The Academy favored Serious fair in 1980, awarding the top prize to Ordinary People, Robert Redford's directorial debut about a teenage boy grappling with the accidental drowning of his brother. It is an earnest, well-acted film (especially by Timothy Hutton in the lead role, who was delegated to the Best Supporting Actor category at the awards only because of the subordinate billing he received to the more famous stars playing secondary roles), and the selection of Mary Tyler Moore to play the boy's aloof mother was a brilliant piece of casting, showing the dark underside to the cloying optimism she displayed on television. But as well crafted as the film is, it is an incredibly depressing story that has a last-minute revelation which seems to be inserted only to manipulate the audience into feeling a false sense of optimism towards a character whose primary dilemma during the film is whether or not to commit suicide. Hutton's role is so gloomy and depressed that it never really becomes compelling and the resulting film has a disagreeably hollow center as its consequence.

Compelling is the only word for the lead character is Raging Bull, the volatile, self-obsessed boxer Jake LaMotta played so brilliantly by Robert DeNiro. The film has been named in many critics' polls as the best made in the 1980s, although it really is far too morose and disturbing a story to claim that title and the character of LaMotta - while undeniably intriguing - is such a repellent human being without any redemption that it occasionally makes one wonder what kind of statement director Martin Scorsese was trying to make in depicting this loathsome person's story. But it is hard not to admire a film with such a dark central character which doesn't resort to the contrivances that Ordinary People or 1980's other big prestige picture, The Elephant Man, employ to make their distressing protagonists more palatable to movie audiences, and presents LaMotta unapologetically as the appalling example of humanity at its worst that he was.

It's fun to ponder what goes through an Academy member's mind when they fill out their ballots for Best Picture. It's hard not to believe that there are frequently mental conversations that go "Spider-Man II was the film that I enjoyed the most and did the best job of delivering what it intended, but this is a Serious award and I have to choose something that isn't so artistically unpretentious." There must have been a lot of mental conversations like that one in 1981 when the Academy chose Chariots of Fire, director Hugh Hudson's account of 1924 Olympics, for its top prize - a sumptuously produced drama made by high pedigree British talent that is so unremittingly bland that it's difficult to remember anything about it (except for Vangellis' powerfully effective Oscar-winning score). If the Academy felt the urge to choose a high-minded drama for Best Picture, they might have gone with the far more ingratiating nominees Reds, On Golden Pond or Atlantic City, but in 1981 they seemed to be on a mission to award their top prize to the least entertaining film possible.

With this mindset, it's surprising that one of the most unpretentious and entertaining films ever made was nominated for Best Picture. Raiders of the Lost Ark was the seminal teaming of super-showmen Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, filled with some of the most celebrated scenes ever filmed (the opening sequence of Indiana Jones trying to retrieve a golden idol from its underground vault seems to have been parodied by every animated television series ever created). It is actually a credit to the Academy that Raiders was considered for the top prize at at all, since summer blockbusters are usually consigned to the technical awards and nothing else. But this first entry in the Indiana Jones saga has always been considered something unique, and time has proven it to be the most memorable film made in 1981, as well as the best.

Richard Attenborough spent twenty years trying to get his film about the life of Mahatma Gandhi made, and the result was a David Lean-like epic with a high-mindedness that borders on the preachy. The Academy loves sanctimonious films like Gandhi, and stories like the uphill making of films like Gandhi even more, so their selection of it as Best Picture is a perfectly understandable, if predictable, one. In fact, Gandhi is a fine film, with Attenborough's passion evident in every frame and wonderful performances by its cast, especially Ben Kingsley in the title role (the lone exception is Candice Bergan, who stands out like a sore thumb in her few awkward scenes as photographer Margaret Bourke-White). But 1982 was filled with fine films, with nominees ET the Extraterrestrial, Missing, The Verdict and Tootsie all being reasonable contenders for the Best Picture crown. But the best of these was Steven Spielberg's box office champ about the little alien trying to go home. ET was only the second science fiction film ever nominated for Best Picture (after Star Wars), and given the Academy's distaste for the genre and the backlash against the film after it became a cash cow for Universal, it's not surprising that it failed to win the Best Picture award against Attenborough's somber testimonial to the Great Spirit. But ET the Extraterrestrial is a vastly more engaging and memorable film, and should have been awarded the Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, and Sound Oscars in addition to the Oscars for Original Score, Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing that it received.

