Cultural Gap Film #7: Home Alone

Relevant elements: Macaulay Culkin being precocious, particularly when he slaps on aftershave and yells

Why it resonated: How could America say no to a holiday family film by John Hughes that showcases the most promising child actor of his generation?

General comments on the film:  Maybe it's just Festivus sentimentality, but this movie annoyed me much less than I expected. Because I didn't see it when it came out, I never really got the full Macaulay Culkin experience. In my world, he went straight from Uncle Buck to being an object of gleeful scorn because of his over-cuteness and notoriously difficult behavior, to the point that audiences cheered when he plummeted to his death in The Good Son. I knew this film put him on the map, but the subsequent criticism of Culkin and endless unfunny allusions to the above-mentioned face-slap-and-yell tainted my perception of Home Alone, making me think his performance would be obnoxious and overly child-performer-y. It also didn't help that I knew Joe Pesci was involved, since he sets my teeth on edge in most appearances.


In retrospect, I should have trusted John Hughes more. Yes, there was a little too much direct-to-camera mugging, but Hughes is not one to let too much sugar pile up without a touch of down-to-earth sourness to balance it out. I'm still a little confused about why Kevin's family are so mean-spirited toward him, but the Hughesian suburban Chicago setting was so comfortingly familiar that such quibbles didn't linger very long.


This is by no means a masterpiece of filmmaking, but it's highly professional and perfectly pitched for a broad audience looking for something to put on in the background as they put up holiday decorations. And it makes me wonder what other films I might be misguidedly avoiding....  

Cultural Gap Film #6: Twilight

Relevant elements: Teen vampire melodrama

Why it resonated: Who can say why vampires become a trend every 10 years? There's always been something vaguely adolescent about vampire fascination, what with the moodiness, swells of sensuality, and so on, but for some reason this iteration spoke unusually deafeningly to the current generation of teenagers.   

General comments on the film: This is the first of these films I've watched that honestly felt like a waste of time. I didn't really learn anything from the experience that I didn't already know about the film or its impact on our culture. 

Going into it, I expected a fairly badly made movie, and in that sense Twilight was not a disappointment. Just about every element is handled poorly: the pacing drags, the acting is lifeless, the exposition is clumsy, the voiceover narration is spotty and artless, the story is unoriginal, the cinematography is distractingly ham-handed (just watch the "You're a vampire" scene in the forest for an example).... I could go on and on. Actually, I think I will. Here are two of the countless "Really?" moments: the benign vampire family playing baseball in the woods in a thunderstorm (?!?!) and the tone-deaf closing scene with the lone remaining "bad" vampire walking toward our lovestruck heroes at their prom to the wholly mismatched Radiohead song "15 Step." Even the closing credits don't strike the right note.

But enough complaints about what is--I'm sorry, I can't stop. Why is the world so blue-tinted? Why is everyone--not just the vampires--so inhumanly pale? Why does there seem to be only one teacher in the high school, why is he so incredibly excited about biology, and why aren't the students rolling their eyes at him incessantly? Isn't it enough that there are vampires in this world? Do they have to be telepathic and clairvoyant as well? Why not just let them travel through time and breathe fire? Did Bella really need to do internet research to find out what a vampire is? And finally, has there ever been a more deliciously spot-on description than Nathan Rabin labeling Kristen Stewart a "dead-eyed talent vacuum"?   

OK. I think I'm done. But just in case that paragraph didn't suck out all the venom and stop me from turning into a blood-lusting monster (yet another cliched plot point in the film), let me end this quickly by saying to any of you who haven't seen this movie that it is exactly what you think it is.  
 

Cultural Gap Film #5: Saving Private Ryan

Relevant element: Standard-bearer for the Spielberg-Hanks project of re-envisioning World War II

Why it resonated: The 1990s saw a surge of interest in mainstream retrospectives about WWII, epitomized by a few prominent films and Tom Brokaw's paean to "The Greatest Generation." Why this cultural wave swelled at that time is a question for another day, but the result is that for an ever-increasing percentage of the American population, their vision of the war is significantly defined by historical films--especially this one, thanks to its graphic depiction of battle and Spielberg's usual emotional manipulation.      

General comments on the film: I've been avoiding this film because I have a fairly strong allergic reaction to unmitigated earnestness and non-nuanced sentimentality, which are hallmarks of Stephen Spielberg's directorial style. So when the movie opened with a proudly fluttering American flag and an aged veteran leading his family into a seemingly endless and perfectly manicured cemetery, let's just say I was not heartened. 

At times, however, another of Spielberg's hallmarks--his consummate craftsmanship--distracted me long enough to let my inflammation subside. For every two overdone elements (like the Ryan homestead in Iowa being the picturesque living embodiment of the American heartland) there is a finely shot piece of visual storytelling as an antidote. The Normandy invasion scene is a nice example of this balance: moments like a soldier's helmet saving him from a bullet, followed by him taking it off to marvel at it and being shot in the head feel gratuitous to the point of verging on slapstick, but the cinematography is spectacular. All in all, I'm glad I finally watched this film, but I don't think I'll ever see it again.