The 18 greatest movies Macaulay Culkin has ever seen, and the one he only liked the first time
If Macaulay Culkin had any vested interest in continuing a full-time acting career after ageing out of being his generation’s defining child star, then he would have pursued it.
Kids who dedicate the earliest years of their lives to Hollywood, especially ones with home lives as well-publicised and troubled as Culkin’s, have every right to step out of the spotlight as soon as they can. Fortunately, he’s in a position to continue earning money from the films that made him a household name.
The first two entries in the Home Alone franchise are screened, streamed, and televised all over the world on an annual basis in the buildup to Christmas, which means the erstwhile Kevin McCallister continues to reap the residual rewards, with Culkin admitting he prefers the second one because it pays him more.
Since the mid-1990s, he’s been doing whatever the hell he wants to do, whether it’s making infrequent forays back into cinema, fronting a comedy rock band that homages the Velvet Underground through the prism of pizza, or changing his middle name to Macaulay Culkin after letting his fans choose for him.
He’s been comfortably usurped by his younger brother and Academy Award winner Kieran as the most ubiquitous and in-demand of the Culkin siblings, and he couldn’t be prouder. Movies and TV shows may not be his priority anymore, and they haven’t been for a long time, but he did once reveal an extensive list of his personal favourite features, which underlines an eclectic taste.
In his semi-autobiographical 2006 novel, Junior, the Richie Rich favourite dedicated a paragraph to the 19 greatest movies he’s ever seen. Technically, you could call it 18, since he made a point of noting that there was one of them he only enjoyed the first time he saw it, and never again.
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, which he famously turned down, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, Miloš Forman’s Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, Sidney Lumet’s Network, and Jake Kasdan’s Zero Effect were the first 14 that came to mind.
However, he switched tracks when singling out George Roy Hill’s The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the lead roles, by clarifying that it was “only the first time I watched it” that made it part of his all-time roster. After that, he rounded out the list with Roman Coppola’s CQ, Chris Noonan’s Babe, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy.
Culkin is an obvious fan of the classics, with just six of those 19 being released after the 1980s, and only one of them arriving since the turn of the millennium. Although he didn’t specify why The Sting didn’t hold up on repeat viewings, it must have been the only one, seeing as it was the only picture that came with an addendum.
