Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1988

The Contenders:

Tom Hanks: Big
Gene Hackman: Mississippi Burning
Max von Sydow: Pelle the Conqueror
Dustin Hoffman: Rain Man (winner)
Edward James Olmos: Stand and Deliver

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1988

The Contenders:

Big
Bull Durham
A Fish Called Wanda
Rain Man (winner)
Running on Empty

Arrested Development

Film: Big
Format: VHS from Seneca Public Library through interlibrary loan projected on screen.

Big is the film that made people sit up and start taking Tom Hanks seriously. His career before Big had some good movies, but they were all comedies, and Hollywood doesn’t take comedy that seriously. Sure, there’s a lot of comedy in Big, too, but there’s a lot more here. The film requires a great deal from Tom Hanks, and he delivers like the actor we all discovered he was in later films.

Young Josh Baskin (David Moscow) is a pretty normal kid with normal kid desires and crushes. At a carnival, he makes two important and devastating discoveries. First, the girl he has been crushing on has a boyfriend who is capable of driving (this pushes believability a bit, since Josh is 12, and presumably so is the girl). Second, he’s too short to go on the scariest ride. Despondent, he drops a quarter in a fortune telling machine and makes a wish to be big, and is told his wish is granted. It’s only then that he discovers that the machine is unplugged.