Monthly Archives: January 2013

Top 10… Films I Missed in 2012

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So last year I went to the cinema 14 times (technically 14 1/2), as I discussed here. However, and this may come as something of a shock, last year more than 14 films were released, and I’ve watched very few on DVD that I didn’t see in the cinema, so there may have been a few decent films that I missed. Now obviously I can’t put any of those on my best of 2012 list, as I can’t vouch for their quality. What I can do, however, is speculate on the ones that I missed, with the intention of slotting them into my list once I’ve seen them, hopefully later this year. In fact, at least two of my list will definitely be seen this year, as they’re amongst my DVD collection of unseen films. So, without further ado, here are the ten films I wished I’d seen last year, but for some reason or another I haven’t (generally a lack of time, money, distribution or organisation).Honourable Mention

God Bless America
I feel like I’ve already seen this due to the sheer volume of podcasts director Bobcat Goldthwaite appeared on last year talking about this film. It sounds right up my alley too – sick of society, a terminally ill man (Mad Men’s Joel Murray) goes on a road trip to rid the world of evil people, and is joined along the way by a potentially sociopathic 16-year old girl. Apparently, there’s a scene where a baby explodes. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but either way I feel that I need to find out. I haven’t seen it yet because I don’t think it came anywhere near me cinema-wise (all i have are two Odeons and an Empire cinema nearby, plus a one-screen tiny little cinema that most people would call arthouse, but they rarely show anything I want to see).

10. Sightseers
I’m not super-excited for this film yet, because I still haven’t seen director Ben Wheatley’s previous two films, Down Terrace and Kill List, the latter of which is in my Unseen DVDs list, so I’ll be getting to it soon, but similarly to God Bless America this sounds nice and gruesomely whacko, with a couple of caravanning outcasts (Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who created the characters on stage many years ago) taking out anyone who crosses their path as they visit some of the more obscure tourist attractions around the Lake District. Again, this was too small a release to make it near me, but I’ve just discovered its on at Poole Lighthouse next week, so I may have to pop over and watch it. I’ve heard good and interesting reviews, mostly along the lines of this being bloodily humourous and humourously bloody, which suits me no end.

9. Frankenweenie
Tim Burton’s been a bit more miss than hit of late, which always seems to be the case when he tries to adapt something he didn’t create. Frankenweenie, on the other hand, was an original story that Burton created many years ago, so it showed real promise and potential for being as good as some of his better works. And it’s in black and white. And it’s about a dog that’s been brought back to life by an inventive child. I wanted to see it, the reviews were good, but it just seemed like something that could wait to be appreciated at home, on DVD, which I’m sure is how I’ll eventually see it via LoveFilm at some point in the next three to five years.

8. Life Of Pi
Yann Martel’s Booker prize-winning novel is wonderful, and if the reviews I’ve read are anything to go by, Ang Lee’s film is just as good (“life affirming” seems to be this film’s buzz-phrase). Also, the 3D is supposed to be really good, but I’m not a huge fan of the extra dimension, so I doubt I’ll ever see it in that format. I get the feeling that this is the kind of film that really benefits from being seen in a cinema, and even though it’s still in theatres (it was released here on December 20th), the oncoming slew of great-looking movies may well prevent me from seeing this on the big screen.

7. Safety Not Guaranteed
This film, on the other hand, looks positively designed for home viewing, as it’s basically a mumblecore time travel movie, with all of the production values and jaw-dropping set pieces that description entails. The premise sounds really interesting – magazine writers follow up on a newspaper advert for a companion to go time travelling – and I’m really intrigued to see where it goes from there. It was only released here on boxing day, and I highly doubt it’ll ever come near me theatrically, but I’m looking forward to catching in on DVD as soon as possible.

6. Ruby Sparks
I loved Little Miss Sunshine, so when Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ next directorial outing, again starring the always great Paul Dano, failed to materialise at my local Odeons in October, I was less than pleased. This is still a state in which I find myself, and I’m really considering moving to somewhere that receives a wider selection of films. The story, about Dano’s writer’s block stricken novelist accidentally creating his dream girl by writing her on the page, could go so wrong in the hands of other directors, but I just know that Dayton and Faris will keep this from being either sordid or silly.

