9. Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019), dir. Timo Vuorensola

I saw the first Iron Sky film in the cinema when it came out in 2012 (LJ / DW). This one, the sequel, did get a cinema release, but in Leeds only one cinema offered a showing if enough people signed up in advance and not enough did, so lady_lugosi1313 and I watched it via Google Play instead.

I was surprised as we watched by how very little I remembered about the first film, but now I've realised it came out in 2012 I'm less so. (If you'd asked me to guess its release date before I checked, I would have said 2015.) It left me a bit at sea at the beginning of the film, as we were evidently meant to recognise some of the characters as descendants of people from the original film, but I couldn't remember anything about their parents so lady_lugosi1313 had to remind me. It didn't really matter too much once things got going, though.

Like the first film, it was funny and knowingly silly. There's a lot to be said for a film whose climax features a fake alien lizard-Hitler riding a tyrannosaurus rex through a moon colony. It was fun to see a fake alien lizard-Caligula crop up briefly part-way through, too. But I see looking back at my review of the first film that I complained about its unsubtlety in some areas, and I felt like that again this time about their parody of Apple cultism, in which a slavish adoration of Steve Jobs and everything he ever produced had become the main religious cult on the moon base. It would have been OK as a one-off passing joke, but as things are it was over-played. Still, it made for a fun afternoon.

10. Let the Right One In (2008), dir. Tomas Alfredson

I first saw this during my trip to Australia in 2017 on a friend's telly-box (LJ / DW), but as I had never seen it in the cinema I was very happy to go along and watch it again at the Hyde Park Picturehouse with lady_lugosi1313 recently. It is, after all, very good.

Some things which particularly struck me this time, and / or I didn't mention last time, included the very effective use of silence and stillness throughout the movie. It creates a compelling sense of focus and isolation around Oskar and Eli when they meet in the play-area of their apartment building, underscoring how separate from everything around them their friendship is. And once that's established, it contrasts nicely with the sounds we do hear - yelling from Oskar's bullies, the buzz of conversation in the bar where the adults hang out, the roar in Oskar's ears as he is being held underwater in the pool.

Perhaps because I was seeing it on a big screen this time, or perhaps just because I already knew the story so could pick up smaller details, I also noticed that sometimes when Eli is in vampire-attack mode, CGI is used to make them appear both older and more savage. I really liked that - both the subtlety of it, so that you may or may not consciously notice it, and the properly frightening, supernatural edge it gives to the character (who could otherwise risk becoming too humanised). And although I had certainly remembered how touching the portrayal of Eli and Oskar's relationship is, I had forgotten that from time to time the film is also darkly humorous - as when we learn that Eli has appeared to save Oskar's life and make short work of his tormentors by seeing severed limbs and heads falling into the swimming pool from Oskar's underwater perspective.

In my head, this film now belongs on a list of five exceptionally-good (for different reasons) vampire movies which we've been lucky enough to have in the last now-slightly-more-than-ten years. In chronological order, those are:

• Let the Right One In (2008)
• Byzantium (2012)
• Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
• What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

I will be only too happy to consider further additions to the list if anyone wants to recommend any, or indeed release them!