Alfonso Cuarón’s lovingly detailed drama inspired by his childhood in Mexico earned the filmmaker Oscars for his directing and cinematography, but his expertly chosen cast was a key factor in bringing his story to vivid cinematic life. Best Actress nominee Yalitza Aparicio is Cleo, the devoted housekeeper who faces her own challenges while helping to keep the family together, and Supporting Actress nominee Marina de Tavira is Sofia, the mother of the family, struggling with the breakup of her marriage.

The second feature from filmmaking duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) is a surreal fantasy/science fiction/action/comedy/drama about a Chinese American family that owns a laundromat and learns they must explore the multiverse to save their own universe. Michelle Yeoh won a Best Actress Oscar for her dazzling performance in a challenging role, which paid homage to her career as an international film star while basing her character in a complex emotional reality. The film earned 11 nominations and 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), and Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis).

James Cagney vaulted to superstardom with gangster roles in The Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces, but his background as a vaudeville dancer made him an ideal choice to portray iconic songwriter George M. Cohan, winning his only Oscar in the process. This lively musical biopic from director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) received eight nominations including Best Picture, and won three Oscars including Sound Recording, with the work of the Warner Bros. sound department (Nathan Levinson, sound director) spotlighting Cagney’s performances of Cohan classics such as “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

Anatole Litvak (Anastasia) directed this groundbreaking Hollywood look at mental illness, with two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland earning her fourth nomination for her intense performance. De Havilland plays Virginia Cunningham, a young wife under treatment in a mental institution, in this adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel by Mary Jane Ward. Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and for Litvak’s direction, it won Sound Recording for 20th Century-Fox’s sound department (Thomas T. Moulton, sound director), whose contribution makes the heroine’s plight chillingly vivid.

Producer-director Stanley Kramer assembled a remarkable cast of comic stars for his epic slapstick farce, with Spencer Tracy starring as an about-to-retire police captain on the trail of a group of strangers (including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, and Mickey Rooney) racing to find a criminal’s buried loot. A comedy blockbuster that has maintained a devoted following for more than six decades, it received six nominations and earned the Oscar for Walter Elliott’s sound effects.

At the height of the 1970s disaster-movie craze, two competing studios teamed with producer Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure) and director John Guillermin (King Kong) for an epic thriller about a San Francisco skyscraper imperiled by fire during its opening celebration. Paul Newman is the architect and Steve McQueen is the fire chief who must save the all-star cast, including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Jennifer Jones, and an Oscar-nominated Fred Astaire. Nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Sound, it won for its cinematography, film editing, and the original song “We May Never Love Like This Again.” 

The search for the Holy Grail sets Indiana Jones on yet another nonstop action adventure and teams with him an unexpected partner—his estranged father. The once-in-a-lifetime pairing of screen legends Harrison Ford and Sean Connery as two generations of Joneses is one of the many delights of director Steven Spielberg’s third film about the globe-trotting archaeology professor.  Ben Burtt and Richard Hymns helped bring the adventure to life with their Oscar-winning sound effects editing, and the film also received nominations for Sound (Burtt, Gary Summers, Shawn Murphy, Tony Dawe) and John Williams’s thrilling score. 

Ruben Stone is a metal drummer whose diagnosis of progressive hearing loss forces him to reevaluate his art and life in this powerful drama directed and cowritten by Darius Marder. Riz Ahmed was nominated for his moving lead performance, and the film’s six nominations include Best Picture and Paul Raci’s supporting performance. Sound of Metal won Oscars for Film Editing (Mikkel E. G. Nielsen) and Sound (Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michellee Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés Navarrete, Phillip Bladh).

The first of Tom Clancy’s best-selling novels about CIA analyst Jack Ryan was brought to the screen by director John McTiernan (Die Hard). When Ryan (Alec Baldwin) learns that a state-of-the-art Soviet submarine piloted by Capt. Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) has gone rogue, he becomes convinced that the crew is trying to defect and embarks on a dangerous mission to avert World War III. The film earned three Oscar nominations, including Film Editing and Sound, and won for the sound effects editing of Cecelia Hall and George Watters II, who help make the film’s submarine settings feel uncannily real.