5. Beasts of the Southern Wild
By all rights, this sounds like the best film released this year, judging from the rave reviews it received everywhere I look, but guess what? It never made it to my local cinemas! So I’ve not seen it, although to be honest I don’t know if I would have gone anyway, as it’s only 93 minutes long, and I like to get my money’s worth at the cinema in terms of length. That being said, The Cabin In The Woods was my top film of the year, and that’s only 95 minutes long, so what do I know anyway?

4. Chronicle
All being well, I’ll be seeing this found footage superhero movie fairly soon, as I got it for Christmas from my girlfriend’s Grandad, in an eclectic combo of this, Singin’ in the Rain and The Skin I Live In, all of which I’m very much looking forward to seeing. I hear very good things about it, so you can look out for my thoughts on it soon. It was good enough to spark furious debate about whether director Josh Trank would be directing the upcoming Star Wars sequels, but it turns out he’s doing a Fantastic Four reboot instead. Hopefully it’ll be better than the last one, and judging by Chronicle’s reviews I think that’s a certainty.

3. Paranorman
Zombies! Stop motion zombies! An all star cast fighting stop motion zombies! How have I not seen this yet? It looked awesome, reviews were good to great, and apparently its littered with horror movie references. Plus, did I mention, stop motion zombies?

2. The Master
This one I’ve got no excuse for not seeing, as it was out in cinemas for a good little while, it’s just unfortunate that it was over the festive-preparation period, so I missed it when I was busy getting ready for Christmas. Paul Thomas Anderson has yet to make a step wrong (though I’ve not yet seen his debut, Hard Eight), and though I’ve heard this is a very divisive film that has far more character than actual plot, I still look forward to eventually seeing it, and it’s pretty much a certainty that it’ll appear on the 1001 List come October.

1. Moonrise Kingdom
As with Chronicle, I’ll be seeing this soon as I’ve already got the DVD. I rather like the films of Wes Anderson, not least because he always uses actors I’m a fan of, such as Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, and adds to that list Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton for this film about two kids running away together, and the hunt that takes place for them. I’ve deliberately kept myself from finding out too much about this film, other than who is in it and the general outline of the plot, as I had fully intended to go and see it, but for a reason I honestly can’t remember, it just didn’t happen. I don’t think it was out for long though, so I may have been planning to go the following week from some point, only to find it wasn’t out any more.

I also really want to see these films, but there wasn‘t room for them in the Top 10:
Amour
Cloud Atlas 
Corman’s World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel
The Expendables 2
Holy Motors
Ice Age 4 Continental Drift
The Imposter
Silver Linings Playbook

Top 10… Films Of 2012

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As promised, the Top lists have returned, with a vengeance! For you see, what once was five has now become ten, because y’know, when something was already a struggle to do on a weekly basis, why not double the workload? Anyway, this list is a fairly standard one for this time of year, looking back at the best films of 2012. I went to the cinema a total of 14 times last year, and for the most part I only saw films that I actually wanted to see, hence why I was able to make this list, as most of what I saw I genuinely loved. The three films that didn’t quite make it this year were, in ascending order, The Woman in Black (partly because of my terrible film experience, partly because it was quite a boring film that I didn’t want to see anyway, thanks Craig), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (wonderful viewing experience, good film that genuinely made me happy) and Prometheus (massive disappointment, but probably better than I originally gave it credit for, if you remove my impossible expectations).

Honourable Mention
The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists
Aardman! In an animation with monkeys! Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run and everything else this Bristol-based animation studio have provided (except maybe Flushed Away) are British treasures, and the closest this country is ever likely to come to Pixar. This story, based on an acclaimed series of children’s books, sees Hugh Grant’s Pirate Captain attempt to win both the Pirate of the Year competition and a big pile of cash from some easily-impressed scientists. It’s hilarious, beautifully crafted and packed with a wonderful cast, including David Tennant as Charles Darwin, Imelda Staunton as Queen Victoria and Martin Freeman as Pirate with a Scarf, and I’ve just realised that I don’t own it yet and I’ve forbidden myself from buying DVDs this year, so I can’t watch it again for a while. Bugger.

10. The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan’s trilogy closer disappointed many people, myself included, but it is still one of the best films this year in terms of spectacle, storytelling and general epic-ness. I think it may be better than I originally gave it credit for, and I desperately need to watch it again, at which point it may find itself rising through the ranks of this list. The film ended Batman’s arc nicely, with the inclusion of some interesting characters, and a truly effective villain in Tom Hardy’s Bane. I seem to be the only person who had issues with Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, but thankfully we have Joseph Gordon Levitt, Matthew Modine and Marion Cotillard to more than make up for that. And Michael Caine was phenomenal, and I’ll be even more disappointed if he doesn’t receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Alfred.

9. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
 Sneaking its way onto this list after I saw it on New Year’s Eve, The Hobbit was just as entertaining as I’d hoped. There were a few niggles (The Goblin King, old-Bilbo’s introduction) but not enough to spoil what was otherwise a tremendous, and tremendously long, cinema experience. I didn’t see it in 3D or 48fps, because two dimensions and 24 frames per second worked pretty well for The Lord Of The Rings, so I felt it wasn’t really necessary here. Martin Freeman is possibly the most perfect casting in all of history as the younger Bilbo, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (pronounced Smow-erg, not Smorg as I’d always believed) has just jacked up by most anticipated list of 2013 (see next Friday).

8. Brave
Now this is a surprise to me too. When I first saw Brave, I was fairly non-plussed, seeing it as better than the lesser-Pixars (Cars and, presumably, Cars 2), but not as good as anything else they’ve produced. The lack of a truly compelling story, combined with far less going on in the backgrounds of scenes than I’d previously come to expect from a Pixar film made this almost boring to watch. But, after having watched it again recently (also on New Year’s Eve, immediately after The Hobbit) I found it to be nothing short of delightful, full of colourful characters, a wide variety of comedic goings on (a bear falling down stairs, what more could you possibly want than a bear falling down stairs?) and the typically magical effects from the animation wonderhouse. And whilst Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) will never be my favourite Pixar character (because y’know, she’s a girl), her dad (Billy Connolly) is very entertaining.

7. Skyfall
Last year James Bond came back, back, back with the help of Same Mendes, and together they made one of the greatest James Bond films in history, at least in the Top 5. Skyfall had everything a good Bond film needs – beautiful but disposable women, a nerdy Q (Ben Whishaw, brilliant), a cool car (and me noticing a car is something to take note of), some top quality British actors getting to have a bit of fun (Ralph Fiennes, Judi Dench, Albert Finney), incredible stunts and, of course, a dastardly villain, here in the shape of Javier Badrem’s Silva. Its almost flawless, except no-one really wants to see James Bond become a wreck and suck at being an agent, even if its just for a little while. This is easily forgotten by just remembering the bit where he checks his cuffs after jumping into a destroyed train carriage. Easily my favourite moment in cinema this year, with Avengers’ “Puny God” line being a close second.

6. Argo
Ben Affleck continued his quality-ascending solid thrillers with this impossibly tense extraction film, as his CIA agent formulates and performs and elaborate scheme to rescue six American citizens from 1980s Iran. The mix of edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting tension and biting, self deprecating satire of the Hollywood industry courtesy of Alan Arkin and John Goodman worked unbelievably well, and it was a long time after I’d seen the film that my heart stopped racing at an incredible pace, so fraught is the film. A cracking supporting cast featuring every jobbing character actor available (Bryan Cranston! yay!), an effective and realistic recreation of the era and a well balanced script outshines the overly Hollywood-ised ending to finish off Affleck’s best work to date, both in front of and behind the camera. Roll on whatever he decides to do next.

5. Looper
It’s officially the film I’ve seen the most times at the cinema, with a current total of 1.5 viewings after I fainted during the first attempt. The fact that I not only paid for myself but also a friend to go and see it again (in premier seats no less, and a different companion to the first co-watcher) must mean that the story was beyond captivating. The casting of Bruce Willis and Joseph ‘Joggle’ Gordon Levitt as the older and younger versions of the same guy who, for reasons that become clear, aren’t necessarily all that fond of each other and are definitely out for different goals, is just beautifully done, and I never had any problem with Joggle’s facial prosthetics. There are so many things I want to say about this film, but pretty much all of them are spoilers, so if you still haven’t seen it I can only imagine it’s because you haven’t seen either of director Rian Johnson’s other films, in which case go and watch this, Brick and The Brothers Bloom immediately, for this is a guy who does nothing but make good films. Imagine if he directed the new Star Wars films! They’d be so awesome. Joggle as Han and Leia’s son anyone? Oh, and one final shout out to Pierce Gagnon, the kid in this film, who is pretty goddamn great for a young’un. And Jeff Daniels, for being Jeff Daniels.

