Holiday knee-jerk review: "Home Alone"

1. We'd long assumed we'd seen Home Alone before.  But watching it in its entirety last week, we realized that we have not seen Home Alone before.  Not all the way through anyway.  More than one scene we had zero recollection of ever seeing before.
2. People, Joe Pesci's burglar character is also a Chicago police officer.  The whole movie is an inside job, crooked cop story.  Spoiler alert.
3. The McCallister family really treats little Kevin horribly.  He's banished to the third floor attic like a hostage for a chain reaction series of accidents sparked by his obnoxious bully brother who's in dire need of an ass kicking.  Note that this bully brother is not sent to the attic.
4. The whole thing is sort of charming in a goofy 1980s sort of way, we suppose, ladling on plenty of feel-good sentiment and emotion to hide the utter implausibility of it all.
5. Why doesn't Kevin call the police?  We didn't notice this plot hole until another critic recently made the joking suggestion that the McCallister dad must be a mob lawyer who's told his family to never engage with law enforcement.
6. We all know why the movie was a hit: those last 15 minutes when the movie turns into a Looney Tunes cartoon and delivers hilariously satisfying booby-trap cartoon violence on these two despicable criminals.  All these years later - this is the part we've definitely seen again and again - it's still a fantastic showstopper ending.
7. Remember that the Daniel Stern burglar purposely leaves the sink faucet turned on in the houses he burglarizes, which is incredibly mean.  He deserves that iron (and paint can) to the face.
8. The most interesting thing about the movie to us is the fact that the old 1940s noir that plays a pivotal role in the plot - something called Angels with Filthy Souls - is completely made up.  The single scene you see in the movie ("Keep the change, ya filthy animal.") was created by the Home Alone filmmakers.  Genius.
9. Is it sacrilege to admit we never really got the appeal of John Candy? Probably.
10. Catherine O'Hara's character wonders in the movie if she's a bad mom for leaving one of her kids behind when the family flies to Europe.  The answer, of course, is 100% "yes, you are."
11. One of the lingering images of the movie is Macaulay Culkin slapping aftershave on his face, then screaming in pain.  Hardee har har.  But it's the scraping of a razor that makes one's face vulnerable to the sting of aftershave.  Kevin didn't shave, so why is the Brut burning his face?  It's kind of symbolic of the whole movie - go for the joke or the gag whether it makes sense or not.
12. Remember the 20th century when people could only connect over long distances via voice over the telephone?  No e-mail, no texting, no Facetime.  If someone didn't answer your call or if you didn't have a phone handy, you were out of luck.  The plot of this movie couldn't work in 2023.
13. When it comes to holiday movies, we prefer Elf, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and White Christmas.  (FYI we recently rewatched Love Actually - it hasn't aged great.)

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Knee-jerk review: "Wonka"

1. We weren't necessarily interested.  This was a Cheese Fry family decision.
2. And yet... we're happy to report that it's a whimsical delight on every level.  Top notch.
3. Family lore has it that Roald Dahl's Charlie and Chocolate Factory was the first book of fiction we read, circa 4th grade in 1982.  The 1971 movie with Gene Wilder is certainly memorable and embraces Dahl's crueler instincts ("You're turning violet, Violet!"), while the 2005 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie is the sort of oddball visual spectacle - fun, yes, but also kind of cold and remote - you'd expect from those two.
4. Bonus points for avoiding the obvious angle of forcing Willy Wonka to have some kind of love interest.  If there's another popular literary character who's this asexual, we don't know who it might be.
5. The Victorian-era, Dickensian look and feel of the movie is fully developed and wholly immersive.  This is a fairy tale world of dirty street orphans (and the rich snobs who hate them), rundown boarding houses, and secret getaways using giant city sewer pipes. 
6. That is to say, don't go here looking for gritty realism.
7. We're not much of a Timothee Chalamet fan (the same can most definitely not be said for the older Cheese Fry daughter, who muttered "he's so fine" on the car ride home), but he's pitch perfect here.  Is Wonka a genius in on the joke of it all or a weirdo who's completely clueless?
8. We didn't love the business with the giraffe, but we acknowledge it provided a moment for Wonka and his teenaged sidekick Noodle to bond.
9. The quirky plot turns and magic realism details were more than enough to make this movie work, but we appreciate the filmmakers' effort in digging a little deeper into the backstories of Wonka and Noodle, both lonely orphans dreaming of seeing their mother again.  The ending provided an unexpected emotional catharsis.
10. We will never forget the phrase "Yeti sweat."
11. Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa is, of course, awesome.  Plus for the hardcore fans we get a cute call back to the Oompa Loompa-related flute riff from the Gene Wilder movie.
12. We were a little disappointed the Everlasting Gobstopper didn't make an appearance.  Maybe that's something for the next movie, which we're very much interested in seeing.
13. We didn't immediately recognize the name of writer-director Paul King and for that, we are embarrassed.  He's also responsible for the two Paddington movies (20014 and 2017), which are similarly polished and winning.  He's got the goods.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes"

 Full disclosure: We saw this movie more than a couple of weeks ago but only]now found the time to submit for your approval a "Knee-jerk review."

1. We found the book sort of "meh."  And so guess what?  The movie's also sort of "meh."
2. Panem is certainly an interesting dystopian world, but the more you think about it, the more illogical and ridiculous it all is.  Don't look too closely, in other words.
3. Rachel Zegler completely steals the movie as the charismatic tribute Lucy Gray.  Probably not as impressive a feat as you might imagine given the wet blanket performance by Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, the film's supposed protagonist.
4. Were audiences really curious to know how and why the evil President Snow from the original Hunger Games trilogy (tetralogy since the last book spanned two movies - remember when that was a thing?) turned bad?  We get that the "how'd it happen?" exercise likely excited author Suzanne Collins, but the whole thing works very hard to answer a question no one was asking.
5. There are some interesting political and classism issues bubbling under the surface, like Snow's desperate attempt to hide his poverty from his snobby affluent friends.  His determination to rise above his station in life is probably the movie's most relatable element.
6. The story behind the actual invention of the Hunger Games - which we get here only through dialogue about things that happened long before the events of the movie - might have been more compelling.
7. No doubt Viola Davis is having a great time.  She's in full diva mode here, chewing up the scenery and sporting that actor's prop delight - crazy contact lenses.
8. The snakes-that-recognize-scents thing is pretty cool.
9. The real kicker is that after you sit through a whole lot of plot and action and conflict and characters to see this movie's edition of the Hunger Games play out, which was more or less satisfying, the story shifts gears into a new setting and keeps going for another 45 minutes.  Most troubling, the big heel turn for Snow is crammed into the last 20 minutes.  That dark chain of events felt so rushed and unmotivated, in fact, that we had to conduct a family debriefing on the car ride home to work out just what exactly happened.  It took all of us to piece it together.
10. Of course the movie has to find a way to namecheck Katniss Everdeen, a character who won't be born for another 30 years or so.  Eye roll.
11. It's well done, goes through the paces, yadda yadda.  It's fine.

From the archives, here's our original review of The Hunger Games from 2012.

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