Sunshine and Vampires

Two movies I've seen lately --

Dane and I went to see Sunshine Cleaning a couple weeks ago with Susanna and some of her friends.  It was entertaining, but not really my favorite.  I have really truly loved Amy Adams in a lot of movies, she's great and can be so adorable and hilarious and just light up the screen.  There's the Drop Dead Gorgeous version, which was hilarious and genius, and the Enchanted version which is innocent and precious, and the Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day version which is sort of a mix of both of those and whom I could watch all day, and we're going to pretend the Talladega Nights version never existed, except that it was a lot like the Charlie Wilson version. 

Then there's the Junebug, Sunshine Cleaning, Doubt Amy Adams, which is kind of all quivering bottom lip and wide blue tear-filled eyes and defeated smiles and Lucille Ball hand-wringing (know what I mean?) and this mix of innocent and sweet and pitiful and desperate.  That one was just done one too many times and turned up to 11 in Sunshine Cleaning and may have ruined that whole Amy Adams for me for a while.  Probably only for a while though.

Then they had this plotline with Emily Blunt, whom I also happen to love, that was kind of awkward and never really went anywhere, and I'm not sure what the point of it was.  I mean I kind of get it, but sometimes it seems like "let's throw a few controversial-ish themes in there, even if they don't lend to story or character, just because it'll make us more Indie and will take the place of creative plot twists and if people have a problem with it we'll call them narrow-minded."

BUT THEN.

Last night we watched Let the Right One In, which I pretty much loved completely.  I've had less time to think about it, so that could be part of it, but I was just sucked in.  It was unbelievably refreshing to me how they told SO much of the story in shadows or off-screen or only showing you the few moments before something happened.  It's like they actually believed that I have my own imagination, or something.  Crazy, right? 

I wished I saw it on the big screen, because even on our teeny one in non-HD, it was just one of the most beautiful movies ever.  It opens with a kid walking through snow (or at least that's in the first couple minutes) and my immediate thought was "ew, I'm so glad we don't live where it's that cold".  20 min later I was like "I want to go to SWEDEN."  Just soooo soo pretty.  I was sold even with the screwed-up American subtitles.  I hate it when you can TELL they say this whole long sentence and you even recognize a few words or a name, and then the subtitles are all "NO, THANK YOU."  And you're like "Come on!  I know that's not all they said."  I guess I'll just have to learn Swedish. 

Anyway, worth checking out.  Kind of gory, and not really terribly cheery, but not scary like I thought it would be, not at all.  Just beautiful and sweet.  In a little bit of a murdery kind of way.  And with the second kid named Oskar that I've loved recently, the other being Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Dane nixed it as a kid name though.  Too bad.