3.09.2009

My Life as a Bat

What a cool movie. It's hard not to call Let the Right One In a horror film but it also hardly feels like one. I read a a few reviews right afterward and found it odd that a number of mainstream critics tended to describe the film as grim (“deadly grim” in Ebert's words) I found it rather the opposite, a sort of heartfelt and giddy coming-of-age black comedy. The gentle romance/friendship between the two young leads was honest and realistic (as far as vampire/mortal love affairs go) and hell... they even end up together.

It will be interesting to compare Let the Right One In with the upcoming releases of Twilight and HBO's True Blood. This one is a winning combination of Nosferatu meets My Life as a Dog by way of Heathers.

A totally easy film to recommend and oddly enough also nearly a perfect tweeny movie. Of course the soulless hyper-protective middle-aged Toronto parent cabal would never allow their trophy children to view such a film and that's too bad.

Great flick.

Sporgey.
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6 comments:

the coelacanth said...

i watched it this morning, and felt much the same way. not grim at all, but beautiful and touching. i thought both the (main) kids were excellent as well. it will be interesting to see how hollywood fucks up the proposed remake...

oh yeah - they really marketed this one wrong when it was in theatres - all the taglines on the newspaper ads were things like "terrifying" and "chilling", clearly going for the horror buck...

3/9/09, 1:49 AM
Dropkick said...

i think the film is great too, just in my personal experience it was weakened by it's excessive hype. People kept telling me it was going to be the best movie i had ever seen. and well, they were wrong.
my roomies have seen this 3 times in theatres respectively and i just didn't really.. i dunno. Very easy to recommend only many people put it back down when they find out they may have to *gasp* read subtitles.
"no i don't do that" is what they always say, or "i'm not in the reading mood tonight" so silly. most of the better comedies, dramas, thrillers, horrors, action flicks are in other languages. If your brain seriously can't take having to read highlighted text at the bottom of a screen then you should have your license revoked. The one that warrants you to be able to do anything.
it's like saying you're going swimming and laying out in the sun beside the pool all day. or something.

anyways, yeah too much hype. Much like Crash, that shit smear that calls itself film that was awarded the oh so pointless oscar was tooted as being the best movie ever made by people i knew.
Shortly after sitting through that trite i severed all ties with those "people".

3/9/09, 2:51 AM
La Sporgenza said...

FYI - Mongrel sweded LTROI with an English dubbed audio track - it's in the setup section on the disk and might even be the default track (I suppose it'd be more accurate to say they "unsweded" it). It's such a goofy language I found half the fun of the film was listening to them speak.

Because I rarely leave Segredos, I wasn't exposed to all the hype, but I know what you mean Kris.

3/9/09, 9:08 AM
Dropkick said...

i actually told someone that there was an english dub on it but they couldn't even be bothered by going into the menu and switching it on. It's as if because it wasn't made in North America it wasn't something to be watched.
Some people would call that being xenophobic but i'm sure this guy called it being a patriot.

3/9/09, 10:36 AM
the coelacanth said...

english-dubbed is the default audio track, so lazy fucks don't even have to go into the set-up. i, however, am not a lazy fuck, so i pressed a button twice and voila - "sweded".

3/9/09, 12:47 PM
La Sporgenza said...

I'm troubled by Kris's proper use and spelling of "xenophobic". You Joe?

3/9/09, 4:14 PM

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