87%  Winner:   Unforgiven  130 min,  R,  [Drama, Western]  [Clint Eastwood]  [07 Aug 1992]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 82%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 96%,   Metacritic: 85%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 4 Oscars. Another 44 wins & 45 nominations.
Actors:  Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris
Writer:  David Webb Peoples
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  The town of Big Whisky is full of normal people trying to lead quiet lives. Cowboys try to make a living. Sheriff 'Little Bill' tries to build a house and keep a heavy-handed order. The town whores just try to get by.Then a couple of cowboys cut up a whore. Dissatisfied with Bill's justice, the prostitutes put a bounty on the cowboys. The bounty attracts a young gun billing himself as 'The Schofield Kid', and aging killer William Munny. Munny reformed for his young wife, and has been raising crops and two children in peace. But his wife is gone. Farm life is hard. And Munny is no good at it. So he calls his old partner Ned, saddles his ornery nag, and rides off to kill one more time, blurring the lines between heroism and villainy, man and myth.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Dedicated to his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winner examines the mythic violence of the Western, taking on the ghosts of his own star past. Disgusted by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett's decree that several ponies make up for a cowhand's slashing a whore's face, Big Whiskey prostitutes, led by fierce Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), take justice into their own hands and put a $1000 bounty on the lives of the perpetrators. Notorious outlaw-turned-hog farmer William Munny (Eastwood) is sought out by neophyte gunslinger the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) to go with him to Big Whiskey and collect the bounty. While Munny insists, "I ain't like that no more," he needs the bounty money for his children, and the two men convince Munny's clean-living comrade Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to join them in righting a wrong done to a woman. Little Bill (Oscar-winner Gene Hackman), however, has no intention of letting any bounty hunters impinge on his iron-clad authority. When pompous gunman English Bob (Richard Harris) arrives in Big Whiskey with pulp biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) in tow, Little Bill beats Bob senseless and promises to tell Beauchamp the real story about violent frontier life and justice. But when Munny, the true unwritten legend, comes to town, everyone soon learns a harsh lesson about the price of vindictive bloodshed and the malleability of ideas like "justice." "I don't deserve this," pleads Little Bill. "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it," growls Munny, simultaneously summing up the insanity of western violence and the legacy of Eastwood's Man With No Name. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

73%  Nominee:   A Few Good Men  138 min,  R,  [Drama, Thriller]  [Rob Reiner]  [11 Dec 1992]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 77%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 82%,   Metacritic: 62%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 10 wins & 26 nominations.
Actors:  Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Bacon, Tom Cruise
Writer:  Aaron Sorkin (play), Aaron Sorkin (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, French    Country:  USA
Plot:  In this dramatic courtroom thriller, LT Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey's Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is LTJG Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a "CODE RED". Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren't tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something's fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee.
Rotten Tomatoes:   A fast-talking, charming Navy defense attorney must prove that a pair of Marines are innocent of murdering a fellow fighter in this taut and provocative courtroom thriller. The lawyer's biggest obstacle is a conniving base commander who wants the whole affair swept under the carpet.

86%  Nominee:   Howards End  142 min,  PG,  [Drama, Romance]  [James Ivory]  [26 Feb 1993]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 75%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 94%,   Metacritic: 89%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 3 Oscars. Another 29 wins & 48 nominations.
Actors:  Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Joseph Bennett, Vanessa Redgrave
Writer:  E.M. Forster (novel), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, German    Country:  UK, Japan, USA
Plot:  Encounter of three social classes of England at the beginning of the 20th century : the Victorian capitalists (the Wilcoxes) considering themselves as aristocrats, whose only god is money ; the enlightened bourgeois (the Schlegels), humanistic and philanthropic ; and the workers (the Basts), fighting to survive. The Schlegel sisters' humanism will be torn apart as they try both to softly knock down the Wilcox's prejudices and to help the Basts.
Rotten Tomatoes:   One of the best Ismail Merchant/James Ivory films, this adaptation of E. M. Forster's classic 1910 novel shows in careful detail the injuriously rigid British class consciousness of the early 20th century. The film's catalyst is "poor relation" Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson), who inherits part of the estate of Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave), an upper-class woman whom she had befriended. The film's principal characters are divided by caste: aristocratic industrial Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins); middle-echelon Margaret and her sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter); and working-class clerk Leonard Bast (Sam West) and his wife (Nicola Duffett). The personal and social conflicts among these characters ultimately result in tragedy for Bast and disgrace for Wilcox, but the film's wider theme remains the need, in the words of the novel's famous epigram, to "only connect" with other people, despite boundaries of gender, class, or petty grievance. Filmed on a proudly modest budget, Howards End offers sets, spectacles, and costumes as lavish as in any historical epic. Nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, the film took home awards for Thompson as Best Actress, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's adapted screenplay, and Luciana Arrighi's art direction.

