Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
What I did this weekend
Among other things, I watched movies.
Best of the bunch was Let the Right One In, a subtitled Swedish coming-of-age vampire movie. It’s about a bullied 12-year-old named Oskar (who is a very dark child, despite being all blond and blue-eyed and Swedish) who befriends Eli, a girl (maybe) who has been 12 for the last 200 years. The cinematography is spectacular, the film is well paced, and the child actors are mesmerizing. Most fascinating thing: leaving aside the whole bleeding your victims to death thing, is Eli evil? For most of the movie, I saw her as a practiced user who victimizes the men/boys who become fond of her. Won’t spoil the ending, but it did leave my early judgment somewhat shaken.
Next up was Dead Snow, a subtitled Norwegian zombie movie. Nazi zombies. Fast Nazi zombies. Who prey upon a group of witless but attractive medical students. I know, I know, what more could you ask for? Some originality, for one thing. One of the med students is afraid of the sight of blood. Another is a horror movie aficionado, who really ought to know better than to get laid early in the movie, because of course that means he’s one of the first to die. (Movie tropes dictate that the woman gets it first, because naughty women are more intrinsically zombie food than naughty men.) I recommend you pass on this one.
Finally, we watched a Woody Harrelson movie, Zombieland, a non-subtitled American zombie flick about a neurotic young guy with irritable bowel syndrome who as the movie starts thinks he’s the last non-cannibalistic guy in America, or what’s left of America, which he has renamed Zombieland. But he soon meets up with Woody Harrelson, an actor who surprises me because I never thought the Woody from Cheers would ever amount to anything. I liked him in this, and thought he and the protagonist (Jesse Eisenberg) had great chemistry and were a hoot to watch.
A horde of flesh-eating children. What's not to love?
But then they had to bring a couple of other characters into the film: Abigail Breslin who is supposed to be twelve in the film, probably really WAS twelve, but looked about fifteen, and love interest Emma Stone. They play con artist sisters, and the trouble is, in this cut-throat world these two are just too evil to live. This was sufficiently annoying that my wife stopped watching it (shortly after yelling at the screen, “SHOOT THEM ALREADY!”) but Jake and I trudged on.
It’s all a matter of suspension of disbelief. Or perhaps a trust in male hormones; after all, there’s a good chance Emma Stone is the last eligible female in the mainland 48, so why wouldn’t the two guys put up with a seemingly endless stream of abuse? I had no problem believing that, but my Vulcan wife couldn’t buy it.
Fun movie. Not my favorite zombie movie (Dead Alive and Fido vie for that top slot), but it had enough style and humor to keep me entertained. Much better than boring old fast Nazi zombies speaking Norwegian, anyway. Aside from an annoying cameo by Bill Murray and the aforementioned “why don’t they blow them away” problem, Zombieland (not to be confused with Brad Dourif’s Zombieland, also released in 2009) was a fun ride, great fare for the Fourth of July weekend.
D.
A Vulcan would not yell at the screen – it is highly emotional and so illogical. Verbotten for Vulcans.
At times, she likes to pretend at emotionalism 🙂