Review of the 80s

The 80s - Extraordinary People

Considering the glitzy materialism of the decade, every single one of these films has something much more personal at its core. They are all, first and foremost, about people dealing with the situations they are put in. Four of them are about famous people - athletes, musicians and political leaders. The other six are about people dealing with what life has given them and coping with the relationships they are forming. They are all quite different films so I was surprised to find this common thread running through them. I was also pleasantly surprised by the decade as a whole - but this focus on relationships in these films is probably why, with just two "meh" exceptions, I liked all these films.

This is the first decade in our challenge that I remember personally. In the 70s I generally visited the cinema to watch Disney films, but by the 80s I was watching some Oscar nominees on first release. ET is probably the earliest of these - and by the second half of the decade I was visiting the cinema pretty frequently and buying Empire magazine each month. Rain Man is the first Best Picture winner I saw on first release (twice) and I am so pleased that I still love it as much as I did at the time.

Here's my awards for the 80s - bring on the 90s!

My Top Ten (as they stand today!) is as follows:

1. Rain Man
2. The Last Emperor
3. Chariots of Fire
4. Amadeus
5. Gandhi
6. Driving Miss Daisy
7. Platoon
8. Terms of Endearment
9. Ordinary People
10. Out of Africa

(numbers 6,7 and 8 are fairly interchangeable!)

Best Picture

Nominees:   

Rain Man
Chariots of Fire
The Last Emperor
Amadeus
Gandhi

And the winner is.....

Rain Man

Amadeus is more impressive, The Last Emperor has completely knocked me sideways by how much I loved it - but with me and Rain Man it's personal.

Best Director


Nominees:   

Richard Attenborough
Milos Forman
Bernardo Bertolucci
Oliver Stone
Barry Levinson


And the winner is.....

Milos Forman and Bernardo Bertolucci

I'm going with a tie. I can't decide between the two. Both of them completely inhabit the film that they are directing and put themselves through a fair bit to get the film that they want. The stories of the actual shoots, being on location in some interesting and difficult places, working with diverse sets of actors - both of them would make fascinating films in their own right. (I suppose I could also put Dickie in that category, but his directing feels less passionate than these two.)


Best Actor


Nominees:   

Ian Charleson
Ben Kingsley
Dustin Hoffman
Tom Cruise
F Murray Abraham
Tom Hulce
Timothy Hutton

(I'm cheating here with the number of nominees, but I couldn't leave any of them out - and, technically, two of them count as Supporting actors, so that's ok!)

And the winner is.....

F Murray Abraham - for totally stealing the show from its title character!


Best Actress

Nominees:   

Shirley MacLaine
Deborah Winger
Meryl Streep
Jessica Tandy
Mary Tyler Moore

And the winner is.....

Shirley MacLaine

Another decade where most of the best performances by women were in films other than those that took the big prize. It was a struggle to find five nominees - and I'm not really that keen on the performances of two of them! Sissy Spacek, Jodie Foster and Sally Field all won Best Actress Oscars in the 80s for great performances - but not for any of our ten films. Shirley MacLaine and Jessica Tandy were the only two actresses to win Oscars in Best Picture films this decade - and Shirley had the edge!

Best Non-Winning Picture

Nominees: 

Dead Poets Society
The Mission
The Color Purple
ET
Raging Bull

And the winner is.....

The Color Purple - because it really should have won something!

(I've limited this category to films that got a nomination but didn't win. If I'd widened it to all films I don't think I would have been able to cope. But if I had, I would probably have given it to Do The Right Thing.....)

Worst Picture

Nominees:    

Out of Africa

Ordinary People

And the winner is.....

Out of Africa (probably)

Neither of them are actually bad. I just found them both a bit boring, although they both had lots of redeeming features. I keep changing my mind between the two....