Go Galactic!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been months since the last time I posted here. I started this blog as an outlet for writing, but ever since I started contributing to Agit Reader (a really cool music site edited by ex-Columbus Alive writers Stephen Slaybaugh and Kevin Elliott) I've kind of neglected Crosseyed and Painless.

As the decade crawls toward its demise and the inevitable mushroom cloud of "best of the 00's" lists begins to take shape, it's as good a time as any to start this pop culture-obsessed trainwreck back up again. Inspired by one of my favorite blogs, Intensities in Ten Suburbs, I'm going to start posting silly retrospectives on the best movies, songs, and albums of the decade, according to one six-billionth of the population.

And why would I ever waste the time to do this? Because I'm addicted to list-making and list-reading like others are addicted to online poker or ludes.

(by the way, are ludes even addictive? They seem to be coming up a lot lately but I know nothing about them except for that Penny Lane ODs on them in Almost Famous and you could sell them in that awesome drug dealer game for the TI-83)

Anyway if you're a fellow listophile, check out the site over the next few months. I think I'll start with movies.

Oh and Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader Agit Reader

Speaking of Horror Movies, a Few Words on Torture

The right-wing talk radio psychotics and smegma-molds over at Fox News have added another offense to Obama's long laundry list of crimes against rich white America: he hates torture! My god, how will the children be safe with a president who doesn't condone state-sponsored torment of any turban-wearing "radical" who's caught jaywalking in Baghdad? How can good honest Americans go to bed at night with the knowledge that future detainees will be pampered and spoiled with luxuries like clothes and habeas corpus? And what about all the terrorist attacks that our government could have thwarted had they only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 200-300 more times for good measure?

Before getting too deep into the pernicious idiocy of these claims, here's a brief timeline of the events leading up to the Right's most recent collective temper tantrum:

April 16 - Obama releases four "torture memos" drafted by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel back in 2002 and 2005 that provided legal justification for the harsh CIA interrogation techniques used on detainees under the Bush administration. The president states that the CIA officials who carried out the harsh interrogations will not prosecuted.

April 19 - In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says that Obama believes that the individuals who devised the torture policy itself should not be prosecuted either.

April 21 - After getting a lot of heat from Human Rights organizations, Muslims from around the world, and Senate democrats like Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein, Obama says that he is open to prosecution of the individuals who formulated those legal decisions but that it would be up to Congress and the Attorney General to conduct the investigation. Conservative America proceeds to blow up in a vile and embarassing display of bloated outrage.

Conservatives are angry because they think Obama has "given in" to the demands of ultra-radical Left-Wingers with a political vendetta against the Bush administration. Moreover, they claim that the individuals now in danger of prosecution were the very same individuals doing God's work to protect America from terrorism. This disingenuous "no good deed goes unpunished" defense is based on two untenable fallacies:

1. These "harsh interrogation techniques" made the country safer

2. The techniques themselves do not constitute torture

Regarding the first argument, the interrogation techniques have actually had the opposite effect on our safety. For example, say you live in a politically volatile country and your leader has just been ousted by an occupying nation with ostensibly good intentions. Although you might not be crazy about your occupiers, you figure it can't get any worse than the last regime. Then one day, a casual acquaintance or rival who is struggling financially like yourself tells the local authorities that you are a part of a radical terrorist cell so he can receive a modest cash reward for the tip. Suddenly you're taken from your home in the middle of the night and locked away in a prison where you are subjected to unbearable pain and humiliation for information you do not have by the people who are supposed to "liberate" you. When (or I should say "if") you ever make it out, you might start to think those anti-American insurgents have a point. Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo? These are essentially recruitment facilities for future terrorists.

(Oh, and I almost forgot: even when a prisoner has potentially valuable information, torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence anyway so pretty much everybody loses.)

But even if we're to believe Michael Mukasey and Jack Bauer when they list the myriad benefits of "aggressive interrogation tactics" it's important to note just how euphemistic the phrase "aggressive interrogation tactics" really is. This brings us to the second flawed piece of rationale used to justify the crimes of the Bush administration which is that these techniques aren't really torture in the first place. When defending the rough treatment of detainees, torture-proponents downplay the cumulative effect of these techniques by listing only one or two of the tactics at a time. For example, it's debatable whether or not we'd call it torture to put someone's hand in a box containing a daddy long-legs while telling the detainee that the box contains a black widow. But employing the box trick on someone who has been standing for over 100 hours naked in a cold, pitch-black room with guards incessantly threatening death, slapping the person in the face, and throwing them against walls is a different story. Any kind of "interrogation" for 100 hours straight would be torturous, but it's especially inhumane when the ordeal involves sick and ridiculous rituals like these.

