What Shoulda' Won Best Picture of 1986

1986 might be one of the most underrated years for movies. Or it might not. Maybe I’m just nuts, but, a year in which “Top Gun,” “Back to School,” “Ruthless People,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Rad,” and “Sid and Nancy” were released is pret-ty sweet.

It was the year that Oliver Stone became a household name. For better…and for…nah, for worse.

The Academy’s best picture nominees of 1986:

Platoon: The eventual winner. I’ve seen it a few times, and it’s a very ambiguous movie. Buried somewhere in this morality tale, is, I’m sure, a message. It’s real subtle, though

Hannah and Her Sisters: Woody Allen in fine form. Great ensemble cast. Best Supporting Actor winner Michael Caine called the Academy and said, “I’m going to miss the ceremony mates. I’m in Jamaica making the BEST MOVIE EVER.” He was wrong.

Children of a Lesser God: I think, I think…this might have been a play before it was a movie.

The Mission: There is nothing particularly wrong with this movie, but would it have killed them to make it a teensy bit fun?

What should have been nominated? Easy.

Stand By Me: I’ve got friends who say it hasn’t aged well. I hope they get hit by a train and me and our other friends can go looking for them.

Blue Velvet: Daddy likes to watch this movie.

Lucas: Funny, heartbreaking, and painfully honest. Charlie Sheen was on a roll this year. Here, he excels as a sensitive, nice jock. Get that…a high school football player in a Hollywood movie who’s not a total douche. And Winona Ryder. Oh my, Winona Ryder. Same friend who hates Stand By Me: Dude, she’s heinous in that movie! Me: Fine. More Winona for me.

Hoosiers: Can’t…watch…too…much…awesomeness…head…exploding…

And the winner for what shoulda’ won best picture? Hoosiers.

Watching a movie like Hoosiers, even for the second, or, oh, one millionth time, one gets the feeling of what it might be like… To be God. Even atheists can be somewhat down with this. Just wrap your head around the idea of an all-knowing, benevolent, kind and loving Being, even if you consider it a fairy tale. He knows how it’s going to end. He knows our foibles, our sins, our mistakes … and his knowledge of our deepest, darkest, most lamentable secrets is nothing short of intimate.

Now suppose He’s rooting us on every step of the way.

We cringe when Shooter (Dennis Hopper) shows up drunk at the game, staggering onto the court, embarrassing his son. The millionth time we see it, the cringing increases by a factor of, well, a million. And although we know, even on first viewing, that Jimmy Chitwood will indeed sink a shot to win the Indiana state championship, we are no less thrilled when it happens. In fact, the movie sets it up so that we demand it, with Coach Dale (Gene Hackman) calling a different play, for a different player. It’s obviously a psychological ploy by Dale and in turn by the filmmakers. Dale wants Jimmy to demand the ball just as the filmmakers want us to want Jimmy to demand the ball. He was the kid that refused to play. After a tragedy in his family, his guardian Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey) helps him decide that maybe basketball has been just a bit to important to Jimmy and it’s time to unlace the Chuck Taylors for a while.

But Jimmy loves basketball. And he’s got the prettiest jumper ever put on film, at least this side of Jesus Shuttlesworth in “He Got Game.” But Jesus was played by Ray Allen, so, yeah, he’s got a bang-up jumper. Jimmy was played by Maris Valainis, who didn’t do much after Hoosiers and who, in reality, had been cut twice from his own high school team.

There are perhaps too many great moments to count. I love the conflicted Myra Fleener, who loves basketball almost as much as she hates it. I love the authenticity of those little sweatbox gyms; you can practically smell the wood from the planked floors and the leather from those old slick basketballs. The meeting in the barber shop, where a bunch of men who couldn’t be bothered to coach the team, tell Dale what kind of team he ought to be running. And hoisting the whole thing on his shoulders is, of course, the indisputably great Gene Hackman, whose Coach Dale yearns for a redemption that he may not have the right to earn.

We’re rooting for him every step of the way.