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So, Home Alone was three days late [CALENDAR] and I’ve seen it at least four million times and I love it? And I feel like maybe the universe says we should all be ashamed of how much we love it? And that’s dumb. [Spoilers!]
Because, dude, this is a great movie. It’s not, like, Citizen Kane or some shit, but if you haven’t figured out that “great movie” doesn’t mean “critically acclaimed” and “universally revered” around these parts, then you need to GET IT TOGETHER. A great movie is one you love to watch. That’s simple. And I’m sticking to it.
I don’t remember watching Home Alone when I was young even though I am totally sure I did. I’m pretty sure the VHS of it is still in this house somewhere right now, just lurking. But I think it was one of those movies that I sort of pretended to have no knowledge of because I was that douchekid who thinks that being pop culturally ignorant is cool and stuff. It’s not. And as an adult I believe in doing you and loving what you want and that wanting to be cool is stupid anyway. I was cool. I’ve always been cool. I am cool. I’m awesome. And it’s never been because of what I did or did not want to watch, read, or listen to. YO.
Anyway, I don’t have any significant memory of watching this all the way through until I was in college at least but I didn’t really develop an appreciation of it until fairly recently after years of watching parts of it over and over again on cable.
I want to be able to perfectly articulate why Home Alone works and why I like it so much and why it’s so beloved, but I can’t. Partially because it’s three am and partially because it’s inarticulable. Home Alone is good because Home Alone is good. It gives us the warm and fuzzies because it’s about family and love and making mistakes and atoning for them.
Things of Note:
– All John Williams scores sound the same, but “Somewhere in my Memory” is SO GOOD anyway.
– Whoa, wait, why is that pizza boy so cute? BABEIN’ PIZZA BOY CAN GET IT.
– LOOK WHAT YOU DID YOU LITTLE JERK
– HEY FULLER EASY ON THE PEPSI
– He is so lucky he wasn’t murdered by shelves. Imagine forgetting him and then coming home to his mangled dead body?!
– FUCK YOU IF YOU STEAL MY SHIT. BUT FUCK YOU PAINFULLY AND CRUELLY IF YOU FLOOD MY FUCKING HOUSE.
– HEY HOPE DAVIS HEEEEEEEY
– Kevin McAllister is a fucking engineering genius.
– Do children not ever purchase things in this town? Why does everyone look at him like he has two heads? Sometimes eight-year-olds run in the grocery store, dang.
– I miss John Candy.
– Love you, Santa.
– The scene in the church with the old dude and his reunion with his family at the end will forever make me choke up and get all weird.
– MONOGRAMMED DOORKNOB
– I will never get over how horrifying the foot injuries in this movie are. Burn my hand? Cool. Light my head on fire? Fine. Make me step on ornaments barefoot? EAT SHIT. Make me step on a nail? I WILL MURDER EVERYTHING YOU LOVE.
– JOHN CANDY FOREVER
– Dude, how did he explain ANY of this to his family? Did he keep it a secret until well into adulthood? How do you explain that you, like, cut down a tree and fucked up some burglars and DESTROYED EVERYTHING. Does Kevin McAllister suffer from PTSD later in life? This whole string of events would have made me catatonic.
– How totally 90s is that title screen?!
ALSO, I AM SO EXCITED TO COMPLAIN. Because Netflix sent me a disc SO BADLY DAMAGED that I missed basically twelve minutes of the movie. TWELVE MINUTES. Were I new to Home Alone I would be missing large elements of stuff! Not cool, Netflix, not cool. Gratefully, my wise computer alerts me when it is skipping damaged sections. You go Macbook Pro-Coco, you go.
So yeah, Home Alone = good. Wanting to be cool = not good. Or something?
So remember how I said being one day off wasn’t so bad? Well by the time I watched The Shop Around the Corner it was four days late. [CALENDAR] OOPS. [Spoilers!]
This was a pretty good old timey movie situation! It’s kind of cool to look at and there’s lots of fast, sharp dialogue, and I really like the supporting characters (Pepi and Flora and Pirovitch) and the way they interact and avoid and enable the romantic plot at the center of the story. Also Jimmy Stewart is beautiful and wonderful and I could listen to him talk all day every day. Please make love to me old timey Jimmy Stewart. Tell me I am pretty. Light my cigarette and tuck my hair behind my ear and stuff. Margaret Sullavan is also a babe duh.
