Home Alone (1990)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I’m six years old in 1990, it would have been a marvel of avoidance—or a set of parents far more concerned about cartoonish violence than the ones I had—to somehow get to my 40s without having seen it probably half a dozen times.

Did I Like It: I’d be remiss to start this review without a word about Catherine O’Hara. That’d be the big reason why the review gets written now, as she passed away on Friday. Shee could play the imminently believable Kate McCallister here and seamlessly switch gears in the span of just a few years between the hateful/delightful Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988), Sally the Ragdoll in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and spend most of the rest of the next decade regularly being the best thing in a series of Christopher Guest movies where there were plenty of candidates for the MVP. I don’t say this lightly, but: She shared and was ultimately the heir to Madeline Kahn’s reign as the livewire in whatever movie she appeared. Now that they are both gone, I can’t think of talent that reaches anywhere close.

Yeah. Pretty safe bet that a review of A Mighty Wind is coming pretty quick.

But let’s try and make this review about something this movie offers that doesn’t get talked about all that much. There’ve been a dozen times when I seriously gave consideration to adding a field in the early matter detailing the credited screenwriter. One can make all the arguments about the auteur theory they can, and there are plenty of films where those arguments are unassailable, but I think the real reason I didn’t include the field is the prospect of going back to all of the previously written reviews and having to add that info. This film does feel of a piece with other Chris Columbus films, but that may be in no small part because this film was such a success that studios continued to hire him with the hope that he would bring some of Home Alone to those subsequent films. But we really need to talk about John Hughes’ work here. From all angles, this is obviously a family comedy, but it has the seemingly breezy, complicated plotting of the best thrillers. One can see the raw material for Kevin’s (Culkin, with enough charisma to spare that one never questions why they built a movie around him) war on crime all around the house, but the moments that drift in during act one that make the conceit work are unfurled so as not to make the viewer aware that they are seeing a plot unfold, but that Christmas is chaotic and anything can happen. Definitely, Hughes’ screenwriting work is not given enough credit here.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland

Have I Seen it Before: Again, sure.

Did I Like It: I almost want to take back my retroactive ambivalence about <Lethal Weapon (1987)>. There were instances—indeed, long stretches—where I was less distracted by how awful Mel Gibson has proven himself to be.

My immediate instinct is to to say that there’s so much Three Stooges shtick jammed into the film that I can’t help but be annoyed at the movie for an entirely different set of Gibson’s predilections… But that doesn’t cover it: I actually found myself liking the film.

Part of that is that this feels like a more personal story for Riggs, if not necessarily Murtaugh (Glover). The previously unseen unravelling of his life now fuels part of the plot. While the whole “I’m the villain and the cause of all your problems” has been done to death here (and, indeed, is a reprise in the great summer of 1989 after Batman (1989) pulled the same trick), it does give some narrative fuel to Riggs’ Riggsiness, whereas in the last film it just felt like a randomly selected character trait to serve his mismatched pairing with Murtaugh.

Also, the conceit behind the film is somewhat ingenious in its simplicity. What is an Action Movie Cop (tm) to do when the evil crime lords also have diplomatic immunity. Granted, it could have easily been a plot in a Robocop film, would have been right at home creating issues for John McClane in a Die Hard sequel, or even any number of Schwarzenegger or Stallone characters. But Riggs and Murtaugh got there first, so they get the points… If points were something we were keeping track of in 1980s action films.

The Irishman (2019)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano

Have I Seen it Before: No, but it took several days to get through the film. So, yes I went against Scorsese’s wishes and watched it essentially as a miniseries, and I watched it almost exclusively on my phone. I’m not sure Scorsese gets to dictate the terms in which his films are watched anymore.

Which brings us to his recent comments about current popular filmmaking, specifically those films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He dismisses them as not really cinema, and even went so far as to say that they shouldn’t be shown in cinemas.

Is it possible to disagree with him, and not blame him for having the opinion in the first place.

If I were Scorsese, and I had made a career out of a litany of prestige films, the shifting of the movie business to favor what would have been B-movie material during his formative and prime years would feel a little disconcerting. It means that his material of choice is now receiving the resources of B productions.

Thankfully, he is still getting the resources—if not the exhibition he once had—to tell the kind of stories he wants to tell.

Did I Like It:  Oh, I guess you came to this review wondering about that part. Sure. What’s not to love? Pacino and De Niro taking a swing at not slumming it for the first time in what feels like forever? Scorsese working in the genre that made his bones, so to speak? The long-prophesied return of Joe Pesci? Hell, make the movie six hours next time. I’ll show up. One might quibble with the under-utilized Anna Paquin—and even I’m a little befuddled by her near-prop status—but it is a minor quibble with an otherwise ornate tapestry of mob goodness. It feels elegiac, but I think that is a remark on De Niro’s character, and its stretching to apply it to Scorsese himself. I think he’s got plenty of great films still left within him.

Now if only he could get the same kind of presence in cinemas as some of the Marvel movies, maybe we could all get along again and enjoy watching De Niro shoot people in the face.