this kid is amazing

This film is easily on my top ten for the year.  wait top 5 maybe.

As with every good vampire flick I expect religious imagery and some amazing cinematography.  This film delivered all of that and more.  Let The Right One In has simply become my favorite vamp flick.  This film rose above the others for one simple reason.  It isn’t shot like a vampire flick and there are no Victorians.  Seriously I love vamp flicks so much I even watched Twilight…yea I  know 20 years in purgatory for admitting that.

Spoilers as usual:

In this film we see some great storytelling that is subtle and delicate.  What we have is a film that allows us to see a new side of the vampire mythos.  The idea of a vampire that doesn’t want or like to kill is a tired one, this story takes it to a new place.  We start off with a pathetic person incapable of defending himself, Oskar.  He has hate bursting from him but is unable to act on his urges.  When he meets Eli, a 12 (120) year old girl, she urges him to hit back, to hit harder than he dares.

It’s not that Eli is unwilling to kill its that she rather wouldn’t.  She is a parasite on one boy a generation.  Eli feeds off of the love that Oskar gives her just as much as she feeds off of the blood of victims.  Her relationship is perfectly beneficial to Oskar.  She teases with her emotions, her body, and her strength.  Eli has to choose weak individuals with potential.  This is a tragic story for the heroes. Both of them get what they want but they will both suffer.  I only hope that Morse code lets then fall in love!

let me know what you think!

about the most blood you'll see in the film

Wow. Let me tell you this movie was a real surprise!  I thought I would be walking into something rather simple and lame.  I thought it was going to be advertising for Nappa.  What I found was a really quaint histo-drama on a very special unique time for California and for America.  It was kind of like Seabiscuit without the national pride.  Now that I think of it that doesn’t surprise me.  It is a movie about selfish people trying to make a difference without knowing how.  It is typical of how California thinks of itself in terms of the country it is part of.  The fact that on their site they compare this moment with the moon landing and 1980 hockey win seems a bit of a non-sequitor.  But I digress from my thoughts on the film.

So this film was pretty amazing in one spectacular detail.  I have been researching to see how true the facts are but have found squat, so I will just go with it an hope that it is based on real events.

Spoilers follow:  as in total spoilers:

So as I walked out of the theatre I felt way better than I should and as David Wilcox would say “I was bugged for metaphorical reasons.”

You see I had just saw something really beautiful and didn’t know why it was beautiful.  It wasn’t until 2 days later that it struck me.  Christ was the entire focus of this film he was the driving story the reason these people were in community and he taught them about love life and how to be better human beings. He even was a perfect creation that died and rose again in this film.  And it was because it was perfect that it HAD to die and rise again.

Now by no means am I saying that this is a Christian Film, I would never condemn a film like that. :)  what I think is that these filmmakers knew the power of Christ imagery and of the story that so much of the world is familiar with that it became their story.  I am sure a lot of it was coincidence or just playing on tradition western storytelling, but it is there.

Ill be short with the explanation then let you play with it a bit on your own.

The grapes and wine are Christ.  OK for all you sacramentals out there you say “Of course Marshall!” I hope so beacuse this movie mad me want to take communion ASAP.  so the one quote about wine from Galileo “Wine is sunlight held together by water” is ever so meaningful. That image Christiologicaly is very cool.

If Christ is the wine in this story some things need to be there.  Well the wine is brought into the world by the unequipped and unprepared.  People society would never imagine a savior coming from.  It should be prophesied.  It should polarize people.  It should die. it should rise again. and finally it should save people’s lives because of the death and rebirth.

In the film the wine does all these things and more.  it even goes through a 3 day death and rebirth.  AND durring its death it is still sweet and beautiful.  In fact the reason for its necessary death is its perfection. and it literaly saves a “nation.”