Annal:1988 Academy Award® for Best Motion Picture
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Academy Award® in the year 1988. For a ranked list of films, try the honor roll.
- 1989 BAFTA-Film winner
- 1988 Golden Globe-Drama winner
- 1988 Oscar-Picture winner
- Score: 30.39
Bernardo Bertolucci does the nearly impossible with this sweeping, grand epic that tells a very personal tale. The story is a dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the emperors of China. It follows his life from its elite beginnings in the Forbidden City, where he was crowned at age three and worshipped by half a billion people. He was later forced to abdicate and, unable to fend for himself in the outside world, became a dissolute and exploited shell of a man. He died in obscurity, living as a peasant in the People’s Republic. We never really warm up to John…
- 1988 Golden Globe-Musical/Comedy nominee
- 1988 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 12.38
Holly Hunter plays a network news producer who, much to her chagrin, finds herself falling for pretty-boy anchorman William Hurt. He is all glamour without substance and represents a hated shift from hard news toward packaged “infotainment,” which Hunter despises. Completing the triangle is Albert Brooks, who provides contrast as the gifted reporter with almost no presence on camera. He carries a torch for Hunter; she sees merely a friend. Written and directed by James L. Brooks, this shows remarkable insight into the people who make television. On the surface it…
- 1988 Golden Globe-Drama nominee
- 1988 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 12.38
The date movie of the late 1980s, this had everyone arguing in the aisles. Does Michael Douglas deserve the unwanted attention he and his family are receiving at the hands of loony stalker Glenn Close? After a weekend extramarital affair with colleague Close, he returns home to wife Anne Archer, and Close becomes progressively angrier. You might even say she is boiling bunny mad.
Directed by Adrian Lyne, this is not your average thriller, as it garnered six Academy Award nominations. The plot is too obvious, but the dialogue rings true and the intense…
- 1988 Golden Globe-Musical/Comedy winner
- 1988 BAFTA-Film nominee
- 1988 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 22.38
This winning 1987 epic written and directed by John Boorman (Deliverance, The General) serves as a picaresque and semi-autobiographical remembrance of a boy’s coming of age during the Second World War. Exhibiting a defiant and humorous take on life during the London blitz, the family of the young boy at the center of the story (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) is a close-knit and resilient bunch, undeterred in the face of the war and reveling in each other even as they hide from the incessant bombing. To be sure, there are some poignant moments in this…
- 1988 Golden Globe-Musical/Comedy nominee
- 1988 Oscar-Picture nominee
- Score: 12.38
Remember the outfit Cher wore to the Oscars when she won an Academy Award for her performance in this 1987 film? Ay-yi-yi. The actress’ more retiring character in this infectious comedy leaps several psychological hurdles just giving her hair a permanent. But then the original screenplay by John Patrick Shanley (Joe Versus the Volcano) is a wonderful, gently satirical tale of an Italian-American family dealing with repression and dissatisfaction against a backdrop of cultural expectations. Cher is focused and funny as a widow who feels she should marry an…
