It wasn’t until 1990 when critics began to reassess the films of the previous decade that Raging Bull came to be considered the best film of the decade in retrospect. Until then Ordinary People had generally been considered a most deserving Oscar winner and easily the best film of 1980. It had won most of the precursors for Best Picture and Director as well as Oscars for both, so what happened over the course of ten years for the critical consensus to change? Probably the fact that the deeply emotional territory of Ordinary People had by then become the province of TV movies whereas the raw edginess of Raging Bull had remained unique to the big screen. Anyway, that’s my theory.

Based on Judith Guest’s best-selling novel, Ordinary People marked the directing debut of acting superstar Robert Redford who was more than up to the task. Twenty year-old Timothy Hutton, the son of popular actor Jim Hutton who had recently died of cancer at the age of 45, was given the plum role of a suicidal teenager. Cast against type, TV’s perennially smiling Mary Tyler Moore was given the role of the cold, distant mother just two years after the deaths of her only sister from suicide and only brother from cancer following a failed assisted suicide attempt with Mary the assistant. Her only son, not much older than Hutton, shot and killed himself in what was officially ruled an accident shortly before the film’s release.

Despite the personal tragedies of the film’s two stars and the tragic story itself, the film is decidedly uplifting with superb performances from Donald Sutherland as Moore’s husband and Judd Hirsch as Hutton’s psychiatrist as well as those of Hutton and Moore. Moore and Hirsch received two of the film’s six Oscar nominations. The film, in addition to its Best Picture and Director wins it was accorded wins for Best Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor, Hutton, who actually had the film’s largest role.

Three films about real life people not only managed to secure a Best Picture nomination, they each received more nominations than the winner.

Nominated for eight Oscars, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull took home only for Robert De Niro’s superlative portrayal of self-destructive former boxer, Jack LaMatta and for Thelma Schoonmaker’s meticulous editing. Joe Pesci as De Niro’s volatile brother and Cathy Morairty as his breathy wife were also nominated for their performances, as was Scorsese for his direction. The other two nods were for Cinematography and Sound.

Matching Bull’s eight nominations, David Lynch’s The Elephant Man was about the life of 19th Century Englishman Joseph Merrick, played by John Hurt, whose disfiguring congenital disease hid the intelligence and sensitivity that was hardly evident in his career as a side-show freak. Rescued by a Victorian physician, played by Anthony Hopkins, he finds dignity at last. Based on two books about Merrick’s life, a successful play with the same title, but by a different writer, ran simultaneously on Broadway.

Nominated for Best Actor (Hurt), Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Costume Design, Editing and Score, the film to take home a single Oscar.

With seven nominations, Michael Apted’s Coal Miner’s Daughter was one of the more intelligent musical biographies, telling the life story of legendary country singer, Loretta Lynn, played by Sissy Spacek in her Oscar winning role. Also nominated for Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction and Sound, it failed to secure a nod for either its director or for the acclaimed performances of co-stars Tommy Lee Jones as Lynn’s husband, Levon Helm as her father and Beverly D’Angelo as Lynn’s fellow country superstar, Patsy Cline.

Based on Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Roman Polanski’s Tess filled out the list of Best Picture contenders, coming away with six nods and three wins for Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design. Polanski and the film’s score were also nominated.

Other films that Oscar liked this year included Melvin and Howard; The Great Santini; Resurrection; The Stunt Man; The Empire Strikes Back; Fame; Breaker Morant and My Brilliant Career.

Jonathan Demme’s Melvin and Howard, which won the National Society of Film Critics award for the year’s Best Picture only received three Oscar nominations, but won for two of them: Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress, the delightful Mary Steenburgen who plays the wife of the truck driver who claimed to have been Howard Hughes’ heir. Jason Robards received the third nomination for his portrayal of Hughes.

The recipient of two nominations, Lewis John Carlino’s The Great Santini was originally released in a handful of theatres in the South in 1979, but was sold to television before it had a chance to open in any of the larger markets. Its showing on HBO in early 1980 met with such acclaim that Warner Bros. decided to open it in New York and Los Angeles later in the year. The result was a Best Actor nod for Robert Duvall as a gruff marine pilot and a Supporting Actor nod for Michael O’Keefe as his sensitive son. That couldn’t happen under current Oscar rules which do not allow a film to be nominated in any category if has been shown on television prior to its theatrical showing in Los Angeles.

Ellen Burstyn had her best role in years as a woman who dies and is brought back to life with amazing healing powers in Daniel Petrie’s Resurrection. She and Broadway legend Eva Le Gallienne as her grandmother both received acting nominations.

A surprise hit about movie making, Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man received three nominations for Best Director, Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor, Peter O’Toole as an egomaniacal director.

The second installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back,was nominated for three Oscars and won one for Best Sound along with a Special Achievement Award for its visual effects.

Before there was Glee, there was Fame, a popular TV series about gifted singing and dancing high school students, and before the series there was Fame the movie. Nominated for six Oscars, it won two, for its score and its rousing title song.

The Australian film industry, which had long been taken for granted by the Academy finally made them sit up and take notice with two films, Breaker Morant, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and My Brilliant Career, nominated for Best Costume Design.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Black Swan and Tangled and the Blu-ray releases of The Ten Commandments and King of Kings.