Going back to the release of the "torture memos" and the prospect of prosecution, I think Obama is right to avoid bringing criminal charges against the individual interrogators. These men were following orders. I'm sure many of them are already traumatized enough by their war-time experiences and the last thing they need is for their country to throw them in prison as gratitude for their service. And as easy as it is to direct our ire at the insidious Justice Department lawyers who snaked their way around the Geneva Convention to draft the memos, we shouldn't forget the people at the heart of the clusterfuck, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez, who requested the reports in the first place. After all, when a person is convicted of murder, the judge doesn't throw the defense attorney in jail and let the killer go free. And if Obama does not create an environment that allows Congress and the Justice Department to conduct a fair and thorough investigation of potential war crimes under the Bush administration, he may quickly lose the precarious sense of faith and trust he's instilled in our fellow free nations.

It Came From the Stacks of North Campus: Searching For the Ultimate Horror Movie

Any Columbus horror fan will tell you that North Campus Video is the only place to go for movies about slashers, monsters, zombies, and cannibals. Many of the local Blockbusters have gone so far as to eradicate the horror section altogether, peppering the Drama and Action sections with whatever lonely vestiges remain from the erstwhile genre (it's always strange to see a stately snoozer like House of Sand and Fog buttressing a glorious atrocity like House of 1000 Corpses). Lucky for us, North Campus is here to supply the goods to horror aficionados across central Ohio.

But despite the store's fine collection of mainstream, cult, and foreign horror movies, it's always a challenge to find a winning film beyond the universally-appreciated Horror 101 classics (The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead et al). Critical hivemind sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes can be helpful when selecting a good documentary or independent film, but since critics are usually woefully off-the-mark when it comes to horror, trial and error is the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff. To make matters even worse, an alarmingly high percentage of horror movies are terrible and only a small number of those are so terrible that they're actually good.

So every time I rent a semi-obscure horror movie from North Campus, bad or good, I'm going to write a quick review of it in hopes of building a solid catalog of the scariest/funniest/weirdest horror movies. We'll start with a French repulser called Frontier(s) that came to me via my friend John Liberatore, a veritable guru of disgusting shit. Sadly the movie was not very good. And your guess is as good as mine in regards to the parentheses.

Director: Xavier Gens

Sub-genre: Torture/Slasher

Pedigree: Selected as one of 8 Films to Die For at Horrorfest 2007 but removed from the slate due to its NC-17 rating.

Synopsis: Four young Parisian robbers exploit the confusion of a political protest gone awry to pull off a heist. They retreat to the countryside to hide out for a night at a secluded hostel run by people who I can only assume are France's equivalent to American white trash (I'm not sure if "French hicks" actually exist, or if the filmmakers just wanted to make sure their film bore as many misguided similarities as possible to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie the vast majority of their intended audience has already seen). The backcountry hostel owners (who are later revealed to be neo-Nazis) attempt to torture, kill, and eat the photogenic urban protagonists with varying degrees of success until, after 108 minutes and 20 gallons of blood and entrails, the film mercifully ends.

The Good: Fans of pure gore won't be disappointed as Frontier(s) is the kind of movie that wears its NC-17 rating as a badge of honor. Also, the opening Parisian riot sequence is an interesting attempt by Gens to address the civil unrest beneath the surface of France's faux-idyllic baguette-noshing culture.

The Bad: Both the concept and the plotting owe way too much to Texas Chainsaw. The only major difference is in setting and let's face it: a European hostel isn't exactly the most original venue for a horror movie these days. Even the gore itself is little more than an extension of Eli Roth's Hostel (the most cringe-worthy scene involves a couple severed Achilles tendons). And as for the director's stabs at social commentary, what arch message is Gens trying to impart? That you can complain all you want about police brutality and urban strife, but count yourself lucky that you don't have to deal with all those farmboy psychos in the countryside? If we're to believe that Gens really aspires to address legitimate socio-political concerns, then the film is practically an endorsement of fascist cops as the lesser of two evils.

