And the Oscars should have gone to...

It's Oscars Night -- time to honor this year's flicks? Heck no, time to look back two decades and second-guess the Academy voters one more time.

So which movies won for best picture (and which one should have won)? Leave it to Stuck in the 80s to determine right from wrong.

1980
Nominees: Coal Miner's Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, Tess.
Does anyone actually own: Tess.
Winner: Ordinary People.
Should have been: Raging Bull. Of all the baffling choices in the 80s, picking Ordinary People over Raging Bull ranks at the top. (View trailer)

1981
Nominees: Atlantic City, Chariots of Fire, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds.
Does anyone actually own: Atlantic City.
Winner: Chariots of Fire.
Should have been: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Tougher call, because I actually own Chariots of Fire and still enjoy it (whereas I never bought Raiders -- I mean, why? It's on TV every other week anyway). (View trailer)

1982
Nominees: E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie, The Verdict.
Does anyone actually own: Missing.
Winner: Gandhi.
Should have been: Gandhi. OK, I know people are going to howl at that, but I can't still can't stand to sit through more than 3 minutes of E.T. without flipping the channel. I'd go as far as to say E.T. would rank behind both Gandhi and Tootsie on my list. Maybe even Missing -- and I never saw that one either. (View Gandhi trailer)

1983
Nominees: The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, Tender Mercies, Terms of Endearment.
Does anyone actually own: The Dresser.
Winner: Terms of Endearment.
Should have been: The Right Stuff. Sure, Terms of Endearment is an icon of the 80s, but The Right Stuff is an icon of the 20th century. (View trailer)

1984
Nominees: Amadeus, The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart, A Soldier's Story.
Does anyone actually own: A Passage to India.
Winner: Amadeus.
Should have been: Amadeus. Not to take anything away from Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham, but this was probably the weakest year of movies in the 80s. (View trailer)

1985
Nominees: The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Out of Africa, Prizzi's Honor, Witness.
Does anyone actually own: Prizzi's Honor.
Winner: Out of Africa.
Should have been: The Color Purple. Spielberg just couldn't win at this point in his career. (He has to wait until 1994's Schindler's List.) (Scene from Color Purple)

1986
Nominees: Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon, A Room with a View.
Does anyone actually own: The Mission.
Winner: Platoon.
Should have been: Platoon, with Hannah and Her Sisters a VERY close second. (Platoon trailer)

1987
Nominees: Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, The Last Emperor, Moonstruck.
Does anyone actually own: The Last Emperor.
Winner: The Last Emperor.
Should have been: Broadcast News. This was the first and only year where I saw every nominee in the theaters before the Oscars. And the last. (Scene from Broadcast News)

1988
Nominees: The Accidental Tourist, Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, Rain Man, Working Girl.
Does anyone actually own: Mississippi Burning.
Winner: Rain Man.
Should have been: Rain Man. I think it was the "K-Mart sucks" line that clinched it for Rain Man. (By the way, I love Working Girl, but Oscar-worthy? Not quite.)

1989
Nominees: Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poet's Society, Driving Miss Daisy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot.
Does anyone actually own: My Left Foot.
Winner: Driving Miss Daisy.
Should have been: Field of Dreams or Dead Poet's Society -- two of the best movies of the 80s and they lose to a movie about a chauffeur and Dan Aykroyd's painful Georgian accent. (Final scene of Dead Poet's Society)

Lastly, let us lament the exclusion of two movies that saw no Oscar love in the 80s: Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club. Someday, when John Hughes picks up his lifetime achievement Oscar, I hope he just smirks and says:

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are such a wonderful crowd, we'd like to play a little tune for you. It's one of my personal favorites and I'd like to dedicate it to a young man who doesn't think he's seen anything good today - Cameron Frye, this one's for you."

Or better yet, in the words of John Bender: "Eat ... my ... shorts."

Comments

[Andrew]

Hey, I have The Mission on DVD, it is one of DeNiro's greatest performances and the ending is one of the most powerful climaxes of 80s dramas. Also probably the best Morricone soundtrack after The Untouchables. And Dangerous Liasons was far superior to Rain Man. RM was cute in a Forrest Gump kind of way, but DL is an Adult classic. It is a thinking person's portrait of sex and seduction. John Malkovich was robbed by Hoffman because the academy thinks it is harder to act mentally challenged than mentally dominant, when really the reverse is true.