75%  Nominee:   Scent of a Woman  156 min,  R,  [Drama]  [Martin Brest]  [08 Jan 1993]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 80%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 88%,   Metacritic: 59%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 14 nominations.
Actors:  Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, Gabrielle Anwar, James Rebhorn
Writer:  Giovanni Arpino (novel), Bo Goldman (screenplay), Ruggero Maccari (character from Profumo Di Donna), Dino Risi (character from Profumo Di Donna)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Frank is a retired Lt Col in the US army. He's blind and impossible to get along with. Charlie is at school and is looking forward to going to university; to help pay for a trip home for Christmas, he agrees to look after Frank over thanksgiving. Frank's niece says this will be easy money, but she didn't reckon on Frank spending his thanksgiving in New York.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Driven by an extravagant, tour-de-force performance by Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman is the story of Frank Slade (Pacino), a blind, retired army colonel who hires Charlie Simms (Chris O'Donnell), a poor college student on the verge of expulsion, to take care of him over Thanksgiving weekend. At the beginning of the weekend, Frank takes Charlie to New York, where he reveals to the student that he intends to visit his family, have a few terrific meals, sleep with a beautiful woman and, finally, commit suicide. The film follows the mis-matched pair over the course of the weekend, as they learn about life through their series of adventures. Though the story is a little contrived and predictable, it pulls all the right strings, thanks to O'Donnell's sympathetic supporting role and Pacino's powerful lead performance, for which he won his first Academy Award. Scent of a Woman is based on the 1975 Italian film Profumo Di Donna.

85%  Nominee:   The Crying Game  112 min,  R,  [Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller]  [Neil Jordan]  [19 Feb 1993]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 73%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 94%,   Metacritic: 90%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 21 wins & 46 nominations.
Actors:  Adrian Dunbar, Forest Whitaker, Jaye Davidson, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Rea
Writer:  Neil Jordan
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  UK, Japan, USA
Plot:  An unlikely kind of friendship develops between Fergus, an Irish Republican Army volunteer, and Jody, a kidnapped British soldier lured into an IRA trap by Jude, another IRA member. When the hostage-taking ends up going horribly wrong, Fergus escapes and heads to London, where he seeks out Jody's lover, a hairdresser named Dil. Fergus adopts the name "Jimmy" and gets a job as a day laborer. He also starts seeing Dil, who knows nothing about Fergus' IRA background. But there are some things about Dil that Fergus doesn't know, either...
Rotten Tomatoes:   In this successful psychological thriller, a reluctant agent of the Irish Republican Army discovers that some people just aren't who you expect them to be. Fergus (Stephen Rea) is an IRA "volunteer" who, despite personal misgivings, takes part in the kidnapping of a black British soldier, Jody (Forest Whitaker), stationed in Northern Ireland. The IRA hopes to use Jody as a bargaining chip to win the release of IRA operatives behind bars, but, while guarding Jody, Fergus becomes fast friends with his prisoner. Jody makes Fergus promise him that if he dies, Fegus will look in on his girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson), and see if she's all right. Jody escapes, and Fergus doesn't have the heart to shoot him; as fate would have it, Jody runs from the woods into a street only to be run over by a British police vehicle, which then flushes out the IRA compound. Fergus escapes to London, where he's wanted by the law for Jody's kidnapping and also by his former girlfriend, IRA operative Jude (Miranda Richardson), who thinks he knows too much to fall into the hands of the British authorities. Good to his word, Fergus tracks down Dil, and soon the two outcasts find themselves entering into a love affair, although Fergus discovers that Dil is not the sort of woman he thought she was. Writer/director Neil Jordan won an Academy Award for his screenplay; the title song, which was a U.K. hit for Dave Berry in 1965, was re-recorded for the film by one-time Culture Club vocalist Boy George with backing by the Pet Shop Boys. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi