87%  Winner:   Platoon  120 min,  R,  [Drama, War]  [Oliver Stone]  [06 Feb 1987]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 81%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 88%,   Metacritic: 92%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 4 Oscars. Another 19 wins & 14 nominations.
Actors:  Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker, Keith David, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe
Writer:  Oliver Stone
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, Vietnamese    Country:  USA, UK
Plot:  Chris Taylor is a young, naive American who gives up college and volunteers for combat in Vietnam. Upon arrival, he quickly discovers that his presence is quite nonessential, and is considered insignificant to the other soldiers, as he has not fought for as long as the rest of them and felt the effects of combat. Chris has two non-commissioned officers, the ill-tempered and indestructible Staff Sergeant Robert Barnes and the more pleasant and cooperative Sergeant Elias Grodin. A line is drawn between the two NCOs and a number of men in the platoon when an illegal killing occurs during a village raid. As the war continues, Chris himself draws towards psychological meltdown. And as he struggles for survival, he soon realizes he is fighting two battles, the conflict with the enemy and the conflict between the men within his platoon.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Oliver Stone's autobiographical Vietnam War film stars Charlie Sheen as Chris Taylor, a neophyte soldier who finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good (Willem Dafoe) and the other evil (Tom Berenger).

76%  Nominee:   Children of a Lesser God  119 min,  R,  [Drama, Romance]  [Randa Haines]  [31 Oct 1986]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 72%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 81%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 4 wins & 12 nominations.
Actors:  Marlee Matlin, Philip Bosco, Piper Laurie, William Hurt
Writer:  Mark Medoff (stage play), Hesper Anderson (screenplay), Mark Medoff (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, American Sign Language    Country:  USA
Plot:  James is a new speech teacher at a school for the deaf. He falls for Sarah, a pupil who decided to stay on at the school rather than venture into the big bad world. She shuns him at first, refusing to read his lips and only using signs. Will her feelings change over time?
Rotten Tomatoes:   Children of a Lesser God is a love story about a speech teacher who falls for a beautiful yet distant deaf girl in a small New England school for the deaf, and the obstacles that they face due to their differences. William Hurt plays James Leeds, a renegade teacher with an unconventional approach to education and a resume that includes stints as a bartender and a disk jockey. Upon his arrival, he is warned by school administrator Dr. Franklin (Philip Bosco) not to get creative with his instruction. Naturally, Leeds already has his mind set on his teaching plan and proceeds to play loud rock music in class in order to teach the students to feel the vibrations of the music and get them to try to speak phonetically. But a new element enters his life when he meets the attractive custodian, Sarah (Marlee Matlin). An exceptionally intelligent yet extremely bitter young woman, Sarah is a graduate of the school who has decided to remain there, in the confines of her world of silence; it's safer for her to be with her own "people" than to face what she perceives as a cruel and uncaring world. She hardly seems interested in James and will only communicate with him through signing, although she can read lips and even speak a little. James learns from Sarah's mother (Piper Laurie) that Sarah was sexually molested as a teenager; this explains why she is so wary of his attempts to form a relationship with her and why she is so full of fear. Eventually, James does get through to Sarah and the two fall in love, although both have to learn new ways to communicate their feelings. Though it seldom resembles the Mark Medoff play on which it was based, this directing debut from Randa Haines won an Best Actress Oscar for Matlin, for her first screen performance.

86%  Nominee:   Hannah and Her Sisters  107 min,  PG-13,  [Comedy, Drama]  [Woody Allen]  [14 Mar 1986]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 79%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 91%,   Metacritic: 90%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 3 Oscars. Another 22 wins & 27 nominations.
Actors:  Barbara Hershey, Carrie Fisher, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Michael Caine
Writer:  Woody Allen
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Hannah, Holly and Lee are adult sisters from a show business family, their boozy actress mother who still believes she's an ingénue that can attract any man she wants, despite still being married to the girls' father, Evan. Hannah, on her second marriage to a man named Elliot, a financial advisor, is the success of the family, taking a break from her acting career to raise her children. Everyone turns to her for advice, while she never talks to others about what she needs or feels. Her first husband, Mickey, is a comedy show writer and hypochondriac, who is going through a crisis as he mistakenly believes he will die soon without a clear belief, as a non-practicing Jew, of what will happen to him in the afterlife. Single Holly is the insecure flaky sister, a struggling and thus continually unemployed actress, who has just started a catering business with her actress friend April, in order to do something constructive with her life. In her own security, Hannah even set up Holly and Mickey together following her own break-up with Mickey, Holly and Mickey's sole date which arguably was the worst night in both their lives. Holly turns to Hannah for everything in her life, including money, despite feeling Hannah overly judgmental about her failures. It's during a catering job that Holly and April meet David, an architect, who seems interested in both of them. Holly's insecurities may threaten her potential relationship with David and friendship with April. Lee, who collects unemployment, is metaphorically the family's piece of clay waiting for the right artist to mold her. She has long lived with artist Frederick, who has contempt for everyone except her, and as such relies on her for whatever his connection to the outside world. This already complex collective becomes even more complex when Elliot contemplates telling Lee that he has fallen in love with her. His attraction to her is as much feeling unneeded by Hannah, who he does not want to hurt regardless of what he decides to do with respect to Lee.
Rotten Tomatoes:   A Woody Allen Manhattan mosaic, Hannah and Her Sisters concerns the lives, loves, and infidelities among a tightly-knit artistic clan. Hannah (Mia Farrow) regularly meets with her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) to discuss the week's events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's various subplots. Hannah is married to accountant and financial planner Elliot (Michael Caine), who carries a torch for Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow). Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey (Allen), who used to be married to Hannah and spends most of the film convinced that he's about to die. Appearing in supporting parts are Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's real mom), as the eternally bickering husband-and-wife acting team who are the parents of Hannah and her sisters. The film begins and ends during the family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, filmed in Farrow's actual New York apartment. Unbilled cameos are contributed by Sam Waterston as one of Wiest's brief amours and Tony Roberts as one of Allen's friends. Hannah and Her Sisters collected Oscars for Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, and Woody Allen's screenplay.

64%  Nominee:   The Mission  125 min,  PG,  [Adventure, Drama, History]  [Roland Joffé]  [31 Oct 1986]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 75%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 63%,   Metacritic: 55%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 12 wins & 27 nominations.
Actors:  Aidan Quinn, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Robert De Niro
Writer:  Robert Bolt (original story & screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, Guarani, Spanish, Latin    Country:  UK, France
Plot:  Jeremy Irons plays a Spanish Jesuit who goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region. Robert DeNiro plays a slave hunter who is converted and joins Irons in his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.
Rotten Tomatoes:   In director Roland Joffe's historical epic The Mission, Jeremy Irons stars as Gabriel, an 18th-century Jesuit priest sent to the jungles of Brazil to build a Guarani Indian mission. Upon his arrival, Gabriel meets the slave trader Mendoza (Robert De Niro), a cruel, bloodless man who kills as many of the Guaranis as he enslaves. His brother Felipe (Aidan Quinn) is another of his victims, killed in a duel over a woman. Because of Mendoza's aristocratic background, he cannot be tried for his crimes; however, the weight of his conscience inspires him to ask Gabriel for the opportunity to do penance at the mission. When Spain sells Brazil to Portugal, the two very different men must join together to defend the mission against aggressors.