1980s

Mike Nichols certainly knew how to charm actors! Check out the cast of his Golden Globe award-winning comedy, Working Girl: Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Philip Bosco, Oliver Platt, Kevin Spacey, Olympia Dukakis, David Duchovny, and Ricki Lake. 1988 was a particularly good year for comedies and it was anyone’s guess which film would win the Golden Globe until, at the last moment, Working Girl showed up.

Just how funny was John Boorman’s recollection of his childhood during the London Blitz? Also competing that year in the comedy category was Broadcast News, which still holds the record for having won all five of the major New York Film Critics awards including Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Director, and Screenplay. Ultimately, however, it was the HFPA choice for Best Motion Picture Drama, The Last Emperor, which prevailed at the Oscars winning no less than eight statues.

In Rain Man, a road movie with an autistic twist, a rich father leaves almost all his inheritance to his “savant” son Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). The younger yuppie brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) doesn't accept his father’s will: $3 million to an unknown brother! So he goes to meet Ray in his psychiatric clinic and brings him back to Los Angeles hoping to plead his case in court.

This British-Italian epic biographical film about the life of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, conquered everybody and every award. Co-written and directed by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor won four Golden Globes: Best Picture – Drama, Best Director (Bertolucci), Best Screenplay (Bertolucci with Mark Peploe and Enzo Ungari) and Best Original Score (Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, Cong Su).

This anti-war film set in Vietnam couldn't have been authored by anyone else than Oliver Stone. Platoon is a visceral movie, a story seen through the eyes of a soldier (Charlie Sheen) who volunteers for 'Nam, then discovers the horrors of war, the violence against civilian population, the insanity among U.

Finally, Woody Allen wins a best picture Golden Globe! It was the first of his many such triumphs at the Beverly Hilton, which culminated in his 2014 Cecil B. deMille Award for lifetime achievement.

It was indeed a family affair when John Huston, Jack Nicholson, and Anjelica Huston teamed up for this much-lauded work. What a shame Anjelica lost out to Meg Tilly for the Supporting Actress Golden Globe but she took it gamely having won every single critics' award that year and went on to win the Oscar as well.

An epic love story, skillfully mixing gorgeous photography and mal d’Afrique, Out Of Africa was the film of the year. The Sidney Pollack-directed film, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (and Klaus Maria Brandauer), garnered six Golden Globe nominations, winning three: Best Picture – Drama, Best Original Score (John Barry), and Best Supporting Actor (Brandauer).

And thus began a 13-year cycle of comedies claiming the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy. After the failure of Man of La Mancha.

The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of rival composer Antonio Salieri, who recounts his relationship with the young prodigy from a lunatic asylum he's been confined to - Mozart’s pure genius drove him literally nuts. This winning film was based on Peter Schaffer's 1981 stage play.