Best movies that are oscar winners or nominees in writing (screenplay based on material from another medium) category

Kiss of the Spider Woman(1985)

Combined Rating:
61
Combined Critics Rating: 59

A gay man and a political prisoner are together in a prison. The gay man narrates the stories of two fake movies and his own life.



Awakenings(1990)

Combined Rating:
56
Combined Critics Rating: 37

The victims of an encephalitis epidemic many years ago have been catatonic ever since, but now a new drug offers the prospect of reviving them.



The Accidental Tourist(1988)

Combined Rating:
53
Combined Critics Rating: 46

An emotionally distant writer of travel guides must carry on with his life after his son is killed and his marriage crumbles.



Out of Africa(1985)

Combined Rating:
52
Combined Critics Rating: 33

In 20th-century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.



Norma Rae(1979)

Combined Rating:
51
Combined Critics Rating: 49

A young single mother and textile worker agrees to help unionize her mill despite the problems and dangers involved.



Educating Rita(1983)

Combined Rating:
45
Combined Critics Rating: 37

In London, the twenty-seven year-old hairdresser Rita decides to complete her basic education before having children as desired by her husband Denny. She joins the literature course in an ...



Ragtime(1981)

Combined Rating:
44
Combined Critics Rating: 41

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.



The Killing Fields(1984)

Combined Rating:
44
Combined Critics Rating: 23

A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.



Midnight Express(1978)

Combined Rating:
41
Combined Critics Rating: 17

Billy Hayes, an American college student, is caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison.



On Golden Pond(1981)

Combined Rating:
41
Combined Critics Rating: 23

Norman is a curmudgeon with an estranged relationship with his daughter Chelsea. At Golden Pond, he and his wife nevertheless agree to care for Billy, the son of Chelsea's new boyfriend, and a most unexpected relationship blooms.



The Verdict(1982)

Combined Rating:
41
Combined Critics Rating: 21

A lawyer sees the chance to salvage his career and self-respect by taking a medical malpractice case to trial rather than settling.





Heaven Can Wait(1978)

Combined Rating:
39
Combined Critics Rating: 24

A Los Angeles Rams quarterback, accidentally taken away from his body by an overanxious angel before he was meant to die, returns to life in the body of a recently murdered millionaire.



The Unbearable Lightness of Being(1988)

Combined Rating:
38
Combined Critics Rating: 17

In 1968, a Czech doctor with an active sex life meets a woman who wants monogamy, and then the Soviet invasion further disrupts their lives.



Children of a Lesser God(1986)

Combined Rating:
35
Combined Critics Rating: 20

A new speech teacher at a school for the deaf falls in love with the janitor, a deaf woman speechless by choice.



A Passage to India(1984)

Combined Rating:
34
Combined Critics Rating: 17

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.



The Elephant Man(1980)

Combined Rating:
32
Combined Critics Rating: 0

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous facade, there is revealed a person of intelligence and sensitivity.



The Stunt Man(1980)

Combined Rating:
32
Combined Critics Rating: 22

A fugitive stumbles on a movie set just when they need a new stunt man, takes the job as a way to hide out, and falls for the leading lady.



The French Lieutenant's Woman(1981)

Combined Rating:
31
Combined Critics Rating: 17

A film is being made of a story, set in 19th century England, about Charles, a biologist who's engaged to be married, but who falls in love with outcast Sarah, whose melancholy makes her ...



Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes(1984)

Combined Rating:
30
Combined Critics Rating: 11

A shipping disaster in the nineteenth century has stranded a man and woman in the wilds of Africa. The lady is pregnant, and gives birth to a son in their tree house. The mother dies soon ...




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