Dave Tompkins :: DVD Library :: Academy Awards (Oscars) :: Best Original Screenplay


(text-only version)

2013Her (2013)
2012  Django Unchained (2012)

With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

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2011  Midnight in Paris (2011)

A romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.

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2010  The King's Speech (2010)

The story of King George VI of Britain, his impromptu ascension to the throne and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch become worthy of it.

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2009  The Hurt Locker (2009)

Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

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2008  Milk (2008)

The story of Harvey Milk, and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official.

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2007  Juno (2007)

Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.

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2006  Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

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2005  Crash (2004)

Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters...

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2004  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.

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2003  Lost in Translation (2003)

A movie star with a sense of emptiness, and a neglected newlywed meet up as strangers in Tokyo, Japan and form an unlikely bond.

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2002  Talk to Her (2002)

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for their girlfriends who are both in deep comas.

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2001  Gosford Park (2001)

Multiple storylined drama set in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guest and downstairs servants at a party in a country house in England.

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2000  Almost Famous (2000)

A high-school boy is given the chance to write a story for Rolling Stone Magazine about an up-and-coming rock band as he accompanies it on their concert tour.

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1999  American Beauty (1999)

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend.

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1998  Shakespeare in Love (1998)

A young Shakespeare, out of ideas and short of cash, meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.

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1997  Good Will Hunting (1997)

Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics which is discovered, and a psychologist tries to help him with his gift and the rest of his life.

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1996  Fargo (1996)

Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of pregnant Marge Gunderson.

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1995  The Usual Suspects (1995)

A boat has been destroyed, criminals are dead, and the key to this mystery lies with the only survivor and his twisted, convoluted story beginning with five career crooks in a seemingly random police lineup.

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1994  Pulp Fiction (1994)

The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

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1993  The Piano (1993)

A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she's soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.

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1992  The Crying Game (1992)

A British soldier is kidnaped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier's world.

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1991  Thelma & Louise (1991)

An Arkansas waitress and a housewife shoot a rapist and take off in a '66 Thunderbird.

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1990  Ghost (1990)

After being killed during a botched mugging, a man's love for his partner enables him to remain on earth as a ghost.

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1989  Dead Poets Society (1989)

English professor John Keating inspires his students to a love of poetry and to seize the day.

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1988  Rain Man (1988)

Selfish yuppie Charlie Babbitt's father left a fortune to his savant brother Raymond and a pittance to Charlie; they travel cross-country.

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1987  Moonstruck (1987)

A widowed Brooklyn book-keeper is torn between her fiancé and his brother.

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1986  Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

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1985  Witness (1985)

A young Amish boy is sole witness to a murder; policeman John Book goes into hiding in Amish country to protect him until the trial.

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1984  Places in the Heart (1984)

In 1930's Southern US, a widow and her family try to run their cotton farm with the help of a disparate group of friends.

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1983  Tender Mercies (1983)

A broken-down, middle-aged country singer gets a new wife, reaches out to his long-lost daughter, and tries to put his troubled life back together.

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1982  Gandhi (1982)

Biography of Mahatma Gandhi , the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British through his philosophy of non-violent protest.

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1981  Chariots of Fire (1981)

The story of two British track athletes, one a determined Jew, and the other a devout Christian who compete in the 1924 Olympics.

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1980  Melvin and Howard (1980)

The story of hard-luck Melvin Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes.

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1979  Breaking Away (1979)

A small-town teen obsessed with the Italian cycling team vies for the affections of a college girl.

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1978  Coming Home (1978)

A woman whose husband is fighting in Vietnam falls in love with another man who suffered a paralyzing combat injury there.

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1977  Annie Hall (1977)

Neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.

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1976  Network (1976)

A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit.

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1975  Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

A man robs a bank to pay for his lover's operation; it turns into a hostage situation and a media circus.

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1974  Chinatown (1974)

A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles on to a scheme of murder that has something to do with water.

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1973  The Sting (1973)

In 1930s Chicago, a young con man seeking revenge for his murdered partner teams up with a master of the big con to win a fortune from a criminal banker.

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1972  The Candidate (1972)

Bill McKay is a candidate for the U.S. Senate from California. He has no hope of winning, so he is willing to tweak the establishment.

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1971  The Hospital (1971)

Black comedy in which a suicidal doctor struggles to find meaning in his life while a murderer stalks the halls of his hospital.

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1970  Patton (1970)

The World War II phase of the controversial American general's career is depicted.

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1969  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close.

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1968  The Producers (1968)

Producers Max Bialystock (Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Wilder) make money by producing a sure-fire flop.

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1967  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Matt and Christina Drayton are a couple whose attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.

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1966  A Man and a Woman (1966)

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other...

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1965  Darling (1965)

A beautiful but amoral model sleeps her way to the top of the London fashion scene at the height of the Swinging Sixties.

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1964  Father Goose (1964)

During WW2, a man persuaded to live on an isolated island and spot aircraft finds himself responsible for a teacher and several students, all female.

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1963  How the West was Won (1962)

A family saga covering several decades of Westward expansion in the nineteenth century--including the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the building of the railroads.

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1962  Divorce Italian Style (1961)

A married Sicilian baron falls in love with his cousin and vows to wed her, but with divorce illegal he must concoct a crime of passion to do away with his wife.

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1961  Splendor in the Grass (1961)

A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.

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1960  The Apartment (1960)

A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

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1959  Pillow Talk (1959)

A man and woman share a telephone line and despise each other, but then he has fun by romancing her with his voice disguised.

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1958The Defiant Ones (1958)
1957  Designing Woman (1957)

When Mike Hagen and Marilla Brown marry after a whirlwind romance on the west coast, they return to New York to find that they don't have much in common...

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1956  The Red Balloon (1956)

A red balloon with a life of its own follows a little boy around the streets of Paris.

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