “Son of Saul” and “Time is Art” are all now available in the latest Movies with Meaning post on the blog page of The Good Radio Network, available by clicking here. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics ...

Reviews of “Spotlight” and “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict,” along with a link to a David Bowie tribute radio interview, are now all available in the latest Movies with Meaning post on the blog page of The Good Radio Network, available by clicking here. Photo by Kerry Hayes, courtesy of Open Road Films. Photo courtesy of Submarine Deluxe. Photo by Brent Marchant ...

“Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” (2015). Cast: Interviews: Jacqueline B. Weld, Robert De Niro, Mercedes Ruehl, Edmund White, Jeffrey Deitch, Simon de Pury, Diego Cortez, Larry Gagosian, Arne Glimcher, Nicky Haslam, Dominique Lévy, Donald Kuspit, Carlo McCormick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lisa Phillips, Lindsay Pollock, John Richardson, Calvin Tomkins, Marina Abramović, Karole Vail, Michael Govan. Archive Materials: Peggy Guggenheim, Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Howard Putzel, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning. Director: Lisa Immordino Vreeland. Screenplay: Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Bernadine Colish. Book: Jacqueline B. Weld, Peggy: The Wayward Guggenheim. Web site. Trailer. What were you destined to do in life? Were you meant to play a starring role? Or were you supposed to be a supporting player? Or maybe even just a spectator? No matter which part you embrace, they all serve a purpose, as evidenced by the philanthropic efforts of a generous benefactor depicted in the entertaining new documentary, “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict.” What does the heiress to a vast fortune do with her time and financial resources if she’s in a male-dominated world and not necessarily expected to accomplish much? What’s more, how does someone like that fit in when she possesses ...