4. Seven Psychopaths
Christopher Walken! Woody Harrelson! Tom Waits! His rabbit! Sam Rockwell! Harry Dead Stanton! Kevin Corrigan! Colin Farrell! Crispin Glover! Michael Stuhlbarg! Michael Pitt! Everyone else in this goddamn cast! by Martin McDunnough! Yep, you know me, I’m a sucker for a character actor, so when you give me a cast full of them, I’ll go see your film (goddamn I can’t wait for Lincoln to get over here). Seriously, if at some point in The Sound Of Music Christopher Walken rose from the grave, Nosferatu-style, with a pistol in each hand and started unloading on a gang of hoodlums, I’d happily sit through three hours of saccharine nonsense just for that moment. Especially if he ended up gunning down the Von Trapps. Starting with the little girl. Anyway, it wasn’t just the cast that made me love this film, but all the self-referential twists and turns, the stories within stories, the complete disregard for even caring whether the female characters were well written or not, just everything. 

3. The Muppets
Now I know what you’re thinking, why is The Muppets, a film from 2011, on a best of 2012 list? Hell, it even won an Oscar in 2012. Well, that’s because I live in a world where I can receive a t-shirt I’ve ordered from America in a matter of days, but where it takes 3 months for a film to arrive in my local cinemas. You see, The Muppets wasn’t released here until February 10th 2012, so as far as I’m concerned it came out last year, and thus is more than deserving of a place on this list. The Muppets saw human the human Gary (Jason Segel) and his bizarelly felt-clad brother Walter attempt to track down the disbanded Muppets, with the hope that they’ll perform a show to raise money in order to save their theatre from evil rapping oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper). Packed to bursting with cameos (of which my favourite is probably still The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Sheridan), wonderful songs penned by Flight of the Conchords‘ Bret McKenzie and more puppet-based hilarity than is probably good for your health, this even surpasses the original The Muppet Movie in terms of sheer enjoyment value.

2. The Avengers

Firstly, I refuse to call this film by it’s British name, Avengers Assemble, because that sounds really quite dull. There is little to no chance of anyone going to see this film and be disappointed when Ralph Fiennes doesn’t show up wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella, so the marketing department can just accept that they were wrong on that front. Who knows, if they’d given it the proper name, this may well have been my top film of 2012. I guess we’ll never know. Either way, before it was released there was much speculation that this could be a monumental flop, all of which disappeared when the film was released and pretty much everyone though it was flipping amazing. And I’m inclined to agree. Be it Mark Ruffalo’s best-Hulk-yet (though that’s not necessarily saying much), the return of Tom Hiddleston as a villain worthy enough of requiring six superheroes (OK, four superheroes and two skilled agents) to bring him down, the deft blend of awe-inspiring action with laugh-out-loud humour or the many lingering shots of Scarlett Johansson’s backside, there was an awful lot to like about this film. Oh, and it was directed by Joss Whedon, who can really do no wrong in my eyes. Which brings me neatly along to…

I went into The Cabin In The Woods already knowing a little bit about the plot, which I won’t ruin just in case. If you have so far avoided hearing anything about it, I encourage you to continue to do so until the copy that I presume you are about to order arrives in the post, at which point you can sit down, watch it, watch it again, then come back and tell me which bits you loved so much. My Christmas was almost ruined when I failed to find this under neath the tree, but rest assured my shiny new Blu-Ray arrived yesterday, and I cannot wait to watch it soon (hopefully this weekend). This is a horror film for people who don’t normally watch horrors, a comedy for those that do, and just basically a great movie for people that like such things. Joss Whedon, hallowed be thy name, has crafted an intelligent, hilarious and brain-melding script whose concept is what I truly love. Even if, as with The Avengers, the trailers may have left me waiting for certain moments to happen, this is still the most enjoyable film I watched in the cinema last year.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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Bear with me here, this may sound a little strange. There’s these things called hobbits, which are basically people, but they’re quite a bit shorter than humans, with big hairy feet, and they live in the ground in houses with big round doors, and they have a penchant for pipes. One of these hobbits, Bilbo Baggins, is paid a visit by a wizard – stay with me – called Gandalf, who arranges for said hobbit to go on a quest with thirteen dwarfs – kind of like hobbits, but a little taller, bulkier, hairier and grumpier – to travel a really long way in order to break into a locked mountain and kill the giant dragon that’s sleeping on a huge pile of gold that rightfully belongs to the dwarves. Oh, and one of the dwarfs, Thorin (their king), chopped off the hand of a giant pale orc (a kind of, um, ogre?) after the orc (called Asok the Defiler, of course) killed Thorin’s grandfather, and understandably Asok is out for revenge. Oh, and there’s a mass of caves full of goblins, some giant wolf-creatures called Wargs, great big problem-solving eagles and another wizard called Radagast the Brown who keeps birds under his hat, their faeces in his hair and rides a sleigh pulled by big rabbits. Actually, now I think about it, there’s nothing all that weird about any of this.
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The Obligatory New Year’s Post

