If there’s one thing that supports my belief that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time, it’s how he brought an almost sacred seriousness to even the lowest-brow movie material. Before Williams, Star Wars was a bunch of actors in Halloween costumes running around wooden spaceship sets. After he waved his conductor’s wand, it was an ornate space opera — a mythic world we are still getting lost inside. Another prime example of his bringing high art to potentially low material is his work scoring Chris Columbus’s Home Alone , which turns 35 this fall.

“For John to be able to connect what I did in that movie,” said Columbus, “not only propels the story forward but from a narrative standpoint it’s like he’s taking the audience’s hand and inviting them inside that world. I

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