So, basically, I liked this movie a lot because, BIG REVEAL, I LOVE You’ve Got Mail. And that movie is based on this one. And JUDGE ME ALL YOU WANT, but You’ve Got Mail is GR8. It is a good light-hearted romantic comedy. Plus Tom Hanks.
Sorry cynical, youthful Ash, grown-up adult you LOVES TOM HANKS. Don’t worry though, she still hates Forrest Gump so you can calm down.
So yeah, this one is similar! Except with handwritten letters and an anonymous newspaper ad! It’s like… You’ve Got Mail Beta. You’ve Got Mail 1.0. You’ve Got Mail DOS. If we made this today it would be Craigslist and text messages. [Wait, I kind of like that, let’s make this thing again.]
Three things I cannot get over:
1. DUDE. Why are they in Budapest? I can’t parse this thing out. Are they Americans living in Budapest? Are they supposed to be Hungarian? They have vaguely Hungarian-esque names, so is that it? Are they the children of Hungarians come back to the motherland? Why are Klara, Alfred, and the messenger boys the only people without accents? I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.
In all those 191,000 results, no one could give me a comprehensive, logical answer. I mean. WHAT IS THE DEAL? I am a big fan of multiculturalism and filming in other countries and all that good stuff. But this was filmed in CULVER CITY. In California. In the UNITED STATES. So what is the deal? [Do you see how hung up on this I am? I CANNOT LET IT GO.]
2. Dude. Mr. Matuschek was going to KILL HIMSELF. He had a gun to his head! Off-camera, but still. And Pepi had to fling himself at the shopkeeper to keep him alive. And a lamp loses its life as a consequence. SUICIDE. I can’t. In a CHRISTMAS movie. And I know it’s not just a Christmas movie, yadda yadda, but just the idea of this lighthearted romantic comedy with a major suicidal moment as its catalyst is kind of insane/awesome. This is the same thing I think every time I think about It’s a Wonderful Life. [Which I hate, won’t watch all the way through, and am constantly irritated by.] I just can’t imagine suicide-as-a-plot-element making it’s way into something considered a holiday classic produced now. And I am FASCINATED by it.
3. This:
SO WELL DONE. SO SAD. Klara reaching in, hopeful for a letter from her mystery love and finding nothing. SO SAD. REAL SAD. Not tears sad, but legit sad nonetheless.
So yeah, I dug it enough. I’d maybe watch it again. Jimmy Stewart’s corpse should call me.
In conclusion, sock garters.
Since I am still trying to play catch-up with the 31 Days of Festive-Ass Flicks (I won’t apologize, but, uh, OOPS.) I thought I would throw together a list of Good Shit I Recently Liked:
– What I Learned in First Grade (Elisha Lynn at My Black Tongue)
– I Am So Not Sorry About My Vagina, And Other Apologies We Should Retract (Sara Benincasa @ Jezebel)
– The Spielberg Face (Kevin Lee of Fandor)
– Hear 10 Seconds from Every Hit Song of the ’80s (WFMU’s Beware of the Blog)
– Pinochle (KT Kieltyka for The Hairpin)
– The Last Photo of Walt Disney at Disneyland Park (George Savvas at Disney Parks Blog)
– Make Everything OK
– On Orange Juice (Anthony Geffen at Well, That’s Just Great)
– Tradition (xkcd)
– Ghost of Christmas Past (Ranch Dressing with Eartha Kitsch)
– Adventure Time! (Rae Hartsock at Say It Ain’t So)
Now I’m going to go to sleep for awhile because I haven’t slept more than three hours at a stretch for the last… week and a half. AND I AM TIRED. And I finally caught up on all the movie watching. The writing can come LATER.
But really, thanks for hanging in there, doods. I believe in me. I believe in you. I believe in us.
The twelfth day of festive-ass flicks was Bad Santa which I watched twelve-ish hours after I was supposed to AND by myself while I did a million other things to prepare for my TENTH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS PARTY and also dicked around on the internet because I’ve seen this one before. A lot. [Calendar.] [Also, spoilers.]
I like Bad Santa a lot because I like stories about losers. Losers are inherently more interesting than winners and they have a tendency to be not only more complex, but better written and developed. Sorry heroes and good guys, losers are where it’s at.
Bill Bob Thornton’s Santa is great. You kind of have to hate him and that’s really important for the shaping of this story. This dude is a DOUCHE and an asshole and a hateful, miserable piece of shit and so, as the story develops, you have to learn to like him as he slowly redeems himself and grows. And you do! And it’s so successful and kind of quiet and he never becomes a totally good guy, but he tries to do the right thing by this weird, awesome, sad kid who needs him. And it just works really well and is great.
