Nostalgia was very much evident in 1994’s major Oscar contenders. Three of the five films nominated for Best Picture and all four acting winners were in films set in previous eras. The fourth Best Picture nominee was made in the style of 1940 thrillers and the fifth, though set in contemporary times, involved situations that could have occurred in films forty or fifty years earlier.

Nominated for thirteen Oscars, and winner of six, Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump was awash in nostalgia, following the life of its protagonist, Tom Hanks. through the cultural events of his lifetime. Covering a period of thirty-five years, its main focus is on the Vietnam War and its effect on American life. Hanks, with his Best Actor win, became the fifth consecutive acting winner, joining a rare company of actors that includes only Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Jason Robards to date.

Hanks is excellent as the somewhat dimwitted man to whom things just seem to happen, but he’s matched by an equally fine supporting cast including Robin Wright as his tragic wife; Sally Field as his worldly wise mother; Gary Sinise, Oscar nominated as a wounded Vietnam vet and a poker faced Haley Joel Osment as Hanks’ son.

The film’s other awards were for Best Direction; Adapted Screenplay; Editing and Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Cinematography; Art Direction; Makeup; Score; Sound and Sound Effects.

Gump’s closest challenger was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, made in a style reminiscent of the pulp fiction novels of the 1940s and the films that were made from them well into the 1950s and early 1960s.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Actor John Travolta and Supporting Actor Samuel L. Jackson, who played hit men, as well as Best Direction; Editing and Supporting Actress Uma Thurman as the unfaithful wife of another hit man. It won for Tarantino’s Original Screenplay.

The quiz show scandals of the late 1950s were brought vividly to life in Robert Redford’s aptly named Quiz Show starring Ralph Fiennes as Charles Van Doren, the disgraced scion of one of America’s leading literary families. The film was nominated for four Oscars including Best direction; Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor Paul Scofield as Fiennes’ painfully embarrassed father, Mark Van Doren.

Beginning in 1947, Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, based on a short story by Stephen King, is about the bonding of two incarcerated prisoners (Tim Robbins and Oscar nominated Morgan Freeman) over the course of many years. Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Direction; Adapted Screenplay; Cinematography; Editing and Score, the film has long been one of the most highly films on the Internet Movie Database.

Mike Newell’s hilarious Four Weddings and a Funeral is about exactly that. The nostalgia here comes from our own personal experiences in attending such social events in our own lives and drawing parallels. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay in addition to its nod for Best Picture, the film benefits from the strong performances of Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, John Hannah, Simon Callow and others.

Other films Oscar liked this year included Ed Wood; Bullets Over Broadway; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Little Women; Interview With the Vampire; The Madness of King George; Legends of the Fall; Blue Sky; Nobody’s Fool and The Lion King.

Martin Landau’s dead-on impersonation of horror film legend Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The film also won for Best Makeup. Burton’s primary go-to actor, Johnny Depp, starred as the titled director of bad movies.

Dianne Wiest as a legendary, albeit fictitious, stage star of the 1920s won her a second career Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. The film had been nominated for seven Oscars including Best Direction; Original Screenplay; Art Direction and Costume Design as well as additional acting nominations for Chazz Palminteri and Jennifer Tilly.

An Oscar winner for Best Costume Design, Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was set in Australia’s contemporary outback, but the songs mouthed by the film’s two drag queens and one transsexual weretried and true classics of slightly earlier times. The film fared even better at the Globes and other awards venues where star Terence Stamp was a popular nominee as the transsexual. Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce made their first major impression on U.S. audiences as the drag queens.

The latest version of Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War era classic Little Women, directed by Australia’s Gillian Armstrong, garnered three nominations including one for Winona Ryder as Jo. It was also nominated for Best Costume Design and Score. While certainly a well-made version, it still couldn’t hold a candle to George Cukor’s 1933 version with Katharine Hepburn.

Anne Rice wrote the screenplay for her own contemporary classic, Interview With the Vampire, directed by Neil Jordan. Although set in modern times, the film’s main character, played by Tom Cruise, is a 200 year-old vampire who saw his first film some sixty odd years earlier. Brad Pitt was his apprentice vampire. The film was nominated for Best Art Direction and Score.

England’s George III, America’s Revolutionary War nemesis, was the titled character in Nicholas Hytner’s The Madness of King George. The film won an Oscar for Best Art Direction and was nominated as well for Best Actor (Nigel Hawthorne); Supporting Actress (Helen Mirren) and Adapted Screenplay.

World War I was the backdrop for Edward Zwick’s Legend of the Fall featuring Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas as brothers and Anthony Hopkins as their father. Nominated for three Oscars including Art Direction; Sound and Cinematography, it won the latter category.

Jessica Lange won her second Oscar, her first in the lead category, as a voluptuous Army wife in Tony Richardson’s Blue Sky set in the Nevada weapons testing desert of the 1950s. Tommy Lee Jones played her volatile husband.

Paul Newman, approaching 70, brought his own built-in nostalgia to his portrayal of a world-weary man on the verge of retirement in Robert Benton’s Nobody’s Fool, for which the legendary star received his eighth Best Actor nomination. Also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, the film’s strong supporting cast included Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith and the marvelous Jessica Tandy who died before the film’s release.

Disney’s The Lion King proved to be one the studio’s best and most popular films, garnering Oscars for Best Song (“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”) and Best Score, and securing nominations for two additional songs.

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

This week’s new DVD releases include Rio.