Beowulf

Running Time: 113 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Starring: John Malkovich, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Angelina Jolie

What a year Neil Gaiman is having, first Stardust, now Beowulf. I hope he gets an Oscar, maybe two – one for best original, one for best adapted screenplay. Start looking up superlatives, because you’ll want them for this film. It is dark, twisty, sexy, and the 3-D version had the audience gasping as spears, branches, blood, and bodies seemed to approach, pass, and even pierce us. There is boasting and bellowing, a bawdy song for which I want the lyrics, and a gentle Dane woman harp song for contrast.

If you are a Gaiman reader, or if you read the Datlow & Windling anthologies of fantasy and horror, you can guess where the movie goes when it skips off the path of the original poem. Even with these variations, this movie is much truer to its source than the usual Hollywood fare. It follows the entire course of the epic, from the slaughter in the hall and Beowulf’s arrival, through his fight with Grendel, the revelation of Grendel’s vengeful mother, on to an aged Beowulf’s final confrontation with a devastating dragon. The only issue I had with the tweaks to the storyline is that now it is harder to recognize Beowulf’s dragon as the source for Smaug in The Hobbit.

The c-g animation is mesmerizing, with gorgeous storms and golden sunsets and wavelets over pebbles, plus a humorously tantalizing sequence when Beowulf opts to fight Grendel naked. Some movies entertain superficially; this one gets inside and changes you. Highly recommended. – Chris Paige