Hanks For The Memory

Almost from its inception from time to time The Rust has featured a selection of lists.

We love them.

Most importantly, in times like these, they can be a reliable kicking-off point for conversations and arguments. Inevitably, in the nature of human things, nothing is quite as simple as you might initially think.

Here’s a case in point:

Peter Bradshaw selects his “Best 25 Tom Hanks Films” in a piece that appears on the website today of – THE GUARDIAN

Do Ruster movie fans agree with him? Let me know what you think?

The other aspect is the inherent uncertainty in Bradshaw’s choice of criteria. Has he really selected what he considers the best Tom Hanks movies, or just his 25 most favourite ones?

And has he selected them in ascending order of excellence, or perhaps in order of his personal sentimental attachment to each?

And, then again – ultimately – does it even matter?

Answers, please … by “key worker” courier, postcard, first class post, or horse and carriage … to the usual address.

Next week, assuming we’re all still in lock-down by then – echoing something mentioned to me by The Rust‘s boxing correspondent James Westacott – viz. a cult underground boxing magazine that flourished briefly in the UK in the 1980s which at one time ran a feature on Great Fights I Have Slept Through – I shall be running a Rust competition via WhatsApp group challenging our readers to list their Top Twenty Movies Of All Time That I Have Never Seen.

It will be a two-part competition: (1) listing your Top Twenty; and (2) explaining why you regard each of them as Great Movies in less than ten lines of A4 text.

Stand by for further details …