1985's Oscar Nominees

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Watched these all in the same week about a half year ago.

Kiss of the Spider Woman > Witness > Prizzi's Honor >> Out of Africa > The Color Purple

well this is a grim fucking year

haven't seen Kiss of the Spider Woman or Prizzi's Honor since I was a teen, hard to imagine the former would hold up nowadays

Prizzi's Honor without thinking twice

it's underrated these days. Some find it ponderous, I can relax with its rhythms. Great cast of gargoyles cackling among themselves.

Runaway Train is my favourite I can think of not here.

Others that deserve a mention: Ran, Trip to Bountiful, and The Return of the Living Dead

which wunna dese?

Prizzi easily

William Hickey offering Angelica Huston a cookie.

I've only seen Witness.

And Prizzi's Honor looks to be the only one of these that isn't available at either the library or on the iTunes store.

After Hours or gtfo

def would vote for After Hours over any of these

My 10...

Crime Wave (John Paizs, Canada)
Day of the Dead (George A. Romero, USA)
The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, USA)
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, USA)
Mala Noche (Gus Van Sant, USA)
Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, USA)
A.K. (Chris Marker, France)
Phenomena (Dario Argento, Italy)
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, UK)
Ran (Akira Kurosawa, UK)

Others nominated in 'the Big 8' categories that year: Ran, Murphy's Romance, Runaway Train, The Trip to Bountiful, Agnes of God, Sweet Dreams, Cocoon, Jagged Edge, Twice in a Lifetime, Back to the Future, Brazil, The Official Story and The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Those last four were all in the Original Screenplay category (where the winner was Witness) and I think if you remove them, it becomes a fairly stodgy list. I was starting to become precociously interested in non-kids movies by 1986, when most of these would have started to trickle onto cable, yet I don't remember being interested in watching any of them except Witness (which had Indiana Jones in it) and Cocoon (which looked enough like a Spielberg movie that I thought I'd care, but which turned out to be of little interest me when I went to watch it). It's possible that I might change my mind once I've seen more of these films, but the 1985 Oscars really doesn't look like it had a whole lot to offer movie lovers.

well Brazil is clearly the best movie mentioned so far. ugh had totally forgotten about The Trip to Bountiful, my mom loved that movie

Brazil on my last viewing is too much, just like all of Gilliam's films except perhaps Time Bandits

wow, awful. not voting

To Live and Die in L.A.

I wish I could say Roeg's Insignificance but that was the beginning of his free fall into mediocrity

I've said it before and I'll say it again, excepting some of the dogs from the first decade of Oscar winners, and the pure cinematic ninth circle of hell that is Crash, Out of Africa is the most awful best picture winner of them all. Absolutely unwatchable.

witness by default

Had to dig up this convo from the archives:

My main association with Out of Africa, which I've never actually seen, has always been an episode of Golden Girls where Blanche is on a date with frequent hookup Mel Bushman (played by Alan King, perhaps the ideal actor to play a character named Mel Bushman) when they discuss renting Out of Africa and heading over to his place. Blanche notes that they've rented it like five times and never finished it, to which Mel smiles and says "I know." So, as far as I could always tell, Out of Africa was the kind of movie that people watch only to have on in the background while they have sex and then fall asleep.

― the vineyards where the grapes of corporate rock are stored (cryptosicko), Saturday, August 31, 2013 12:08 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thx a lot now I get to think about Alan King having sex, you punk.

― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Saturday, August 31, 2013 1:04 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good discussion here about Streep, A.O. Scott, and the eighties prestige picture:

WORST of the Best Picture Oscar Noms (Only The '80s Edition)

No interest in the first two, can't vote for any of the other three. (I've always intended to give Prizzi's Honor a second look...but still haven't 33 years later, so I guess it's not a priority.)

The two big films for me that year were Lost in America and My Life as a Dog. I like Sweet Dreams and After Hours, and To Live and Die in L.A., Jagged Edge, and even The Year of the Dragon are good genre films.

Shoah, and after that Vagabond

(saw these two recently, so they are in my mind)

I noticed Shoah when I skimmed through Wikipedia's list of '85 films. I'm glad I took the time to watch it (four or five years ago, I think--at home, on DVD). Trying to find exactly the right words to explain why Lost in America and My Life as a Dog mean more to me would require finding exactly the right words.

I remember My Life as a Dog meaning so much more to me when I saw it than any of these Oscar nominees, but it’s also very weird to be reminded that I haven’t seen any of these films in ~33 years

also liked My Beautiful Laundrette, a memorable first introduction to Daniel Day-Lewis. Still haven't seen Taipei Story and The Time to Live and the Time to Die

Prizzi's is one of the funniest films of the '80s

will have to see it again. the only thing I remember about that film is the performance of Anjelica Huston

Arm0nd on TCP: https://www.out.com/armond-white/2015/12/15/color-purple-hollywoods-greatest-gay-film-turns-30

Walker conjugated the term “lavender” from the days of the Mattachine Society when it was code for gay passion as “different” from conventional romantic hues—she moved across the spectrum of affection (now symbolized in the pride flag) from same-sex attraction, opposite-sex attraction, both sex attraction. Lavender-to-Purple charts Celie’s sexual experience throughout her hardship. (“I might be black, a woman, I might even be ugly. But I’m here!”) Plus, Walker and Spielberg explicitly link “purple” to an appreciation of life and God’s wonders. “I think it pisses God off when you don’t know notice the color purple!” says blues songstress and Celie’s lover, Shug Avery.

Perhaps this normalization of the humane in spiritual terms is what “intellectuals” object to as “overripe.” It pisses some people off when gayness is seen as something other/more than a social principle or represented in terms that don’t comply with secular convention—or when idealized by figures who don’t come from society’s dominant class.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is better than any of these.

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Haha, what?

wtf

at least the bottom 2 are correct