MY Greatest Movies Of All Time
In an effort to show Lance Manly just which movies are really the greatest of all time, I present my list.
I reserve the right to change my mind about any of these films at any time. Usually the top five stay consistent, but the lower five switch out as the years go by.
10. Radio Days (1987, d. Woody Allen)
Life growing up during WW2 as only Woody Allen can tell it. Little boy wonderment, working dads and stay at home moms. Boogie-woogie music, learning to live without and giving up things for the cause. Patriotism, family, religion, and a guy running down the street in his underwear with a meat-cleaver to the strains of “Mairzy Doats.” Radio shows. You believed “The Shadow Knows” and listened in on the party-line. Nothing beats this film for sweet nostalgia…
9. A Christmas Story (1983, d. Bob Clark)
…except maybe this tale of Ralphie, the boy who wanted an Official Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle for Christmas. Never before or since have we felt the anguish of a 10 year old boy dressed up in a giant pink bunny outfit. This film shows what it’s like to be betrayed by Ovaltine, to abandon your best pal in the schoolyard whose tongue is stuck to a pole just because the bell rang, and to have electric sex displayed in your front window for all the neighborhood to see. Based on a book by Jean Shepherd (God rest his soul.)
8. The Year My Voice Broke (1987, d. John Duigan)
Wow, a teen angst relationship movie without any nudity. A first, ha ha. Well made and yes, tender story of Danny Embling, everyone’s favorite underdog. He’s in love with Freya, who is in love with bad boy Trevor. Freya seems to be following in the footsteps of her once trampy and now dead mother, Sarah. Danny wants to save her from Trevor, but that’s kind of difficult when everyone at school hates him and the only person who will stand up for him is Trev himself. Woe is Danny. And things don’t get much better for him in the sequel, either.
7. The Last of the Mohicans (1992, d. Michael Mann)
Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Nathaniel, the adopted son of Chingachgook (who really ends up The Last of the Proverbial Mohicans.) Beautiful music highlights this tale of romance and really pissed off natives in 1750’s America. Hard to tell whose hair is prettier, Hawkeye’s or Cora’s. Has the most romantic scene I have ever witnessed in film: Hawkeye seeking out Cora at the fort and then having a wild make out session against the backdrop of gunfire and other assorted explosions.
6. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001, d. Sharon Maguire)
My good friend Bridget who seems to do everything wrong but somehow someone finds her good enough “just as she is,” anyway. Another film that did not need to rely on nudity to get the point across.
5. Empire of the Sun (1987, d. Steven Spielberg)
I do so love movies which are primarily about boys or men in their own environments. Empire doesn’t have many women or girls in it, or at least they aren’t given a whole lot of screen time. James Graham aka Jamie or Jim (”a new name for a new life”) ends up in a Japanese internment camp when he’s separated from his parents in Shanghai. Based upon J.G. (wonder what those initials stand for, ha ha) Ballard’s book. Some action and shooting and explosions, some calculated meanness by Basie towards Jim, still no nudity that I recall. Lots of shots of planes, as Jim is a bit obsessed with them. Excellent, Oscar-worthy performance by Christian Bale.
4. My Bodyguard (1980, d. Tony Bill)
Again, a film with very few females. Cliff is being bullied by Moody and his gang after starting a new school. Seeing how Moody is afraid of one tall and threatening looking yet loner-type student called Ricky Linderman, Cliff devises a plan to pay Ricky to be his bodyguard. The rumor is that Ricky “raped a teacher” or broke people’s legs, but what he actually did was “kill a kid.” Yes, he did. Why, and how it affected him, is the crux of the story. Cliff and Ricky slowly become friends, and the secrets that Ricky has been hiding finally come out. A brilliant movie.
3. Au Revoir les Enfants (1987 d. Louis Malle. In French with English subtitles.)
What can I say beyond this movie really changed my life. I felt so different about things when I stepped out of the movie theater back in January 1987. The film is director Louis Malle’s actual life story of the time he attended boarding school during WW2. The Catholic priests at the school were harboring Jews, a major crime in those times. The Gestapo eventually finds the boys and takes them away along with the priests.
2. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993, d. Steven Zaillian
I cried on the bus on the way home from this film. It may look like just a story about a kid playing chess, but if you look into it a bit you will see it’s about love and forgiveness, compassion and innocence. It’s about what you are before the world gets its claws into you.
1. A Room With a View (1985, d. James Ivory)
Lucy Honeychurch is off to Italy where she meets an assortment of odd characters. She comes home to England to her stuffy fiance, secretly dreaming about George Emerson, an eccentric romantic blond Adonis she met while in Italy. She has a hard time admitting to herself that she is in love with him. He knows for sure he’s in love with her, and so he follows her back to England pretty much, and insinuate himself into her life in a very subtle way. She just can’t be rid of the boy, so ends up with him. Simple story. beautiful, really. And the only nudity is George and Lucy’s brother along with the vicar all “having a bathe” in the local watering hole where they splash each other and their little penises flap around as they run, and you get a very gratuitous shot of the vicars pendulous scrotum. This of course is what makes this film The Greatest Film Of All Time. It certainly was a VIEW.
Just so we are on the same page, I don’t believe it’s possible to know which movies are the greatest of all time. I mean, unless you’ve seen every movie ever made. Maybe then. And even now with the thousands I’ve seen, I know I must be leaving some wonderful movies out. So this list is pretty meaningless, really.
your Origami reporter,
Momo
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