The beauty of Let the Right One In resides in the way the horror remains grounded in a tragic kind of love.

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

I do not like horror films. I was able to sit through a handful of them my whole life, and only in front of the TV screen (that’s if we don’t count Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I don’t think really falls into the “horror” category). It’s cowardice, yes, and an utter distaste for gore and gruesomeness.

I’m not much for vampire movies, either. But when a friend asked me to check out this movie, in an effort to understand why it is deemed better than Twilight, I agreed.  I wasn’t courageous enough to voice out that I’m tempted to think that any other movie can be better than Twilight; I resolved to watch the film in broad daylight and was surprised to realize that it is worthy of all the praises.  It has good scares, of course; it is creepy; and it is beautifully constructed. It’s one of those fims that are more about the storytelling than about the story – the kind that critics love to rave about. The kind that is not commercial and mainstream.

Let the Right One In is a Swedish film that centers on Oskar, a perennially bullied teenager, and Eli, his new neighbor who for all appearances seem to be just another laconic 12-year-old girl. As the two form a bond, Eli’s secret begins to unravel, and let’s just say that “she” is more than that – she’s been 12 for a long time, just without any need for the best wrinkle creams to hide the fact.

I was taken by the chilliness of the film, and not just because it is more often than not fimed in a snowy landscape; it doesn’t have too many movements nor sounds, like what you’ll expect from the genre, but it is, nevertheless disturbing and, ultimately, better than that other film I mentioned in terms of filmmaking strengths. To be fair, though, I don’t think the two movies should be compared, despite the fact that both are love stories about a couple, half of which is a vampire and the other half is human. The similarity ends there.

Internet, meet my new TV (or should I say DVD?) crush – Dr.  Simon Tam.

He’s a highly intelligent and refined medical doctor who gave up a promising career to save his gifted but troubled sister in the TV series Firefly.

He does look dreamy; he’s prim and proper and has trouble with swearing. But he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty for the sake of those he care about.

he mumbles and fumbles when he likes a girl,  

and he’s actually saving that guy even if he looks funny doing it.

He’s the resident doctor on the spaceship Serenity, which is boarded by a bunch of crooks, errr I mean a crew involved in all sorts of “space business.” The captain of the ship, Mal Reynolds (who probably have no need for those Torgoen watches), accepted him and his sister, River, as part of his crew, which set upon an intruiging series of events in the show, which was later more dealt with in the movie version Serenity.

I’m talking to you, Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Give us X-Files 3. Bring on the aliens!

[rxmovie-388153]

The movie has already premiered at SM Megamall last August 7, but there are still two more scheduled on August 11. This is by invitation only, however, so if you want to get advance screening tickets, better join the following radio promos [source: pinoy x-philes.org]:

August 11, 2008

• NU 107
  Powerplant Mall Rockwell, Makati City

• RX 93.1
  Glorietta 4 Mall, Makati City

I’m waiting for August 13. See you at the movies!

I’m not trying to shove this movie down everyone’s throats. Well, maybe a little bit (reminder: August 13 is the opening day of The X-Files: I Want to Believe). General reception to the new X-Files movie has been lukewarm but from everything I’ve read, it’s apparent that the movie is a gift to fans (read: X-phile “shippers”). Granted, some who might have been expecting a grander cinematic offering like the first film, Fight the Future, were disappointed to see a smaller-scale thriller with underdeveloped plot. The X file, they say, took a backseat to character study and the exploration of Mulder and Scully’s relationship. It’s The X-Files at its core – the ever-precarious balance between faith and science. It’s a love story, although in the true X-Files sense (ambiguous and repressed). I’ve spoiled myself with the actual movie clips that fans have uploaded at YouTube and I realized that although the words and the looks that these two gave each other brought out the totally squealing fangirl in me, I don’t think anybody who’s not familiar with the show will understand why those seemingly typical scenes that depict two people in a relationship are pivotal in a decade-long wait for tying up loose ends.
MSR, the Mulder-Scully relationship as fans call it, has been nothing like anything depicted on TV before The X-Files and nothing ever since, partly owing to the actors’ much-raved-about chemistry and partly owing to Chris Carter’s (the series creator) initial insistence to keep the two characters’ relationship strictly platonic and professional. I am watching a season 3 episode as I am typing this post, The War of the Coprophages. Without getting into the plot that pretty much revolved around metallic killer cockroaches, I love this episode because Mulder gets to flirt with a scientist named Bambi while Scully acts jealous and territorial. As if to emphasize the silliness of this episode, my favorite (spooky) duo ended up both covered in dung and insulting each other. It was goofy and funny and reminded me of classic exchanges such as the phone conversation below.

Mulder (sitting in a car parked in nowhere land): Did you ever look up into a night sky and feel certain that not only was something up there, but it was looking down on you at that exact same moment and was just as curious about you as you are about it?

Scully (at home, cleaning her gun) : Mulder, I think the only thing more fortuitous than the emergence of life on this planet is that through purely random laws of biological evolution, an intelligence as complex as ours ever emanated from it. The very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable, but, at its most basic level, downright anti-Darwinian.

Mulder: Scully, what are you wearing?

Oh, the humanity! Have you ever seen a more geeky pair than these two?

Somebody asked me once, “So you like SciFi?” I was about to shake my head and vehemently say “No!” I’m not a StarTrek fan. I don’t even like Star Wars. I then did a little mind inventory:

Favorite TV show: X-Files, Taken

Favorite movie: Contact

Must be the aliens.

Truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of extraterrestrial life. It’s not necessarily about the little green men, or gray ones, or their supposed powers and advanced technologies that we exploit for entertainment. Contact summed it up the best for me when Ellie Arroway said, “The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything that anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”

When you look at the sky, what do you see? How do you feel about the vastness of the space beyond this planet? It always humbles me, in the most lucid moments, how small and insignificant we are against the grander scheme of things. Let’s skip religion, but are we not to agree that we, as a race, are part of something greater than ourselves? But people can be self-possessed and egotistical, lusting over the power of gods, even when we can’t even agree where we really came from. That may very well be how we survived. And if you’ve watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” that’s also what will spell our doom.

It’s easier to think that “the world is what we make of it.” It’s easier not to look for answers, because that’s what humankind has been doing since the beginning of time. Looking and failing mightily. Are we not in a better position now to enjoy our lives and accept that it’s all there is to it?

I don’t think I have an answer to that. I even think that Occam’s Razor (“All things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one”) is a very complicated principle.

People will always look at things differently anyway. Consider these different viewpoints from the movie Contact:

Ironically, the thing that people are most hungry for — meaning– is the one thing that science hasn’t been able to give them … Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the Web… at the same time, we feel emptier, lonelier and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history. – Palmer Joss (a spiritual leader)

You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. – Alien from Vega

So it turns out there’s life on other planets. Boy, this is really going to change the Miss Universe contest, you know what I mean? – Jay Leno in his TV show

Gad, I love the movies! I love how they mirror real life even when they’re trying to be grand and fantastic and out of this world.

Spread the word. Bring back the 90s! It’s coming this July.