Everyone in this is great, actually. Including John Ritter and Bernie Mac who are both dead now. That’s depressing. Tony Cox is great. Lauren Graham is smoking hot, but she’s also really tender and careful and not necessarily as developed or interesting as she should be, but I think you end up liking her a lot anyway. And, shockingly, I don’t get any whisper of slut-shaming around her character either. She sleeps with Santa as soon as she meets him, but there’s nothing in the movie that indicates that there’s anything wrong with it. SO RARE.
And that weird sad kid. SO WEIRD AND SAD. Brett Kelly is probably always going to be that fat kid with curly hair, but I think what he does in this is kind of remarkable. He’s so lonely and so sad and the viewer feels really bad and awful and sorry for him, but he’s positive and gentle and cherubic and he just likes Santa and wants to be his friend. When he tells Billy Bob Thornton that he knows he isn’t Santa but he hoped Billy Bob would get him a gift anyway because they’re friends? I legit lose my shit. FRIENDSHIP. And hope. And sadness. And yeah. It’s great, so shut up.
The only part of this movie that I don’t like is that there are two scenes of extended food consumption that not only turn my stomach but make me want to murder everyone involved in creating them. I have misophonia and Bernie Mac’s eating in his office while he talks to John Ritter is PHYSICALLY miserable to me. I had to pause it three or four times just to get through. And then Billy Bob Thornton does it to me later with broccoli. WHY. WHY DO MOVIE PEOPLE EVER THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA?! Stop it, stop it right now.
ANYWAY, this one’s real good and I’m sad I had to watch it alone because my girlfriend has never seen it. It’s funny and it’s touching and it has a happy ending. Warm holiday fuzzies.
Monday’s festive-ass holiday bonanza was one of my girlfriend’s favorite Christmas movies, The Ref which I had never seen before despite being in love with Kevin Spacey for basically my entire life. [Calendar.]
I liked it, which is largely a duh at this point. I watch a holiday movie and then I usually like it. (That’s not very exciting, huh? I will try to hate more things in the future.) But it also left me feeling really… ugh, I don’t even know how to explain this without getting into a whole bunch of my psychological issues. BASICALLY, this bitch just hit WAY TOO CLOSE TO HOME for it to be super enjoyable even though it’s funny and smart and real.
It is also SO DATED 90s in such an excellent way. The FASHIONS and the marriage counseling and the weird Enya-esque/acid jazz Christmas score that makes it sound like a movie for 90s sex fiends. There is SO MUCH SHOUTING also, which I don’t like. It stresses me out a lot. Any movie with lots of shouting gets voted a little down for me because it’s so uncomfortable to watch. Which is ridiculous because I am a shouter! Maybe it’s a sign of deep self-loathing. How exciting and 90s psych.
But yeah this was fun to watch sort of? When Mother Rose gets told off it’s REALLY SATISFYING because she’s so terrible and I also really enjoy them all sitting around the table with candle wreaths on their heads because that in itself is SO 90s (not candle wreaths themselves, but awkward, semi-appropriative multi-culturality) and also Christine Baranski who is the most best flawless for forever. Also, Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey forever. Perfect beauteous angel of glory.
I always get bummed when I watch Denis Leary stuff though because he’s just playing Denis Leary, I mean really. Shouting and smoking and ranting and swearing a lot. And he’s hot while he does it and good at it, but dang. Let’s see him play something quiet and sensitive and, like, meditative. Denis Leary, make one movie where you never raise your voice even once. I will give you exactly one dollar.
I also wish Robert J. Steinmiller Jr. had kept acting in movies for me to watch because he looks like a poor man’s mash-up of Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix and I would have been real into it had I seen this in my youth/as an adult if he grew into an attractive adult.
My only solidly legit complaint is that this thing ended REAL ABRUPTLY. Like, everything is just about to get exciting/tense/high-stakes and then Kevin Spacey is like, “SON, TAKE THIS THIEF AND RUN THROUGH THE WOODS WITH HIM” and then they do and the movie ends? How is that? What even? IMDB says that originally Denis Leary got caught but test audiences were like, “UGH NO EXCUSE U” and so they changed it and now Ted Demme is still real butthurt over it. Which I totally believe because 1. the end of the movie is totally rushed and 2. Ted Demme strikes me as an ass.
In conclusion, I DARE YOU TO FIND SOMEONE MORE PERFECT. YOU WON’T. DEAL WITH IT.
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