Terms of Endearment was the overwhelming favorite at the 1983 Academy Awards, James L. Brooks' motion picture debut after immortalizing himself with work on television series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and Taxi (and later his crowning achievement, The Simpsons). The film won universal acclaim and most of the pre-Oscar awards, including the DGA Award for Brooks who would go on to win three Oscars for producing, directing, and writing it. But watched now, it's hard to understand what all the fuss was about, as Terms of Endearment comes off merely as a moderately clever soap opera. Well acted by Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson, the film's eccentric characters now seem quirky for the sake of being quirky and its major plot contrivance, MacLaine's daughter Debra Winger dealing with life-threatening cancer, seems more appropriate for a potboiler on the Lifetime channel than for the Oscar winner for Best Picture.

If this seems like harsh criticism of Terms of Endearment, it is in part because Brooks' comic melodrama was honored over Ingmar Bergman's astonishing five hour (in its original version) epic about the isolation and powerlessness of childhood, Fanny and Alexander. Foreign films were rarely well represented at the Oscars until recent years, but Bergman's masterpiece was an exception, being nominated for Best Director and Screenplay Written Directly For the Screen, and actually winning the Oscars for Foreign Film, Art Direction-Set Direction, Costume Design and Cinematography; a record total for a foreign language film that has since been broken. Fanny and Alexander is such a gracefully exquisite film that anything else released in 1983 seems almost vulgar by comparison.

1984 was a bland movie year, with no great films and only a handful of very good ones. The best was the Academy’s choice, Milos Foreman’s film version of Peter Schaeffer’s play about Mozart, Amadeus. Schaeffer did a terrific job of adapting the screenplay to the new medium, especially in making Mozart’s nemesis Antonio Salieri the instigator of the plot to take credit for Mozart’s Requiem Mass (in the play, an unseen third party is behind the scheme). Foreman made some bold casting choices in bypassing the famous names who had played the roles on stage (Ian McKellen and Tim Curry played Salieri and Mozart in the Broadway production, and Paul Scofield created the role of Salieri in the play’s premiere at the National Theatre of Great Britain), choosing virtual unknowns F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, who responded to the gamble with brilliant Academy Award nominated performances. Abraham is particularly memorable is his Oscar-winning role as the jealous Salieri, and his failure to procure any additional quality movie roles is bewildering (he has had the most undistinguished film career of any Best Actor Oscar winner). Foreman’s direction occasionally lapses into bad taste (his attempts to elicit comedy from the behavior of members of the Austrian court are painfully broad), although he did get wonderful performances from Jeffrey Jones, Roy Dotrice, and Simon Callow (who created the role of Mozart in the London stage production) playing a Music Hall singer/manager who stages the premiere of The Magic Flute. Far less persuasive is Elizabeth Berridge as Mozart’s wife, whose unconvincing performance comes off as incompatibly modern compared to her fellow cast members, and her lack of subsequent film success is much more understandable than Abraham’s. But despite its unevenness, Amadeus has some remarkable sequences, particularly the exciting climax where Salieri transcribes Mozart’s dictation of the Requiem (one of the most electrifying depictions of artistic creation in film history) and while it may have faced an uphill battle for the award in a stronger year it was the deserving winner in 1984.

Two austere dramas went head to head at the 1985 Academy Awards, with eleven nominations each for Out of Africa and The Color Purple. Out of Africa was the big winner, with seven awards to The Color Purple's zero, the latter total a huge surprise to pundits who expected the ceremony to turn into a show of support for Steven Spielberg (who wasn't nominated for Best Director despite his film's popularity in the other categories). In fact, neither film deserved the plaudits they received, both being maudlin, overlong bores featuring wooden performances by leading actors (Whoopi Goldberg and Robert Redford); but they fit the Academy criterium of self-importance to a tee. Of the two, Out of Africa (loosely based on the memoirs of Danish aristocrat Karen Dinesen) is certainly the superior film (Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer both deliver excellent performances as Dinesen and her husband), but for all its pictorial splendor it is ultimately meaningless. It is a shame that the Academy was taken in by such empty opulence, as 1985 contained some delightfully inventive movies that weren't considered for the Best Picture Award: The Purple Rose of Cairo, Back to the Future, Brazil, and After Hours were quirky, original films that were wildly entertaining with something to say about the human condition, but perhaps not highfalutin' enough to be taken seriously by the Academy snobs.

