Won: Eight Oscars, including Best Picture, 1985 A sort of prestige picture done right, Milos Forman's Amadeus swept the Academy Awards back in 1985, when it won eight of the eleven Oscars it was nominated for (the winners: Best Picture, Lead Actor , Director , Ad. Screenplay, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, Makeup). The story of Mozart, whose middle name is instead used for the title to suggest a subversive film that's not necessarily all about Mozart himself - it's actually more about his great rival, Salieri (Abraham), whose bitterness at Mozart's success makes Amadeus one of the great films about artistic jealousy - Forman's film is a lush, textured extravaganza; long, yes, but also tight, masterful, and expertly staged and performed (the decision to turn Mozart into a spoiled man-child, memorably played by the Oscar nominated, Tom Hulce, is a brilliant one). Amadeus won Forman his second Best Director Oscar (the first coming for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a decade earlier), putting the director in the hallowed company of the eighteen other men who have won the award more than once (these including William Wyler, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Frank Capra, Eli Kazan).
