Hacker Cinema
Home Alone
1990 · Film · 103 min
Part of Home Alone Collection
Directed by Chris Columbus
Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister makes the most of the situation after his family unwittingly leaves him behind when they go on Christmas vacation. When thieves try to break into his home, he puts up a fight like no other.
5 positive1 negative36 neutralfrom 42 commenters
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45 comments on Hacker News
Whenever I see kids traveling in first class, it grosses me out a little. When I was a kid, we didn't have the money to fly at all; it was just road trips for us, when we could manage it.
I really think parents putting their kids in first class does them a disservice. And on top of that, if they're at all disruptive, that's incredibly rude to other first class passengers who have paid quite a bit of money for a better experience.
I always think of the early scene in the movie Home Alone when Catherine O'Hara's character asks her husband if they should feel bad about the kids flying coach while they're in business, and he assures her that the kids are fine. That's the right way to do it!
(Before the inevitable "but!"s, yes, I know that won't work super well if you just have one kid traveling with you; it's understandable that you might not feel comfortable with them sitting alone. And of course they need to be of a certain age, or have old enough siblings, to be on their own in that situation. But that's not an excuse to bring your kids up to first or business class. You should be flying with them in economy if they can't sit there on their own.)
> There's no 'white' culture, there is modern North American culture and it's not something that belongs to a particular complexion.
This doesn't seem right to me. WASP culture absolutely does exist. Anyone can see it in full display by watching films like Dead Poets Society or Home Alone.
I meant to say modern-day influencer. Like instagram/tiktok like. All this "American-Dream" style things were promotional material with twisted reality. Movies showing luxury lifestyle of a "regular" American/US person.
Although per-person adjusted income is really high compared to many parts of the world, day-to-day lifestyle is hardly comparable to "Home Alone" or Wolf of Wall Street themes.
But yes, each era had prosperous countries trying to attract talent obviously. From Egypt to Persians then Rome and even Ottomans too. Later on France/Britain during industrialization.
I think eliminating the need to think and work around reality is part of the trouble. Not that it ruins everything (people take HN posts as so maximalist even when they factually are not; see: the rest of this comment tree) but I think the lack of the odd limitation or need to think about how to solve a problem without resorting to “render it in a computer” causes significant harm to cinema overall. I’m not (see above parenthetical) claiming it’s net-negative, but there’s a kind of film-making skill and genius that was once on display pretty widely, and now is not.
I mean for fuck’s sake, they’d probably CG the paint buckets in Home Alone if they made it today. And we’d get some tasteless can-cam shot, because you don’t have to figure it out, you can just do it. And they’d look fake because they’d move too perfectly, lacking the kinds of little off-seeming movements that a real paint can in a real take might do. Never might the can obscure a few frames of face when the directors might choose otherwise, and the result will be obviously CG through its convenience if not due to outright flaws.
Excessive perfection and too many things moving the optimal way for the shot or exactly the way the viewer expects are under-appreciated tells of CG, and they’re deadly ones, present even in a lot of “perfect” CG (give it a few years, we thought the CG in Lord of the Rings was convincing and now it looks like trash). They need to start CGing their fake environments sometimes doing something slightly less than ideal to an actor’s jacket, or something, and not to call attention to it as a comedy relief moment, but because “that’s just what happened” (not really, but it’d make the effects more convincing)
I watched Home Alone last year and the characters call each other names constantly. It's funny for sure, but no wonder me and my friends had such filthy mouths as kids. You grow up on that and sitcoms where the characters just rip on each other. It's so strange to watch as an adult.
>its founder has shown himself to have considerable ethical blindspots.
The guy is very vocal and clear about his ethical stances. Saying he has “blind spots” is like saying the burglars from the Home Alone movies had ethical blind spots around personal property
1992 my family just got a VCR but hardly had any tapes. For some reason my sister and brother were obsessed with Home Alone and as the youngest and a toddler, I played along with the excitement. My dad set up "some new movie" to play in our basement but said he couldn't get Home Alone, saying it cost too much, sorry. We eagerly watched the title intro which in retrospect, was obviously Home Alone. Once the oldest sibling finally read "Home Alone" we all completely lost our minds.
We even have this whole thing on video.
Movies I think I truly great I usually only watch once, sometimes twice. If a movie ends and I just sit there thinking to myself… “wow”… I will probably never watch it again.
Movies I watch over and over again are movies that I relate to in some way or find comforting. These are ones I’ve watched at least 5 times, and some I’d bet more than 30 times.
- Back to the Future
- Home Alone
- What About Bob?
- It Could Happen to You
- Matilda
- As Good as It Gets
- Office Space
- Cruel Intentions
- Boiler Room
- Finding Forrester
- Training Day
- Super Troopers
- 8 Mile
- The Transporter
- Elf
- Bad Santa
- Mean Girls
- Saved!
