Annal:1982 Academy Award® for Best Motion Picture
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Academy Award® in the year 1982. For a ranked list of films, try the honor roll.
- 1982 BAFTA-Film winner
- 1982 Oscar-Picture winner
- Score: 20.32
The come-from-behind winner of the 1981 Oscar for best picture, Chariots of Fire either strikes you as either a cold exercise in mechanical manipulation or as a tale of true determination and inspiration. The heroes are an unlikely pair of young athletes who ran for Great Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympics: devout Protestant Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a divinity student whose running makes him feel closer to God, and Jewish Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a highly competitive Cambridge student who has to surmount the institutional hurdles of class…
- 1982 BAFTA-Film nominee
- 1982 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 12.32
Though set in America, this was directed by Frenchman Louis Malle, and the atmosphere is very European. An edgy character study of losers and would be winners, this was written by playwright John Guare.
Susan Sarandon’s sad-eyed appeal won her an Academy Award nomination for her role as a croupier hoping to learn the ropes and move on to the more glamorous casinos of Monte Carlo. Burt Lancaster, who was also nominated for an Oscar, turns in one of the most memorable performances of his career. As Lou, an aged two-bit hood, he brags about his flamboyant…
- 1982 Golden Globe-Drama winner
- 1983 BAFTA-Film nominee
- 1982 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 22.32
Writer Ernest Thompson, who came up with the original stage play of On Golden Pond and adapted it for film, is lucky to have two giants of the screen give dignity and breadth to his sometimes trite dialogue. Henry Fonda, in his last role, plays a prickly English professor at the disagreeable age of 80. Visiting his summer house by a Maine lake with his wife (Katharine Hepburn), the old man forges an unlikely bond with a lonely boy, comes to terms with his daughter (Jane Fonda), and suffers disorienting effects of mild dementia. Even playing a tired old…
Raiders of the Lost Ark: 1st in Indiana Jones series
- 1982 Hugo-Video winner
- 1982 BAFTA-Film nominee
- 1982 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 22.32
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s 1981 resurrection of the Saturday-matinee adventure genre was deservedly popular, and kicked off a successful trilogy. Set in 1936, this first feature introduces Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, an archaeologist and adventurer whose quests for rare antiquities frequently find him running from one menace or another. Raiders finds Dr. Jones in the middle of a Nazi plot to use the mysterious powers of the Ark of the Covenant to win the war. Karen Allen plays the love interest with an old-fashioned “man’s woman” appeal (she…
- 1982 Golden Globe-Drama nominee
- 1982 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 12.32
Warren Beatty’s lengthy 1981 drama about American Communist John Reed and his relationships with both the Russian Revolution and a writer named Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) is a compelling piece of little-known history told in a uniquely personal way. Beatty plays Reed as he did the title gangster in Bugsy and Senator in Bulworth, as a visionary likely to die before anyone fully recognizes the progressiveness of the vision, including those who are supposed to be on the same page. Jack Nicholson has an interesting part as fellow intellectual Eugene…
