Category: Academy Awards History

Other films may have been better, but in 1990 you were either in the GoodFellas camp or the Dances With Wolves camp. By this time there was a general agreement among certain influential critics that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull had been the best film of the 1980s. They were flummoxed by the fact Scorsese and…

Born on the Fourth of July was the most eagerly anticipated film of 1989.  Oliver Stone’s previous Vietnam War movie, Platoon, had cleaned up at the Oscars just three years earlier and this film about war hero turned anti-war activist Ron Kovic, was expected to follow suit.  The film was supposed to have been made…

1988 had probably the most diverse group of winners in awards history with none of the major pre-cursors agreeing on anything. The L.A. Film Critics were the first out of the box this year. They declared the two-part British import, Little Dorrit, directed by Christine Edzard from one of Charles Dickens’ lesser known novels, to…

1987, like 1986, was a year in which there was no clear front-runner for Best Picture. The National Board of Review was first up, naming Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun the year’s best film and presenting him with their Best Director award as well. The New York Film Critics went the comedy route with…

1986 was a year of uncertainty at the Oscars. With no front-runner to speak of, the pre-cursors pretty much disagreed about everything. Back in their traditional position of being the first to announce, the National Board of Review went with the Merchant-Ivory production of E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View, but gave their Best…

Something happened to 1985’s most eagerly anticipated film on the way to the Oscars. Though it won an impressive eleven nominations, its director was ignored and the film itself ended up losing in every category it was nominated for. Steven Spielberg’s film of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, did not start…

Two films by former Oscar winning directors dominated the 1984 awards season. Daivd Lean, who previously won for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrenece of Arabia, was represented by A Passage to India while Milos Forman, who previously won for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was represented by Amadeus. Lean’s elaborate production…

Domestic dramas were in vogue at the 1983 Oscars and indeed, throughout the year-end awards season. The National Board of Review got things started things rolling by naming TV director James L. Brooks’ first theatrical film, Terms of Endearment the year’s best, but the film won in what was a surprise tie with Betrayal, the…

The Academy continued the historical trend it began the year before with Chariots of Fire in giving the 1982 Oscar to Gandhi but Gandhi was one of three films in a very tight race. Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial started off awards season with its win from The Los Angeles Film Critics, which also named…

The 1981 Oscar race was generally expected to be a showdown between Warren Beatty’s Reds, a critically acclaimed historical drama about American expatriate journalist, John Reed, and On Golden Pond, Mark Rydell’s much loved film version of the stage hit featuring the first ever teaming of screen legends Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. The L.A.…

By the end of the 1980s several critics’ polls had declared Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull to be one of the greatest films ever made and the best film of the decade. That it was a good movie was never in dispute, but it is a cold, distant, difficult to like film, especially when compared with…

1979 was the first year in which the L.A. and N.Y. Film critics agreed on the year’s Best Picture – the domestic drama, Kramer vs. Kramer, though they disagreed on Best Director. L.A. went with Kramer’s Robert Benton while the N.Y. group went with Woody Allen for the second time in three years, for Manhattan.…

The 1978 Oscar race is best remembered as the year of the dueling Vietnam War movies but it almost didn’t happen. Universal had planned The Deer Hunter for a February 1979 release and didn’t decide on limited New York and L.A. runs in mid-December until late November. The L.A. Film critics were the first to…

The National Board of Review resumed its tradition of being the first to announce its annual winners in 1977, naming Herbert Ross’ The Turning Point as Best Picture of the year. They eschewed Ross for the Best Director award, however, bestowing that honor on the legendary Spanish director Luis Bunuel for That Obscure Object of…

The Los Angeles Film Critics, in only their second year, started off awards season with another tie. Just as they had done with their first awards the previous year, they split Best Picture honors between two films, the acerbic Network and the feel-good Rocky. The National Board of Review, New York Film Critics and National…