NG2 December/January 2020
Local business directory and community magazine.
Local business directory and community magazine.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
HOME ALONE<br />
1990 What makes It’s a Wonderful<br />
Home Alone is hands down my<br />
Life an essential masterpiece?<br />
favourite Christmas film of all time.<br />
Everything about this film is great. Macaualy<br />
Culkin plays Kevin so well at the age of only<br />
eight. He portrays him as a bratty, annoying<br />
kid to start off with but as it goes along, he<br />
manages to add so much heart and humour to<br />
the character that it’s truly impossible to dislike<br />
him. The increasingly bombastic situations<br />
across the film’s runtime are so entertaining<br />
throughout as Kevin single-handedly sets up<br />
homemade traps in an attempt to defend<br />
his house from two criminals. These are also<br />
standouts, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel<br />
Stern who are so hilarious that you love to<br />
hate them. The film has an amazing Christmas<br />
atmosphere aided by the magic original score<br />
by John Williams and it all makes for a true<br />
Christmas classic and an absolute must-watch<br />
family film.<br />
Writer: Sam Leary<br />
IT’S A<br />
WONDERFUL LIFE<br />
If anyone mentions the words ‘Christmas’<br />
and ‘film’ in the same sentence, there’s a<br />
good chance one would<br />
also mention Frank<br />
Capra’s vibrant tale of<br />
George Bailey in it too.<br />
It’s A Wonderful Life has<br />
inspired and sustained<br />
people’s appreciation<br />
of the holiday spirit for<br />
over seven decades<br />
with its stylish 40s swing<br />
and it doesn’t take ‘the<br />
richest man in town’ to see why. James<br />
Stewart gives one of the most endearing<br />
performances in a classic film of a beatendown<br />
good-hearted man sacrificing his<br />
happiness goals for the good of his small<br />
community, only to realise his happiness<br />
was with him all along. Every snappy scene<br />
is full of twisted currents of chemistry, being<br />
sacrificial with some painful breaks of the<br />
working man’s condition when it needs to,<br />
in order to make those shining re-arises<br />
more wonderfully endearing. But where It’s<br />
a Wonderful Life’s heart lies is in its heavily<br />
flawed characters who often cycle through,<br />
connecting and sadly breaking off. Why?<br />
Because they’re only human. And the film’s<br />
timeless message is that that’s not such a<br />
bad thing. And as long as one gives and has<br />
friends, happiness will always be perched<br />
on your shoulder.<br />
Writer: George Neal
Change language