- Garden State
- V for Vendetta
- Thank You for Smoking
- Stick It
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Idiocracy
- Hot Rod
- Run Fatboy Run
- The Other Guys
- Wreck-It Ralph
To name a few.
This is basically the main plot device for the movie Home Alone.
Family Guy is built on out of context clips.
It could also fill it for background videos in scenes, instead of getting real content they’d have to pay for, or making their own. The gangster movie Kevin was playing in Home Alone was specifically shot for that movie, from what I remember.
The original social contract was we'd all pretend we couldn't trivially copy and reproduce "their" works so they could make some money for a decade or so and then their works would enter the public domain.
When's the last time your culture entered the public domain?
I grew up watching films like Star Wars and Home Alone, playing Super Nintendo and PlayStation games. All these corporations have already made a million fortunes off of these things. When is all this stuff gonna become public property?
What about the public? They couldn't give less of a fuck about the public. They don't even care enough to fulfill their end of the bargain which was agreed upon when this copyright nonsense was created. Oh look, our property's about to become public? Better lobby the government and get them to extend the terms. Just pull the rug from under everyone, just move the goalposts, they won't even notice.
They use their fortunes to systematically rob us of our public domain rights. Yes, rights. We have rights to "their" works which they actively deny. They're literal robber barons. Therefore copyright infringement is a moral imperative. We should all stop pretending that copyright exists because the reality is it doesn't, it's completely made up and unenforceable and there's absolutely no reason anyone should recognize it as a legitimate law. Copyright infringement is civil disobedience and morally justified.
This AI stuff is exactly what we need. It's world changing technology. It's subversive. It gives me hope.
Couldn't read the whole thing. Considering that Christmas is core to the plot of the movie it absolutely is a Christmas movie.
It is even much more a Christmas movie than "Home Alone" for example. Kevin's family could have decided to vacation in France and forget their kid for the summer. OTOH, the Christmas party was the main reason all of Nakatomis big shots were gathered, at night in a mostly isolated building. They wouldn't do that for 4th of July or Thanksgiving, it could only be the Holiday party.
This reminded me about the actual house used in the movie. There is a decent article on it:
https://www.fancypantshomes.com/movie-homes/the-real-life-home-alone-house-then-and-now/
> Which movies show that?
Home Alone (1990) immediately comes to mind.
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.
have you checked to make sure you're not just stuck in the plot of a Home Alone movie?
I searched "full movie" on YouTube and the first result I had was for Home Alone. Looks like it is the full movie and the account that posted it does not seem connected to Fox or Warner Bros or any "official" movie studio. Seems like a random person who claims in the video description that uploading Home Alone is "fair use".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owDd4zify-A
I am not a copyright or intellectual property or legal expert - but my intuition says that Home Alone is probably as copyrighted as the movie Hackers (both older movies). Home Alone has been up for 3 weeks on YouTube with 435k views. By contrast, the tweet linked above showing that "Twitter is breaking" has already been removed (less than a day).
Perhaps Home Alone is public domain or something, or whoever owns the intellectual property wants it shared like this. Not sure how I would check that, but I have seen lots of movies and TV shows like this on YouTube (sometimes with modifications to the sound or image to avoid automatic filtering). If Home Alone is free I'm sure I could find another example.
1988 Die Hard http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016
1988 Red Heat https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095963/
1988 My Stepmother Is an Alien https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095687/
1988 Twins https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096320/
1989 Honey, I Shrunk the kids https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097523/
1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/
1989 Tango & Cash https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098439/
1990 Edward Scissorhands https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099487/
1990 Home Alone https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099785/
1990 Pretty Woman https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100405/
1991 Terminator 2 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/
1991 Silence of the Lambs https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/
1991 The Last Boy Scout https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102266/
Ahhhh, bunk. The beauty of music is that you don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy it. You can enjoy it on a shallow level, or as deeply as you want—tracing every thread in technique and influence and emotion and commentary and so on. That's why it's so [culturally] valuable—it speaks every language at once. It is a lovely thing that it's so much more readily available at that scale than in the past.
Just an aside: There's especially the fun in-between. I had the amazing fortune of getting to see a cross-section of the TSO perform all of the music to Home Alone live while they displayed the movie on a screen above stage. It was fantastic. What a treat.
All this spoken as someone who spent a good portion of his 20's playing 'small-ensemble' and solo around cheap clubs in Toronto. (And continue to nurture those delusions happily into my 30's, and I'll never stop)
(Just another fun aside: my brother in law happens to be a player in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and I'm pretty sure we're both jealous of each other to some extent)
There's a series called The Movies That Made Us, and the thing that stuck with me, is that so many of these movies have the constant theme: a million things came up lucky for these movies to have been made and be the success it was. e.g. Home Alone almost didn't have Joe Pesci or the score or the fact it was actually supposed to be cancelled mid-production, and on and on.