Verdict: Even horror fans who judge their movies largely on how many buckets of blood are spilled can probably avoid this one. There's nothing here in terms of gore, narrative, or theme that hasn't already been covered by Hostel, High Tension, The Descent, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

D -

Another entry from the FilmSlash Stash: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

If history remembers Kevin Smith’s new movie (note: I wrote this review months ago) Zack and Miri Make a Porno, it probably won’t be as a chronicle of the U.S.’s current financial crisis, although the film’s snowy Pennsylvania setting, which is framed as an economically depressed wasteland where strip malls go to die, does provide a timely and empathetic backdrop for the film’s financially strapped characters. Instead, Zack and Miri’s claim to cinematic immortality is that it’s probably the raunchiest movie ever shown in a multiplex alongside fare like High School Musical 3 and Madagascar 5. Without the support of box office king Seth Rogen, I can’t see how the movie could have squeaked by with an R-rating, with its graphic scenes of thrust and awe that are just a shade bluer than your average late-night Cinemax offering. Taking a love interest to see it is just about tantamount to Travis Bickle’s idea of a first date.

In Smith’s latest foray into the dirty minds of romantics, Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play lifelong friends and roommates who share a rapport that, in movie terms at least, can be immediately recognized as platonic (I can’t image Spencer Tracy’s first lines to Katherine Hepburn in a movie being, “I told you to close the door when you’re taking a shit!” but that is exactly how the audience is introduced to the chummy friendship between Zack and Miri) After a high school reunion that brings their monetary woes into sharp focus, Miri wistfully observes that “These are the type of circumstances that drive people to do pornography,” a prospect that, to Zack, seems less like a death knell than a lofty achievement to work toward. Before long, Zack and Miri are holding auditions, rounding up props, and brainstorming titles for their home-made porno that include “Fuckback Mountain” and “Star Whores.”

Despite the blunt puerility of their porn title ideas, the scenes where the characters prepare for or perform sexual acts on camera are in fact a breeding ground for the film’s funniest moments, as Smith celebrates the same exuberant do-it-yourself spirit seen in last year’s excellent Be Kind Rewind, particularly during a “Star Whores” costume montage that is as hilariously nerdy as it is salacious. It’s unfortunate then that Smith continues to lose his edge as both a writer of characters and a purveyor of jokes that reach beyond the realm of hand-jobs and Han Solo for inspiration. For example, Craig Robinson is wasted in a role that’s memorable only because the actor dead-pans his way through lines that sound as if they were written for a “token black guy” in a Michael Bay movie (perhaps Robinson attempted to bring some irony to a character that offered little more than painfully simplistic racial humor).

Even worse is Robinson’s wife, a role that works under the conceit that shrill black women screaming at their husbands are an inherently hilarious stereotype worth wasting a ten minute stretch of terrible jokes on. And despite the indomitable charms and effortless chemistry effused by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, Zack and Miri’s relationship arc rings predictable and stale, as Smith once again fails to approach the romantic elements of his films with the same vibrancy and originality he brings to his sex jokes. The most striking revelation here is actually Jason Mewes who effectively shatters the “Jay” identity he cultivated in earlier Smith flicks to play a reserved amateur porn-star whose mid-coital musings elicit the movie's biggest laughs.

The film loses much of its steam near the 90-minute mark when the principals abandon their pornographic endeavors due to the inevitable awkwardness that ensues when Zack and Miri finally share their big moment on camera. At this point, the movie hits a deeply saccharine note that is both incongruous to the flighty tone of the rest of the film and unjustified by Smith’s simplistic treatment of his lead characters. Although the director raises some interesting questions about the strange brew formed when sex and friendship are mixed, he rushes Zack and Miri through a third act plot-line involving faux betrayals and misunderstandings that would be better suited for shallow romantic comedy archetypes, not the real, relatable characters his protagonists potentially could have become at the mercy of a smarter script.

Nevertheless, it’s hard not to root for Rogen and Banks, who elevate the material with their winsome comic personas. And while Zack and Miri isn’t quite deep enough to warrant the gravitas Smith forces upon his characters, the film showcases the talents of not only trusted performers like Rogen and Banks, but also old Kevin Smith mainstays like Mewes and Jeff Anderson. And besides, what better antidote is there to a case of wintry economic blues than a hearty dose of good clean porn?