There was one sumptuously produced epic that was so arty that it was based on a Shakespearean tragedy, but it was ruled out of the running because it committed the unpardonable sin of not being spoken in English. But the fact is that Ran, Akira Kurasawa's vision of King Lear, was not only the finest film released in 1985, it is one of the most towering artistic achievements of the twentieth century: Shakespeare's most timeless masterpiece brought to breathtaking life by the most inspired and original interpreters of his work on film. Ran did remarkably well at the Oscars for a foreign film, winning nominations for Director, Cinematography and Art Direction-Set Direction and winning the Oscar for Emi Wada's stunning costume design, but its failure to be nominated (and win) the Best Picture award over the vastly inferior Out of Africa and The Color Purple is proof positive that an Academy Award is not necessarily an indication of true quality.

There were three great films up for the Best Picture Oscar in 1986: Woody Allen's Chekhovian Hannah and Her Sisters, the seminal achievement of the Merchant/Ivory partnership A Room With a View, and the Academy's choice, Oliver Stone's ride down a cinematic razor blade, Platoon. Any of these three masterpieces would have been a fine selection for Best Picture (Hannah and Her Sisters and Room With a View split the two screenplay awards), but Platoon is unique in being one of the few films set within the context of the Vietnam war which seems to understand what makes that conflict different from other wars America has fought in the past. It is not an easy film to watch - Stone keeps his audience constantly on edge with the same tension that the soldiers are under so that attending a screening of Platoon seems like an ultra-concentrated tour of duty in Vietnam. A far less pleasant experience than the elegant romance of A Room With a View or the intellectual angst of Hannah and Her Sisters, but of all the films that set themselves up to be about the experiences of combat soldiers in Vietnam, Platoon is the only one that completely delivers.

The Academy went crazy about The Last Emperor in 1987, awarding Bernardo Bertolucci's epic about the life of Pu Yi, China's final emperor before the takeover of Mao Tze Tung's Communist regime, nine Oscars including Best Picture. The Last Emperor is a spectacularly beautiful film featuring (strangely unnominated) committed performances by John Lone in the title role and Joan Chen as the last empress, a magnificent production design and the typically lyrical Bertolucci direction. But for all these strengths, The Last Emperor is ultimately an unsatisfying film as a whole because its subject is a colorless figure who never accomplishes anything or even reaches any profound conclusions about the timing of his placement in history (Bertolucci and Mark Peploe's Oscar for Best Screenplay Based On Material from Another Medium was an award the film didn't deserve, even in this weak year for that category). He is simply a relatively bland man whose ancestral entitlement is cut off because of political factors outside of his control or realm of understanding.

A much more emotionally involving film is James L. Brooks' quirky love triangle about the turbulent life of network television newscasters, Broadcast News. Brooks' complex, entertaining script (which should have received the Oscar over John Patrick Shanley's comparatively conventional screenplay for Moonstruck) is well served by compelling performances by Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks (who was nominated in the inappropriate Best Supporting Actor category while costar William Hurt - whose role was no more contributive to the context of the story but who received higher billing than Brooks - was placed in the Best Actor division for his far weaker performance) and Richard Marks' outstanding film editing (which was regrettably overlooked in the Academy's tidal wave of recognition for The Last Emperor). In truth, Brooks the screenwriter was somewhat let down by Brooks the director who provided a characteristically flat look to the proceedings; but since the film was about television, Brooks' television-like directorial style seemed well-suited to the subject matter this time out.