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Happy New Year! 2012 is officially over, so it’s time to look forward to 2013. I’ve not been overly busy on the site for the past few weeks; Christmas is always a busy time for me (as for most people), and I’ve not had much time for film watching, and even less for discussing afterwards, so apologies for that. I intend to pick things up a little now though. My motivation for this also stems from my New Year’s Resolution. You see, I’m something of a DVD collector. At the last count I’m up to 886 (not counting my girlfriend’s, which would put the total at a little over 900). Now, as a film fan, I think that’s acceptable, until you discover that of those 900+, I haven’t actually seen 256 of them. That’s well over a quarter of the films I own. This is far from acceptable. So, in an effort to stray ever further from my initial multi-List challenge, my aim for 2013 is not only to stop buying DVDs I haven’t seen, but to watch all those that I already own. I don’t intend to necessarily review them all, but if there’s any that I feel particularly strong about then I may grace you with a review. About 100 or so are on the other lists I’m currently running through, so they’ll be reviewed. And it’s not just DVDs I do this with either, I’ve got 80 books I haven’t read yet either, including the complete works of Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Jurassic Park and a book all about Lego. If these are any good, I’ll let you know.


There’s quite a variety of films on the Unseen list (which also has its own shiny new tab). Some were bought because they are on one of my other lists (Cinema Paradiso, It Happened One Night), some because I thought they were on a list but turned out to be wrong (A Bridge Too Far, Charade), some were gifts (Le Code A Change, The Skin I Live In), some recent ones because they’ve gotten good reviews (Kill List, Hunger) and some because they were cheap (The Man with the Golden Arm, Haywire). There’s also a couple that I’ve started watching in the past but never actually finished (Network, I Am Sam), and quite a few that I have technically seen before, in that I’ve been in the same room whilst they’ve been played, but didn’t pay enough attention that I can no longer remember anything about them (Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, The Motorcycle Diaries), so I added those to the list as well. Some I like the stars of (Barney’s Version, Crazy Heart) or the director (Jackie Brown, The Game), some are supposedly classics (Gone With the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain) and others are probably going to be terrible (Timecop, Outpost). Some are part of a boxset that I bought for another film (His Private Secretary, 3:10 to Yuma, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!), and there’s quite a few that I’m really looking forward to watching (Drive, Moonrise Kingdom, Sling Blade, Troll Hunter, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Chronicle). Oh, and there’s the one remaining film of my girlfriend’s that I haven’t watched yet (My Dog Skip).

This year will also see the long-awaited return of my Friday Top 5 lists, that stopped for no real reason other than laziness and poor time management. To make up for the hiatus, this Friday will see a bumper set of lists, all in review of 2012, with the week after taking a rather predictable look at my anticipation for the year ahead. You want a sneak preview? Giant-ass robots. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

If that’s not enough, you can also listen to me taking part in the latest Lambcast, a Lambpardy episode against current champion Dylan Fields of Man I Love Films and fellow challenger Nick Powell of The Cinematic Katzenjammer, and hosted by Kai Parker, also of Man I Love Films. And if you can wait another week, I’ll be appearing on the next episode as well, all about Tom Hanks with Dylan again, Nick Jobe and Nolahn of brand new site Your Face and Todd Liebonow of Forgotten Films. See, there’s a reason I only did six posts last month, I’ve been busy.

Violence is Funny

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Everybody has their own favourite Christmas films, and more often than not they tend to be those watched every year during your childhood. The ones you can quote line for line, and aren’t ashamed to admit you love. That’s the beauty of the Christmas film, by their very nature they almost have to be sappy, family-friendly, it’ll-all-be-OK-in-the-end schmaltz, and some are so much the better for it. Whilst A Christmas Story may not be my personal favourite, I can absolutely see why others may adore it, and you give me National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Muppet Christmas Carol or Elf every day of December and you’ll find it a difficult task to prise me from the sofa. But this post isn’t about any of those film, it’s about a series of films, all set over the holiday period, which I feel I should write about, because I love them so much. That’s right, it’s Home Alone.