C+

Film Review: Gomorrah

Most mob movies can't help but glamorize the gangster condition. Even films that tend to highlight the more grotesque elements of life in the mob (the decapitated horse from Godfather immediately comes to mind) make it difficult for the viewer to resist the alluring sense of danger and excitement embodied by stories of organized crime. Heck, even the gritty and disturbing Brazilian crime epic City of God indulged in exhilarating worldbeat-infused action sequences that made sprinting through the slums of Rio with a handgun look like every kid's dream (Slumdog Millionaire suffered from similar excesses that threatened to undercut that film's attempts at social commentary). Although these films are almost always cautionary tales espousing "crime doesn't pay" messages, gangster movies generally keep the viewer at a safe distance from the carnage by emphasizing style over realism.

Now don't me wrong: movies like The Godfather, GoodFellas, and City of God aren't required to be realistic. They more than make up for a lack of naturalism in ways that have been well-documented elsewhere. But it's refreshing and even startling to see a film like Gomorrah approach a potentionally sensational subject (the Naples-based Camorra, one of the world's most deadly crime organizations) with stark realism and a pointed lack of romance. Through the use of digetic music, understated hand-held camerawork and naturalistic dialogue, director Matteo Garrone does more than merely immerse the viewer into a world of fake tans, tacky euro-thug couture, and horrific bloodshed. His primary concern, true to Robert Saviano's groundbreaking book of the same name, is to expose the personal and global ramifications of the Camorra's relentless evisceration of poor communities in Naples. As a result, the crime syndicate comes off as a monstrous and chaotic network of destruction that feeds on anything and everyone it can, including its own members. Like television's The Wire, Gomorrah documents organized crime's easy infestation into poverty-stricken corners of the world effectively forsaken by more legitimate agents of change.

A-

Breathe Easy, Duke: There's a New Most-Hated Team in College Basketball

My first foray into sportswriting! Let's hope it's mildly tolerable:

The University of Connecticut defeated Purdue last night 72-60 to advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Analysts everywhere have labelled them the favorite to win it all in light of recent struggles plaguing fellow top seeds Pitt and Louisville. I can't really disagree with their assessment; no other team has looked so consistently dominant in the tournament, turning in a token manhandling of 16-seed Chattanooga, destroying a perfectly good Texas A&M team by 26 points, and fighting off numerous rallies by a tenacious yet doomed-from-the-tip-off Purdue squad. But in the spirit of everything still good and honorable about college basketball, here's three reasons why you should be furiously rooting against UConn during the final few rounds. Unless of course you have them in your bracket pool; otherwise continue to root indiscriminately for all your predictions to come true, even if it means going against everything you believe in (just one of the many reasons I love March Madness...)

Top Three Reasons To Hate on UConn

1. They're not as good as you might think

I know, I know, I just got finished shamelessly trumpeting the unparalleled dominance of UConn in this tournament. But on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the Huskies are little more than a one-trick pony. Their team is comprised of highly-recruited yet shockingly unspectacular players with the exception of one Hasheem Thabeet. Thabeet is a 7'3" behemoth who can easily outplay most opponents due to the increasingly diluted quality of his competition, an unfortunate consequence of the yearly mass exodus of collegiate talent (particularly big men like Thabeet) to the NBA. The success of UConn this year is not so much a result of redoubtable playmakers, physical/mental toughness or brilliant coaching. It's more of an inevitability that arises whenever a college team has such a towering presence at the center position that it leaves every other team to rely on things like execution, athleticism, and basketball intelligence, only to be foiled by the sheer magnitude of the other team's best player.

Now don't get me wrong, height alone isn't enough to engender success for your team (see Ohio State's BJ Mullens). To his credit, Thabeet has great agility for his size, a tight grasp on the game's fundamentals, and I have little doubt that he will be a formidable player in the NBA for years to come. But for all the talk about how this is Jim Calhoun's best team in years, it bears mentioning that they only have one player (maybe two if you count the injured Jerome Dyson) who could have longevity as an NBAer. It's hard to attribute their success to coaching and chemistry, since pretty much every play they run involves feeding Thabeet the ball underneath the basket. And as the NCAA goes through an unprecedently severe drought of true big men, it's just not as impressive as it used to be to win 30+ games when you've got a near fool-proof wild card like Thabeet in the paint.

