About the movies that make up the Oscars

Julie Christie plays a washed-up B-movie actress married to a philandering plumber (Nick Nolte). When she trails her husband to one of his extramarital encounters with a young housewife named Marianne, she meets Marianne's husband, who's trying to catch his cheating wife in the act.

Based on a real-life uprising on a slave ship in 1841, Steven Spielberg's latest casts Djimon Hounsou as the leader of the uprising who tries to steer the "Amistad" back to Africa, but is instead caught and tried in New England courts for trying to flee. With Anthony Hopkins as President John Quincy Adams.

Robert Duvall, who also wrote and directed this movie, plays an evangelistic preacher seeking divine redemption for his unholy ways.

An obsessive, manic-depressive novelist (Jack Nicholson) unwillingly forges a friendship with his gay neighbor, played by Greg Kinnear, and he awkwardly tries to win the affections of a young waitress (Helen Hunt) and help her sickly son.

This movie depicts the pornographic film world in the '70s and '80s and follows the career of a 17-year-old (Mark Wahlberg), whose impressive family jewels take him to the top of the X-rated movie industry. Burt Reynolds is porn filmmaker Jack Horner; Julianne Moore is cast as Reynolds' porn-star wife.

Screenwriter Woody Allen plays the lead role in his movie about a writer who gets in trouble with his closest acquaintances after his new comic novel -- in which he thinly disguises the sexual exploits of his family and friends -- is released.

Johnny Depp plays the title character and Al Pacino the pivotal bad guy in this movie, based on the true story of FBI agent Joe Pistone. Pistone infiltrated the mob in the 1970s by posing as a shady underworld character named Donnie Brasco. But in doing so, he also became friends with one of the criminals he was supposed to destroy.

A group of unemployed English steel workers decides to work up a Chippendales-style strip show routine to earn some dough.

Will Hunting (Matt Damon, who wrote this movie with buddy Ben Affleck) is an angry, working-class kid whose genius is discovered by a professor at MIT, where he's a janitor. After being threatened with jail time, he enters counseling sessions with a college professor-turned-therapist (Robin Williams) to help him tame his anger.

Judi Dench plays a queen mourning the death of her prince (Prince Albert, who died in 1861), and her much gossiped-about friendship with her stubborn Scottish manservant, John Brown.

A small-town schoolteacher (Kevin Kline) is outed by one of his former students during an Academy Award acceptance speech. Joan Cusack plays Kline's jilted bride.

Pam Grier, a '70s blaxploitation film icon, plays Jackie, a struggling flight attendant who delivers cash for a trigger-happy gun runner named Ordell Robbie (Sam Jackson). When the feds catch up with her, bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) gives her pointers on making off with the money without getting killed by her boss.

Los Angeles detectives unravel a crime conspiracy touching the corridors of power that are intended to keep evil in check. The multi-layered plot, directed by Curtis Hanson, is set in seedy, mid-1950s Los Angeles.

This screenplay, written by Canadian writer/director Atom Egoyan, examines the impact that a tragic schoolbus accident has on its students' tiny Adirondack hometown. Ian Holm plays a pivotal role as a litigation attorney pursuing a lawsuit against the bus company.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play star-crossed lovers who meet aboard the ill-fated Titanic.

Ulee Jackson (Peter Fonda), plays a beekeeper struggling to raise two granddaughters whose father is in jail and mother has abandoned the family. A Vietnam veteran, Ulee tries to save his drug-addicted daughter-in-law at the behest of his jailbird son. His mission is complicated by his son's partners in crime, who are holding the daughter-in-law in exchange for money the son hid before being thrown into prison.

In this dark political satire, the president of the United States is accused of groping a teen just before he pursues re-election. To salvage the campaign, his spin doctors hire a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to invent a war with Albania that they hope will distract Americans from the sex story.

A conniving turn-of-the-century socialite (Helena Bonham Carter), wary that her liaison with a commoner will cost her her aunt's favor and thus her money, befriends a charming young woman who is wealthy and terminally ill. Then she introduces her to her boyfriend in hopes that the dying heiress will leave her money to her man.

Best foreign-language film

A young clarinet player is torn between her musical career and her deaf parents, who depend on her to help them communicate with the outside world.

A respectable young lawyer is arrested for the murder of the city's most feared bailiff, who police soon discover is the suspect's father. As investigators trace the sequence of events leading up to the crime, they unearth the sordid details of a life built upon lies, betrayal and resentment, punctuated by a romance doomed to failure and regret.

A band of revolutionaries stages an uprising in 1969 Brazil against the military dictatorship that replaced a democratic government overthrown four years earlier.

Set in small-town Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, a young boy learns about living while trying to solve the mysteries of deaths he encounters.

A young widow and her son battling against starvation and exposure in post-WWII Russia believe they have been granted a miracle when a young, handsome officer comes to their assistance. But her romantic dreams quickly turn to fear when the "officer" turns out to be, in fact, a dangerous criminal.

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