Growing up, I must have watched Home Alone and its sequel, Lost in New York, every Christmas since about 1995, but for some reason or another I hadn’t seen either of them for a good few years, so earlier this year I spotted the 4-disc boxset in my local second-hand DVD store for far less money than I would have been willing to pay, so I made a swift purchase and shelved them aside, looking ahead to Christmas when numbers 1 and 2 would be watched for the umpteenth time, and parts 3 and 4would be seen for the first. Well on the weekend before Christmas the time finally came, and was made all the more special by it being my girlfriend’s first viewing of all of them (quickly followed by her first viewing of The Muppet Christmas Carol, although I’ve yet to sit her down for Christmas Vacation).
Before watching, I was slightly apprehensive as to whether the first two films would live up to my memories, but I can attest that they are still amazing. There’s something about spending a considerable amount of time setting up the premise – Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is, through a series of coincidences and mishaps, left alone at his family’s palatial home over Christmas whilst they are holidaying in Paris. After coming to terms with his situation and learning how to take care of himself and the house, his troubles are deemed far from over when two bumbling crooks, Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern), pick the McCallister’s apparently empty house as the perfect target for a little festive theft, so Kevin must use every trick at his disposal to stop them.
This is the very definition of a film of two halves. The first half outlines Kevin’s predicament – his family waking up late after a downed power line, confusion at the taxi head count and rushing through the boarding gates – and introduces our hero’s nemeses, gradually setting up the life lessons that Kevin will have learned by the end of the film – the importance of both independence and family, ingenuity and friendship – whilst the second half is a monumental payoff, with the two crooks getting absolutely everything they deserve in a masterpiece milieu of slapstick, gurning and cringing (the nail through the foot, always the nail through the foot!).
The sequel manages to recreate the same sense of wonder and excitement at the prospect of being allowed to run amok with no adult supervision, but this time gives Kevin not just his home town to play with, but the entirety of New York City, complete with a grand hotel and a magnificent toy store to muck about in. Although the structure is almost exactly identical – Kevin argues with his family, is separated from them, thrives on his own, befriends an apparently scary local loner, runs into difficulties, thwarts the plans of Harry and Marv, rigs a house full of wince-inducing booby traps, uses the aforementioned friend to catch the thieves before being reunited with his family – it remains fresh by approaching each aspect in a new and interesting way. And it features Daniel Stern being hit in the face with a brick, four times. Stern’s subsequent defiant yell of “Suck brick, kid” when he is presented with the opportunity to retaliate is one of my favourite moments in festive cinema, up there with Jimmy Stewart’s life-affirmed canter through Bedford Falls and Andrew Lincoln’s title card confession to Keira Knightley. And Buddy the Elf being hit by a car.
The real universal joy of these first two films lies partly with the heartwarming morals and happy endings, colourful characters and the triumph over adversity of not just a child alone at Christmas, but his parents’ desperate attempts to reunite the family, but personally I believe the true unique quality that sets this duo apart from other festive fare is the violence, of which almost the entirety is directed towards Harry and Marv. Throughout the films they endure enough torment and torture to kill them many, many times, be it from five-storey falls onto concrete, toilet bowl explosions (after an impressive handstand from Harry), being crushed by numerous heavy objects (the nose-bending tool chest down the stairs is a personal highlight) or just being conked on the back of a head with a snow shovel. The beauty is, no matter how much the pair are put through, they can always get back up again and continue their chase of the kid at the other end of the string those paint cans are tied to. It’s a live-action cartoon, and made all the better by the expressions Pesci and Stern are able to contort their faces into. Pesci’s acting decision to channel Muttley in the second film does tend to throw me a little, but it fits the feel.