Well, I had hoped not to live to the moment where we use movies as an argument in seemingly serious discussion.
Hopefully "Home Alone" or "Die hard" didn't shape your picture of our world.
> And if you're not aware of the gray zone conflict since 2014 and that thousands of people got killed on Ukrainian soil because of Russia.
I'd suggest you to substantiate claims like that - "because of Russia". Not everyone is a product of propaganda and readily believe in anything without any evidence.
> No "suggestion" for a "better solution", just ignorance of facts that happened/are happening.
That's would be great if you bring up facts to support your claims instead of throwing patronising phrases about education.
I find the difference most amusing during special events, eg. new years eve, even with similar-ish cultures.
In slovenia, NY eve means a few movies on some channels, maybe even a movie marathon (home alone 1-5, etc.), and on one channel, from about 23h->00:30 the next day/year some "funny" show, with a few songs, a host+guests talking about stuff and a countdown. So basically stuff that you have to watch and listen to in whole.
In serbia for example, the show lasts for 6h+, and it's basically 99.9% music, except for a joke or two inbetween songs and a countdown with happy wishes for new year, and it's designed to be played "in the background", where noone really cares about the show, unless it's a song they really really like and turn the volume even higher. example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ9-w8qlpEY
This has always been a great business idea. Watch good foreign films and spin them into Americanized versions then pitch them to Hollywood.
Also I find it amusing that Home Alone in France is titled "Mom, I missed the plane"
I don't understand why the major streaming services don't have the good Christmas movies. They all have these new "made for TV" quality awful movies they push really hard.
It's A Wonderful Life
A Christmas Carol
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (old animated version)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (old animated version)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Home Alone
Miracle On 34th Street
Elf
White Christmas
There's tons of GREAT Christmas movies. On any given Christmas season Netflix might have 1-2 of the greats. Same for Amazon Prime.
I'm confused because it seems like an easy win for these streaming services. Is licensing them really so expensive?
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
So imagine: You sit at home, you paranoid from lockdown allready. You order this 15min home test. Parcel is at your door. You open the box. You stick test in your nose or your ass, whatever it takes. 15min you got a ressult NEGATIVE. Yeah cool, alles kool.
Outside is quarantine, lockdown everything is closed and you can get coronavirus and bring it home.
Hollywood movie studio is closed and will not release new part of: Home Alone - 15min Test
You are Alone in your own movie.
I have to ask, did you watch 3615 code Père Noël on Joe Bob Brigg’s?
I watched it on Shudder a few days ago, and have to say it had quite the enjoyable selection of late 80s tech.
I was also surprised to learn that it is allegedly the inspiration for the movie Home Alone.
And, the significance of the four digits 3615 - was a common prefix for Minitel services?
It seemed like a more mature, coordinated implementation of a network of BBSs.
I'm not a movie person, but films like Home Alone, Back To The Future, Ghostbusters etc come to mind. My impression is that they are super hits that span generations because they are so predictable, middle of the road, easy to digest and unable to offend.
it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below.
See also: the film Home Alone.
It is possible that will change when Disney starts selling their subscription service in Sweden.
Disney will likely use its huge archive to sell subscriptions.
That likely is the reason Home Alone isn’t on public tv in the Netherlands, as tinus_hn says in https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21871486
If they play it hard, a lot of traditional Christmas movies will move behind a paywall. For example, Die Hard and Jingle all the Way, commented on this page, all are from 20th Century Fox, which is Disney owned, as is The Sound of Music)
Home Alone is a classic Christmas movie. That and Die Hard are Christmas tradition for my family.
In Poland, we have a "bizarre TV tradition" of watching Home Alone during Christmas on one of the main TV stations (Polsat). Usually Home Alone 2 is played the next day.
One year the station wanted to play a different movie during the holiday season and people wrote petition to bring it back.
Yeah, and there are a large number of americans that watch Christian/Biblical movies and consider those to be more Christian. Otoh,there are also a lot of people that think hallmark movies are Christmas movies while some disagree.
It's a celebration,societal consensus is not needed to determine how smaller groups of people want to celebrate it. Lets not force our celebrations on each other. My definition is the latter but I don't care one bit if others watch die hard and home alone while I watch the Gospel of John or something that has nothing to do with Christmas.
Yup.
In Poland, this makes Home Alone and Die Hard both Christmas movies. Ever since I was a kid, I remember both being on TV during Christmas days. Hell, people actually made quite a large uproar couple years ago, when the TV station showing Home Alone decided not to show it on Christmas, and AFAIR they eventually changed the programming to keep it.