2. Dirty recruiting tactics

Granted, we can't blame UConn for capitalizing on the dearth of big men in college basketball. However, we can blame them for revelling in the profilgate yet unavoidably ubiquitous sins of recruiting that are just now catching up with them. Earlier this week, a Yahoo! Sports report prompted the NCAA to launch an investigation into whether or not the university violated monthly limits for phone calls to prospective recruits. Now I know that making excessive phone calls sounds like a pretty innocuous offense. But because phone records are empirical evidence, I imagine it's one of the best ways for the NCAA to prove that a university has engaged in less-than-responsible recruiting tactics (it's analogous to throwing Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, even though everyone knew it was because he killed all those people). Coaches and agents are usually too clever to get caught when they buy SUVs, prostitutes, and cocaine for high school prospects, but they can never seem to figure out how to cover up their phone records (maybe they could take some tips from the dealers in "The Wire" and only use pre-paid cell phones that are more difficult to track. It makes me wonder if there are guys like McNulty and Bunk working tirelessly for the NCAA ethics committee to bust all these dirty coaches. I really hope there are). Now anybody who's seen He Got Game knows that every program scoffs at recruiting mandates and so it's important to keep that reality in mind before villifying UConn. But if a school gets caught, then there's a good chance it was either a. careless, b. arrogant, or c. steeped in a corruption so abject and complete that it was only a matter of time before it got what was coming (as was the case with Indiana's cancerous ex-coach Kelvin Sampson)

3. Jim Calhoun is the least classy coach in the NCAA

That might be a bit of an overstatement since there's only one instance that concretely supports this claim. Nevertheless, Calhoun displayed a pointed lack of class back in February when a freelance rabblerouser named Ken Krayeske asked the coach if he would consider giving back any of his 1.6 million dollar annual salary to help alleviate the state of Connecticut's ever-growing budget deficit (UConn is a public university making Calhoun a state employee). Calhoun snapped, "Not a dime back," before calling Krayeske "stupid" and advising that he "Get some facts and come see me!" Calhoun punctuated his rant with a prime example of his undeniably trenchant wit ("My best advise to you: shut up!") and later made sure to brag about all the charities he supports along with the fact that he brings in "$12 million a year for this university" (by the way, that's $12 million gross, which according to Courant.com, ends up being about $7.3 million net profit so, you know, maybe Calhoun should get some facts himself).

In Calhoun's defense, I'll admit that the coach was caught completely off-guard. A post-game conference isn't exactly the appropriate venue for Krayeske's line of questioning (in fact no one's quite sure how Krayeske, a UConn law student, got into the press room in the first place which, depending on your viewpoint, either totally discredits him or makes his guerrilla journalism tactics all the more admirable). But the fact that Calhoun never apologized for his greed-fueled outburst makes it pretty difficult for me to shake my image of him as an angry capitalist dinosaur who feeds on the souls of amateur journalists and poor people. I don't mean to impugn Calhoun's philanthropic endeavors, nor do I think he should be required to give any of his salary back (despite my bleeding heart, the school does have a contract to uphold). But Calhoun's handling of the situation isn't doing his team any favors. And if he manages to keep his job after this recruiting scandal is over, his team will have achieved a level of ignominy reserved for the great hated teams of all time.

So be sure remember all of this if you're watching the games this weekend. Go Missouri.

DVD: Let the Right One In

I wrote a review of this unsettling vampire flick a few months back for FilmSlash, but it was never published (unfortunately that site is, at best, on indefinite hiatus and, at worst, totally defunct. More details on that as they come in). With the film now on DVD however, the review is worth revisiting. Be careful though; according to an article posted yesterday on the AV Club, first pressings of the DVD featured subtitles that were "dumbed-down" from the ones used during the film's original theatrical run (follow this link to find out how to tell between the new-and-improved 2nd edition and the much-maligned first version). Anyway, here's the review:

