1990s

For over 40 years the HFPA has recorded famous and celebrated actors, actresses, and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind – over 10,000 items – is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Margaret Herrick Library.

A movie Steven Spielberg would like to forget. For the Hollywood Foreign Press, it wasn’t a problem.

The opening is stunning, breathtaking and spectacularly tragic: the bloodbath on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. The first 28 minutes of Saving Private Ryan are something to experience and rightly considered one of the most unnerving and realistic in war movie history.

“I'm the king of the world!” yells Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic – and director James Cameron screamed the very same line even louder while collecting his numerous awards and his gazillion dollars for this very fortunate movie. The film has been described as “Romeo and Juliet on a sinking ship”, and what a spectacular sinking it was.

It would prove a prophetic title for Helen Hunt, who won not only the Golden Globe but the Academy Award as well for her performance in this Golden Globe award-winning film. Unfortunately, her career from then on was all downhill.

The late English-Italian director and author Anthony Minghella – who died prematurely in 2008 at age 54 – left us a World War II- based masterpiece: The English Patient, which he himself adapted from Michael Ondaatje's best-selling novel. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama and went on to win nine Academy Awards.

Finally, after a 13-year absence, a musical won the Golden Globe, although it was greeted with derision by the media for having bested the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. And even worse, Madonna won Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy over Frances McDormand.

The Dashwood sisters are the opposite in character and temperament: Marianne (Kate Winslet) is all heart and romanticism, while Elinor (Emma Thompson) is all reason and prudence. Based on Jane Austen's 1811 novel, Sense and Sensibility played on this soul/mind duality, promoting a resurgence of Austen and a series of high-profile film adaptations from her books (see Emma and Persuasion).

Where did that one come from? Unsuspectingly, from Australia. There were a number of brilliant comedies released during the year, but once Babe showed up it was game over.

Disney’s The Lion King.