Go See This Now!

I just got back from my Monday ritual (flick at the Cedar-Lee and reduced price beer at Parnell's), only on a Tuesday. The film I saw was "Let the Right One In," this tremendous Swedish vampire movie. It might be the best movie I've seen all year. You should really go check it out. I might go and see it again before it leaves the theater, which will probably be at the end of next week.

The film is sub-titled and has all sorts of interesting little sub-themes, from pre-teen lovers communicating in morse code to Cold War politics to bullying (with a kid that blends the worst of Flick from "A Christmas Story" and Tim in "River's Edge") to 70s Euro-rock to, of course, vampirism. The cinematography is beautiful and the script leaves dozens of small yet compelling questions unanswered in the most wonderful way. The film's fashion is compelling, too, as it resembles almost perfectly what you'll see among the audience members at any random winter Beachland Ballroom weekday show. This makes sense, of course, as the film is set in a suburb of Stockholm in the early 80s.

After the film and the drink, I hit up Richie Chan's for some house lo mein. Is it just me, or does the name of that restaurant remind anyone else of Los Angeles? The food was a lot like LA, too, in the sense that it was generally superficially attractive and mostly tasteless. They did, however, make the dish for me sans onion, so I guess I shouldn't hate.