Home Alone: Lost in New York – three incompetent hotel workers
Plot twist. Yes, I am one of – I’m hoping – many to believe that the second Home Alone takes the cake. If it is possible, this one ups the Christmas vibes and nostalgia, with Santas on stilts and wondrous toy shops. More than anything though, it ups Kevin’s talent for torture methods. If burning “M” (for McAllister) into Pesci’s palm and slamming Stern’s head in with an iron wasn’t enough, Lost in New York turns the amp up considerably – there is cement, paint, electricity and fire involved, if you catch my drift. The traps are better and funnier, but the overarching framework is also much larger. While Home Alone only had one house to work with, Chris Colombus makes the city of New York Kevin’s playground, as he tricks both Harry and Marv, but also the Plaza Hotel’s receptionists, including a fantastically creepy Tim Currry as the concierge Mr Hector. He also reprises classic tropes from the first, including Kevin’s ability to pretend there are other people in the room (thanks to his new voice recorder and, in a meta twist, Angels with Even Dirtier Souls, the sequel to the first film-in-a-film), as well as his bond with a kind, “harmless” adult (here, Brenda Fricker’s pigeon lady of Central Park, and toy shop owner Mr Duncan, played by Eddie Bracken). In other words, it’s both an homage to and an improvement on the first – but perhaps that’s just because New York City looks so magical at Christmastime.
Misery – two hobbled ankles (sorry)
It was important for me to rewatch one of my all-time favourites Misery in honour of Rob Reiner. By no means a Christmas film (unless you count a snowy film as one), it is nevertheless a fairly perfect one, a dark and dreary psychological horror that builds upon Stephen King’s original novel. James Caan plays famous novelist Paul Sheldon who, after a particularly gruelling car crash, is hauled from the snow by his “number one fan” Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), a nurse who saves his life, sure, but also starts to threaten it in more ways than one – especially when she finds out he has killed off the main character in what is to be the final book of his franchise. This is one to watch for those who delight in a “classic” horror. There is no supernatural here – just a constant feeling of claustrophobia and isolation as Paul fights with nothing but his wits from his hospital bed, and an exquisitely terrifying performance from Bates, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Direction, soundtrack, cinematography and acting form one in Misery – the result is a film that is near impossible to watch without a racing heart and a constant sense of dread.
When Harry Met Sally… – and one New Year’s Eve
When I was a teenager, I watched When Harry Met Sally… and thought nothing of it. The general consensus was that I hadn’t enjoyed it, and that it was one of those “autumn films” that I would skip each year despite hefty reminders on social media and comfort film lists that it was the one to beat. I built a bad rapport with it based off of a memory, a memory of a time in which I simply didn’t understand Rob Reiner’s fan favourite. How wrong I was. When Harry Met Sally… is popular for a reason. It’s familiar – it fits all the tropes of the rom-com and autumn film, from enemies to lovers to chunky cable knit sweaters – without being generic. As Harry and Sally, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan seem an unlikely pair: their characters are ill-fitting in personality, but it is their appearance, more than anything, spanning twelve years from early twenties through to mid thirties, that dumbfounded me as a teenager. To put it bluntly, despite Ryan’s beauty and Crystal’s charisma, they don’t fully fit the traditional rom-com “look”. Yet, how refreshing they are. This is a love story in which the two leads aren’t cardboard cutout perfect, or pretending to be flawed (as has been the case for many recent dramas in which people profess loudly “I’m messed up”) – they genuinely are. Harry is insufferable, his nasally, pessimistic voice leaving no room for another, his dark eyes seemingly expressionless to the point of discomfort. He is the definition of zero filter. Sally, meanwhile, is the exact opposite, optimistic to the fullest (her surname is literally Albright), yet particular and obsessive about everything (especially the “sauce on the side” rule). And yet, it’s a pleasure to watch them dance around, narrowly missing each other, simply because, despite their flaws, they are so damn likeable. The icing on the cake is that they were never meant to end up with each other – Reiner changed the ending when he met his future wife on set. A wonderful turn of events that gave us such a wonderful film, testimony to life’s complex joy.