Rain Man struck a powerful chord with the movie-going public and the Academy in 1988 presenting the story of two brothers, one of whom is an autistic, as they bond during a cross-country road trip. It is a slickly made though dishonest film (It is highly unlikely that the autistic brother - a ludicrously overpraised performance by Dustin Hoffman - would be able to maintain any kind of composure in the excitement of the various episodes of their adventure, and Hoffman and Tom Cruise's famous appearance at a casino to take advantage of Hoffman's astonishing ability at card counting in matching suits is simply too cute for words), although undeniably entertaining and touching if you accept the film on its own manipulative terms. But as slickly made as Rain Man is, it is far too simplistic to be considered the best film of 1988 or any other year. The year's other nominees - The Accidental Tourist, Dangerous Liaison, Mississippi Burning and Working Girl - are an uninspired lot that don't seem any more deserving of singling out than Rain Man (the strongest film of the nominees - Mississippi Burning - puts forth the absurd contention that the civil rights movement of the 1960s was driven by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI).

In this weak year, the most outstanding film bordered on the cartoonish - literally. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the most ambitious blending of animation and live action ever attempted, and is a once-in-a-lifetime meeting of Warner Bros. and Disney characters. The frantic style of the Looney Tunes crew fits into the manic comedy of the film far better than the gentler Disney bunch, although there is an outstanding appearance by Donald Duck (whose piano duet with Daffy Duck is the highlight of the film) and a surprisingly touching scene with Betty Boop as a cigarette girl. The performance that gives its basis in reality is the brilliant work of Bob Hoskins as Los Angeles private eye Eddie Valient, who is forced to travel deep into the bowels of Toon Town to disprove a murder charge against his client, cartoon star Roger Rabbit. Hoskins effortlessly shifts between playing with live action actors like Christopher Lloyd and Joanna Cassidy and reacting to his yet-to-be-drawn animated co-stars. Regretfully, he isn't provided any help by Charles Fleischer, who supplied one of the most obnoxious voice characterizations in cartoon history as the insufferable title character. Fortunately, the immortal Mel Blanc was still around to provide a master class on how to do such voices and with a little doctoring of the screenplay, Who Framed Bugs Bunny is one of the more enticing "what ifs" in film history. Of course executive producer Steven Spielberg wouldn't have enjoyed quite such a lucrative marketing tie-in with a preexisting character, so we'll never know how good the film might have been if a true movie star had played its title role.

1989 saw the premiere of a lot of very good films including such notable achievements as the brilliantly acted biography of cerebral palsy victim Christy Brown My Left Foot, Spike Lee's provocative racial drama Do the Right Thing, and Kenneth Branagh's only completely successful endeavor at filmed Shakespeare Henry V. When the scrambling for Best Picture was over, a pleasing little movie about the relationship between a black chauffeur and his well-to-do employer slipped through the cracks to win the top prize. Driving Miss Daisy was a exhilaratingly intimate character study that relied more on charm than on lavish production or high pedigree movie stars that most Oscar winners' credentials rely on. Based on Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize winning play and expertly acted by Jessica Tandy and particularly Morgan Freeman (who created his role in the original stage production), Driving Miss Daisy is a perfectly unobjectionable Best Picture selection, and it is refreshing to find such an unpretentious, simple film on the roster of Oscar fame. But the Academy didn't seem all that enthusiastic about its top choice, denying it the usually perquisite Best Director nomination for Bruce Beresford that accompanies a Best Picture (Wings and Grand Hotel are the only other Oscar winners not to receive a Best Director nominations, but they were both released in an era when only three directors could be nominated as opposed to today's five), and producer Richard D. Zanuck somewhat bitterly (and justifiably) objected to Bereford's lack of recognition in his Oscar acceptance speech.

The Academy might have saved itself the controversy by honoring a more characteristic Best Picture contender in Glory, director Edward Zwick's brilliant account of the first black Union Army regiment in the Civil War. Zwick's film takes the traditional movie cop-out of telling the black soldier's story through the eyes of their white commander (Matthew Broderick in a rather uncharismatic performance), but when the camera is trained on the brilliant work of Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Jihmi Kennedy and Andre Braugher, it is an unforgettable story about second class citizens who bask in the opportunity to prove that they are equal to anyone and in the end become venerated as the Honored Dead, and its serious subject matter would seem to be right up the Academy's alley. It's surprising that a movie with such solid Oscar credentials as Glory was overlooked in the Best Picture race, but (as Bruce Beresford can attest) these things aren't always that easy to predict.