Among the criticisms leveled at quasi-vampire movies like 30 Days of Night and I am Legend is that these films emphasize only the feral, animalistic tendencies of vampires, down-playing the more human attributes that arguably make them so scary in the first place. While sharp teeth and inhuman strength are clearly redoubtable traits, it’s the seductiveness and feigned innocence of the vampire that is most threatening (after all, according to many histories of the monster, a vampire can’t even enter somebody’s house unless invited). This last bit of peculiar lore provides Let the Right One In with its title and also hints at the film’s subtext. Its story is a wintry gothic love tale that recounts the friendship between a tirelessly-harassed schoolboy named Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) and a centuries-old vampire named Eli (Lina Leandersson) stuck perpetually in her eight-year old form. Their strange union is forged by varying degrees of affection, loneliness, and mutual necessity, and under the subtle direction of Tomas Alfredson, the audience is left to determine themselves the extent to which each of these elements makes up the basis for Eli and Oskar’s relationship. Meanwhile, Eli herself will surely meet the approval of more reactionary fans of the vampire genre as she is capable of both gentle coyness and ferocious violence. With her saintly Anne Frank resemblance and sober demeanor beyond her years, Leandersson provides an added edge to this methodically paced, slow-burning chiller that recalls the prickly storytelling of another classic of modern European horror, The Devil’s Backbone.


“Squeal pig, squeal,” are the film’s first words and they come from Oskar as he toys with a knife and imagines torturing the bullies who regularly assail him with physical and verbal barbs (this unsettling combination of whimsy and sadism continues throughout the plot’s fanciful yet disturbing twists and turns). That night, new neighbors move in next door and the audience is introduced to Eli and her mortal caretaker, Hakan (Per Ragnar), who collects fresh blood for his thirsty young companion with the gloomy efficiency of an adept deer hunter who’s also a closet animal lover. Both outcasts in their own way, Eli and Oskar become fast friends, absconding each night to the frigid yard surrounding their apartment complex to play with Rubix cubes and discuss retaliation against Oskar’s tormentors. Paradoxically, Eli’s presence is calming to Oskar even as she encourages and prods his secret violent tendencies. The nature of her influence is ambiguous; Oskar’s own taste for blood is evident before he even befriends Eli. And although she is the first to suggest a counterattack, the deafening blow Oskar lays on one of his cruelest classmates is largely a manifestation of the newfound confidence he receives from her companionship. Nevertheless, as her own personal bloodmaid Hakar becomes less and less effective with age, it is difficult to deny the incentive for Eli, under the guise of her affectionate precocity, to unleash Oskar’s darker side.


Beyond the director’s intricate focus on Eli and Oskar’s unconventional friendship, Alfredson also proves to be a skilled purveyor of horror-show thrills, indulging in jump-out scares and even a few scenes of reasonably nauseating gore while never letting these haunted house conventions overwhelm or cheapen the power of the story. When Alfredson’s not decapitating his characters, having them spontaneously combust, or disfiguring their faces with acid (in a scene that makes Two-Face from The Dark Knight look about as scary as, well, Two-Face from Batman Forever), he employs a quiet and reserved approach. At times, the pacing is so diligently slow, lingering on long shots of wintry night skies and snow-blanketed expanses, that Alfredson seems to intentionally dampen the drama of the story for the sake of cultivating realism and emphasizing the film’s fiercely unexpected climax.


Though firmly rooted in the traditions of classic vampire cinema, there is little else you could call conventional about Let the Right One In. The film is predominantly concerned with presenting the joys and perils of intimacy, as Oskar risks both body (the explicit danger posed by Eli as a vampire) and soul (the implicit threat of making sacrifices for a love that may or may not be pure). The film is no more certain of Eli’s intentions than Oskar is, but Alfredson bracingly puts the audience into Oskar’s head as the director charts the boy’s leap of faith into the arms of a possible fiend. Let the Right One In merges the thrill of falling in love with the thrill of our worse nocturnal fears, creating a dark and exciting vision that will please hard-core horror fans along with arthouse moviegoers. And if you’re both of these things? Well, it doesn’t get much better than this.

A -

What It Is

Oh hey, it's "Crosseyed and Painless." I don't really know where to begin since I haven't a clue what the tone or content of this endeavor will be. I'll probably write about a lot of bad movies I like, whip up some top ten lists now and again, and maybe throw in some politics and sportswriting. My point is that I can't properly introduce this thing until I know what it is, and I won't know that until I start writing. And until that time, why don't you check out this fine throwback to Web 1.0, BigPoopCornPoop. That will get you started on everything you need to know about the internet in 1997. Enjoy!