Those are excellent points, but keep in mind that a lot of people define christmas movie as something that both adults and children can watch together. So that makes die hard a hard sell for a lot of families.
For me, any movie set in or around christmas qualifies as a christmas movie and my favorite christmas movies are "die hard", "home alone 1 and 2" and "scrooged". They all represent the redeeming christmas spirit in their own unique way.
Occasionally, at non-mainstream theatres. 'Dollar theatres' were also popular in my college days; they would play things like "Liar Liar" or "Home Alone" for a buck, and then you don't feel bad spending $10 on concessions.
As far as places to go watch classics, or cult movies, I haven't found anything that isn't just streaming/buying. What a shame! I think this would be pretty popular if reasonably priced.
I agree with you, there aren't 3 good movies a month. I don't need more 'infinite media' subscriptions when we're already overloaded with mediocre media every day.
To get an idea what US plastic shopping bags are like, watch "Home Alone" and pay close attention to the scene where Kevin is walking groceries back to his house.
Then consider that plastic shopping bags have generally become thinner and more fragile since that movie was released.
"Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another 'Home Alone' movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination." [0]
- Senior analyst and political writer for FiveThirtyEight
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-donald-trump-isnt-a-real-candidate-in-one-chart/
You must not have seen the movie Home Alone.
Thanks ! I am trying to find out a good attorney to discuss this.
I was trying to figure out and was wondering why aren't there any games that are "inspired" from movies ! So was just looking around trying to find answers.
I was searching for copyright and stuff and came across a whole bunch of posts/sites that talked about parody and fair-use, that's why I was wondering.
I like the TTT - The Game concept, that's kind of what I was thinking and not actually using the material from the movies.
My nephews and nieces are in the age group where all they talk about these days are these home alone, baby's day out kind of movies ! I know there's a whole bunch of games that are either from Disney or are Disney themed but I couldnt find anything from non-animated movies !!
I think non-zombie would be preferred by my target audience ;-)
Your attorney will need to know more about your specific plans, but in general as long as you don't use material from the movies (title, major plot elements, character names, images, sounds, etc) you can be inspired all you want. So "Tiny Thief Thwarter--The Game" is more likely to fly than "Home Alone--The Game", and if TTT weren't named Kevin and was defending a meth lab or a palace instead of a house in Evanston you'd give the Home Alone guys less and less to be quarrelsome about.
Now, you specifically mention "parody" and "fair use," do you intend to quote parts of the movies, or actually parody part of it? Based on your short question I don't really get the sense that's your angle. I more get the sense that you're looking for a new scenario inspired by those movies, and I'd encourage you to use the inspiration to drive toward the new idea rather than attempt a parody of the old.
And good on you for not having it be zombies!
Random note: My friend is married to a woman from France -- the first Christmas they were together after a few months of dating, she was like "have you seen 'Mother, I missed the Plane' it's a family tradition to watch it each Christmas," to which my friend said no. When she put the movie in, it was Home Alone
Gotta love random translations
It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies.
That doesn't really make sense. It's more like the early days of Netflix streaming where people were reluctant to sign up because the selection of movies on there was actually terrible. I didn't touch it for a couple of years despite having access through a Netflix membership, because I couldn't find anything on there I wanted to watch.
The fact is that right now most examples of 3d printing are not that great. People at Maker Faire print out giant dodecahedral hats - admittedly to showcare the alrge print area rather than their taste in headware - or the occasional hard-to-find part. But most of the lower-end printers still produce output that looks highly pixelated, and the properties of the plastic used mean that many items have to be printed with additional structural support. What people see at the moment is like an inkjet printer (good) that can only produce output in Comic Sans (bad) and at low resolution (worse).
The exciting thing about patent expiration is getting around some of the resolution problems. People expect plastic to be smooth, not to look like miniature lego. Ideally you want to be able to print stuff of similar quality to a model aircraft kit. Right now it's OK for large, somewhat clunky items.
That's the nature about the long tail of things: not everything you see will be personally appealing to you. In fact, only a tiny sliver of all possible things will be appealing to you.
The mistake that many people make (not necessarily you), is when they ask for examples of appealing or useful 3D printing, and if your example doesn't appeal to them, then they write off the entire long tail of things to 3D print.
It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies.
3D printing for the masses is so new that no one's seen much of the long tail, and there are things to be printed that are not yet explored.
You would need a much more comprehensive overview process to eliminate misleading information from movies, even if it were limited to life-threatening misinformation!
One instance I can think of is MRI magnets. Often, a medical drama will cut to someone pushing a button and the magnet coming on. In reality, the magnets are always on and bringing metal objects within range can have dire consequences.
The whole movie Home Alone depicts life-threatening pranks on the burglars. c.f. dropping a clothing iron 3 stories onto someone's face.