Oscar Winner: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration

Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basinger plays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a takeover of the city with his lethal Smilex gas.

On his deathbed, Court Composer Antonio Salieri confesses to having killed Mozart, the Genius composer. Flashback to Mozart's arrival in Vienna. His brash and vulgar manner is the antithesis of his divine musical gift. Salieri cannot reconcile that God would endow such genius on this coarse boy. The story unfolds as Mozart becomes more and more popular and Salieri becomes more obsessed with destroying him and getting his revenge on God. Using his influence, Salieri drives his rival to poverty.

Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) turns the camera on himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle musical, allegory to satire. It's an indication of his bravura, and possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script) literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon's heart in a key scene--an unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart procedure.

Climb aboard the Nautilus... and into a strange undersea world of spellbinding adventure! Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre star as shipwrecked survivors taken captive by the mysterious Captain Nemo, brilliantly portrayed by James Mason. Wavering between genius and madness, Nemo has launched a deadly crusade across the seven seas. But can the captive crew expose his evil plan before he destroys the world?

In the Watergate Building, lights go on and four burglars are caught in the act. That night triggered revelations that drove a U.S. President from office. Washington reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) grabbed the story and stayed with it through doubts, denials, discouragement. All The President's Men is their story. Directed by Alan J. Pakula and based on the Woodward/Bernstein book, the film won four 1976 Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor/Jason Robards, Adaptation Screenplay, Art Direction and Sound.

Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.