This love in the first films of all things potentially disabling and dismembering was surely the reason for my high hopes for parts three and four. I had of course heard that these films were sub-par at worst, and disappointing at best, but I had assumed this would be because the film-makers hadn’t understood that you need to have that balance of the gentler, expositionary first half, before the riotous free-for-all of a conclusion. I’d anticipated the directors (The Smurfs’ Raja Gosnell and Teen Wolf’s Rod Daniel, rather than Chris Columbus) would have settled for the most basic of premises before unleashing a never ending torrent of flamethrowers, anvils and rocket-packs, but it turns out I could not have been more wrong. Instead of the expected violence-fest, there was a seemingly endless amount of set-up with so little pay-off I almost missed it completely. Home Alone 3 at least puts a little effort in, but the traps set are far less ingenious and incapacitating than in the previous installments, with at one point of the crooks (four this time, none of whom have done enough to remove Home Alone 3 from their top four films on IMDb) being forcibly restrained by nothing more than a weak hose pipe going off in his face, and they all go through a lot worse than what ultimately immobilizes each of them. Also, where in the first two films Kevin’s isolation was accidental, here Alex (Alex D. Linz) is left home alone on purpose, and only for a few hours at a time, when he’s home sick, his parents are at work and his siblings (including a young Scarlett Johansson) are at school. The fact that at the end of every day the rest of his family comes home to surround him with safety kind of ruins most of the tension. My main issue though, other than the lack of Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci, or a John Candy/Tim Curry-style comedic actor in a supporting role, is that the villains are international terrorists on the trail of a misplaced microchip hidden inside a remote control car Alex has recently acquired. The first times around the crooks were a pair of bumbling ne’er-do-wells who couldn’t find a bag of cement if it fell on their heads, so their being bested by a bratty kid is almost plausible, but this time the crooks come equipped with enough plans and gadgetry that it just becomes silly, and not in the way it’s supposed to.
All of this is fine, however, in comparison to Home Alone 4, a film which justifiably was only released as a TV movie. It tries to bring back the character of Kevin McCallister (Mike Weinberg, hands down the worst child actor I’ve seen) and Marv (French Stewart), but this time Kevin’s parents are separated, and Kevin runs away to spend Christmas with his Dad (Jason Beghe) and his mega-rich new girlfriend (and potential fiancé) Natalie (Joanna Going). Natalie lives in an ultra-modern, remote controlled house complete with a butler and maid, and the British royal family are coming to stay for the festive period. Marv and his girlfriend Vera (Missi Pyle) plan to kidnap the young prince, but weren’t expecting the young Kevin to be around and get in the way. I have four main problems with this film, other than the aforementioned acting talent on display. The predominant one is that, in a film series called Home Alone, and in which the previous three installments have all featured a child being abandoned and left to fend for himself; at no point in this film is Kevin actually alone. The maid and butler are always there somewhere, and if they are ever both unavailable for assistance, this isn’t made clear until after the events have taken place, so you spend the entire time just waiting for help to arrive. Secondly, there’s a twist signposted early on that so obviously wants you to think one thing that the only possible alternative becomes abundantly clear, yet is portrayed as a dramatic surprise when it is eventually spelled out. Thirdly, this is a film in the Home Alone series, yet there’s barely any traps laid out for the crooks to fall into. I’m going to spoil it a little now, but I strongly advise you not to watch this film, which makes it OK in my book. The whole point of the Home Alone films is for a kid to find novel ways to injure trespassers using household objects and toys, but this is almost entirely ignored. The only trap Kevin actually sets is a large frying pan rigged behind a door to bash someone in the head, and he even has to stand next to it to release it. Granted, seeing French Stewart being smacked in the face with a swinging pan is still pretty damn funny, but I really wanted more. A stereo playing one of the crook’s voices doesn’t make sense, and setting up a revolving bookcase to spin faster when there’s people trapped inside is nowhere near what could have been achieved with so much gadgetry to hand. Oh, and the elevator that can’t go up so gets stuck between floors? Well why not just go down or force the doors open? Ridiculous. Anyway. My fourth and final problem is the film’s final shot, when Kevin looks into the camera and instructs his voice-activated remote-control, that apparently only controls the house, to alter the weather patterns and make it snow. I hate this kind of thing, and this may well have just replaced Sex and the City 2 as the worst film I’ve ever seen.
So, other than one smirk-inducing frying pan to the face, there is absolutely no reason to watch Home Alone 4, and don’t bother with part 3 either, just watch 1and 2, every Christmas, forever.
Home Alone: Choose Film 8/10
Home Alone 2: Choose Film 8/10
Home Alone 3: Choose Life 3/10
Home Alone 4: Choose Life 1/10