[Spears]

Good point about the Big Chill. Personally, I think giving Jack the statue for Terms of Endearment should have been enough.

Then maybe give The Right Stuff the Oscar for best picture.

And then give Bill Chill a couple statues for other big awards (supporting actor, actress, etc)

[barb]

Personally, I think the Big Chill should've gotten it for 1983, but I didn't see The Right Stuff. Agree with many of your claims, but I think I'd been happy if Field of Dreams, which I've never seen or Dead Poets won. Honestly, the heart-breaking moments of the Oscars happened for me in the 90s. I'm still bummed about the Crying Game, the Hours, and others that I'm forgotten. Not suprised, but bummed. Also, Kiss was really good, I think, but am not surprised that the Academy didn't give a film about homosexuality and prison the Oscar. Not in the 80s, particularly.

[Bassnote]

I have to disagree with Greg that all the movies in 1985 were lame. Color Purple was okay, nit Spielbergs's best. Prizzi's Honor was good, but I like Jack. The clear great movie was Witness. Harrison Ford rocked in this movie. Out of Africa was a piece of crap, and Kiss Of The Spiderwoman grossed me out.

[Greg Williams]

1980: Should have been Raging Bull
1981: They'd never give an Oscar to an Action-Adventure, or Arnold might have gotten an Academy award for The Running Man.
1982: E.T. was truly the movie to see. If I'm not mistaken it was Spielberg's first blockbuster. Wasn't there rumors of "too much jealousy" preventing him from winning it until Schindler's List?
1983: I loved The Right Stuff. I still watch it whenever I catch it on. In fact, I think I'll go buy the DVD tomorrow...
1984: I think Amadeus deserved it, but The Killing Fields was really a great movie in its own right. If Amadeus didn't win it, this one would have gone to Killing Fields.
1985: Didn't see any of them. LAME!
1986: Platoon hands down. This movie brought back the horrors of war in a way no one really pictured until this movie came out. It wasn't like Guns of Navarone or a John Wayne war epic. This was as real as it would get. I think Apocalypse Now was the closest to a "realistic" Vietnam war movie we'd seen up until this point. Full Metal Jacket came out sometime after Platoon and it was even more real, in my opinion. Boot Camp especially...
1987: I think Fatal Attraction had more going for it than the others, but Last Emperor was a really good movie. Broadcast News was a great movie in its own, but had tough competition. Perhaps if it came out in the LAME! year, it's have won it.
1988: Rain man was good, yeah, it was good yeah, it was good, yeah...time for judge Wapner...
1989: I didn't really like Dead Poet's Society that much. Too yuppie-ish. Driving Miss Daisy was a wonderful film, but I think Field of Dreams was ripped off that year.

One other film, like The Right Stuff that I wish had won was Apollo 13, in 1995, which lost to Braveheart. If it was released in 96, it'd have beat the English Patient easily.

[Damian P.]

I'd say the "forgotten" 1988 Oscar nominee is 'The Accidental Tourist,' not 'Mississippi Burning.'

[Spears]

Gene Hackman's worst movie is ... The Replacements. That awful football movie with Keanu Reeves.

And why is Keanu's football character always from Ohio State? (The Replacements, Point Break, etc.)

[chase]

I love Mississippi Burning, Gene Hackman rocks ... but it, too, is on every week on cable ...

And, funny story, I actually saw My Left Foot by accident. There was nothing I wanted to see playing, and I thought My Left Foot was a soccer movie. I'd only seen a few seconds of the trailer on TV ... oh, it's about a paralyzed guy? My bad.

[Spears]

Tootsie was pretty good and certainly worthy of a nomination. I recently rewatched it again and thought it was more dated than I remember.

What clinches Ghandi is the transformation of Ben Kingsley into that part.

[Bassnote]

Personally I think Tootsie was a better movie than Gandhi, but the academy will never give best picture to a comedy.

[80s groupie]

I think it was the whole "teenage suicide" angle. That was the crisis du jour back in the early 80s.

[Martin Allen]

1980. It wasn't Ordinary People over Raging Bull, it was Robert Redford's first directing attempt over Martin Scorsese, who can't get arrested at the Oscars, 'nuff said?