MY 100 FAVOURITE FILMS (PART NINE). We're heading into the home stretch.

• On Golden Pond (1981) dir. Mark Rydell -- How CHARIOTS OF FIRE won best picture this year I'll never know. Examination of old age and the communication (or lack thereof) between the generations. Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda are sublime as always and Jane Fonda allows herself to be subordinated to the needs of the film. Henry Fonda's character feels himself fading away while Hepburn as his wife tries her best to bolster his sagging confidence. Bittersweet without being cloying.

• The Four Seasons (1981) dir. Alan Alda -- Three couples (Alan Alda & Carol Burnett, Rita Moreno and Jack Weston & Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis)grapple with the onset of middle age and the breakup of one of their marriages. A film divided into four parts (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) rejoins the groups only when they rejoin each other on their shared group vacations during each season of the year. Strongly character driven and quite funny in places. The introduction of Bess Armstrong as the "newcomer" throws all their staid lives into a tailspin.

• Strange Brew (1983) dir. Rick Moranis/Dave Thomas -- Before Beavis & Butthead, before Wayne & Garth there was Bob & Doug McKenzie. Direct from SCTV, the pair make their big screen debut in an audacious knuckleheaded comedy which manages to snare Max Von Sydow into the mix as well. The plot is too ridiculous to recount (deliberately convoluted as part of the joke) but the strange and very true-to-life brotherly relationship between Moranis and Thomas makes the film eminently watchable.
• A Christmas Story (1983) dir. Bob Clark -- the perennial Christmas favourite actually deserves to be dragged out every year. Magnificently written Jean Shepherd sorta memoir/reminiscence that manages to evoke the late 30's/early 40's with the addition of modern sensibilities looking backward. Peter Billingsley manages to carry the film on his tiny shoulders while Darren McGavin's father is priceless.

• Brazil (1985) dir. Terry Gilliam -- Former Python's masterpiece of dystopian near-future (are we there finally at long last?!?) with the faceless, monolithic power-that-be treating you and I like pawns. Jonathan Pryce is the nebbish office worker who dreams of heroics while battling his appliances. Katharine Helmond is his plastic surgery-obsessed mother (My God we ARE there already, aren't we?). Michael Palin is genuinely frightening in his smiling evil portrayal. Gilliam's epoch-shaking battle with the studio who wanted to impose a happy ending on the film was the stuff of a book in itself (THE BATTLE OF BRAZIL) but Gilliam's original cut is the ONLY one to watch; avoid the studio version like the plague!

• The Breakfast Club (1985) dir. John Hughes -- Not a John Hughes fan but I love this movie. Probably because I practically lived it. Unusually effective "brat pack" cast brings real emotion to the plight of high schoolers desperately trying to resist being crammed into the neat little boxes imposed by society at large. My late great college professor (The Underground Grammarian Dr. Richard Mitchell) once said to me that he always watched two movies before the start of every school year: EDUCATING RITA (which just missed out on this list) to remember how a teacher SHOULD be and THE BREAKFAST CLUB to remember where his students were coming from. Keen soundtrack too.

• Clockwise (1986) dir. Christopher Morahan -- John Cleese's cinematic highpoint as he plays a teacher obsessed with punctuality who must travel to be guest of honour at a teacher's symposium. Naturally, everything that could possibly go wrong does go wrong. A modern day screwball comedy/road picture.
• 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) dir. David Hugh Jones -- Based (almost verbattim) from the real life correspondence between author Helene Hanff and the manager of a rare book store in England. The two leads are sensitively played by Anne Bancroft (who got her husband Mel Brooks to produce the picture for her) and Anthony Hopkins who manage to depict a love story between two people who never actually meet.

• Shirley Valentine (1989) dir. Lewis Gilbert -- Hello, wall. The story of a beaten down, ignored and taken for granted British housewife (Pauline Collins in an Oscar-worthy performance) who one day gets fed up and takes off for a vacation in Greece. She finds herself becoming so alive there that she suddenly decides not to go home at all and to stay in Greece for good. Brilliantly written and acted. And a film which every woman I've ever known who has seen it LOVES it.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) dir. Tom Stoppard -- closely adapted from his own play, Tom Stoppard's film follows the misadventures of those two extremely minor characters from HAMLET. The film follows the events in Shakespeare's play but prefers to stick with the two dolts instead of following the main characters of HAMLET. Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are perfect as the dumb and dumber Shakespearean characters; sort of an Elizabethan Abbott & Costello.

Well, holy frijoles! We're almost to the end of the 100. Stay tuned for the next installment which will bring us up to the present day (Lord help us!). And there awaits for us AIDS, assassination, more AIDS, a dodgy knee, Japanese school children with assault weapons, big feet, ghosts and zombies. See you there.