“Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991)
Sure, we’ve come to expect Oscars to swoon for James Cameron after the mammoth hauls for “Titanic” and “Avatar,” but the director’s awards success had actually begun earlier: soon after “The Abyss” won one and was nominated for four, blockbuster sequel “Terminator 2” picked up six nods and won a whopping four —two Sound prizes, Visual Effects and Makeup. Only Best Picture victor “Silence Of The Lambs” took more.
“A River Runs Through It” (1992)
Now really only notable for helping to launch Brad Pitt’s career, and for somehow still being against some stiff competition the most boring movie Robert Redford’s ever directed, fly-fishing drama “A River Runs Through It” still managed to cause an upset at the 65th Academy Awards: Phillippe Rousselot beat out the work on “Howard’s End” and “Unforgiven” to take the Cinematograpy Oscar.
“Speed” (1994)
Jan De Bont‘s bomb-on-a-bus actioner, which cemented Keanu Reeves‘ career as an action star and launched Sandra Bullock to stardom, is mostly remembered as a commercial hit. But in the year when “Forrest Gump” dominated the Oscars, the film won awards for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing (and also picked up a nod for Film Editing too, though was beaten by ‘Gump’).
“Blue Sky” (1994)
Normally, a film being held on a shelf for several years is an immediate sign that it’s not going to be heading for awards success. But “Blue Sky” was something different: stuck on a shelf after the bankruptcy of Orion Pictures and the death of helmer Tony Richardson in 1991, it finally saw the light of day in 1994, and though the film did negligible box office, Jessica Lange won her second Oscar for the film, and her first in Best Actress, for playing the mentally troubled wife of a nuclear scientist (Tommy Lee Jones).
“Restoration” (1995)
If you’ve got a mid-level British costume drama looking for extra recognition, the design categories of the Academy Awards is the place to be. Paving the way for more modern films like “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” “The Duchess” and “The Young Victoria” was “Restoration,” Michael Hoffman’s adaptation of Rose Tremain’s novel starring Robert Downey Jr. and Annette Bening, which, though mostly lost to the mists of time now, won for both Costume Design and for Art Direction.
