Hacker Cinema
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
1992 · Film · 120 min
Part of Home Alone Collection
Directed by Chris Columbus
Instead of flying to Florida with his folks, Kevin ends up alone in New York, where he gets a hotel room with his dad's credit card—despite problems from a clerk and meddling bellboy. But when Kevin runs into his old nemeses, the Wet Bandits, he's determined to foil their plans to rob a toy store on Christmas Eve.
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2 comments on Hacker News
> Free will never had a denotational definition that everyone agreed on, it had a set of vague, imprecise connotational meanings
Agreed in that there is not a coherent definition of free will, but what most people think it means is that if time were wound back and replaced, a person could have made a different choice than they previously made.
> the free will debate has always been about determining whether we can devise a clear denotational definition that makes of agency and how we reason about moral responsibility
Clearly people make voluntary actions and we can influence the voluntary actions people take (through teaching, punishment, reward, etc). This can all be explained through a chain of cause and effect, by which we are all constrained and lack freedom from.
Let me ask you to think of a movie. Now think of a 2nd movie. Now a 3rd.
Did you think of the movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York? Why not? Why did you think of the movies you thought of and in what sense did you choose which movies to think of?
Of all the things humans consider free will, choosing a movie in your head as among the most uncontroversial personal choices. In what way were you free to choose one and not another? I contend that you are not free to choose what thoughts pop into your head. Where is free will then?
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.