Beowulf & Grendel

Great scenery, some language and action dialogue issues but well worth the time taken to watch.

Gritty and poignant. Gerard Butler is an excellent Beowulf!!!! The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking.

Unusual. For some reason it was like the movie the 13th warrior to me: probably wildly inaccurate, very fluctuating acting skills and accents, ridiculous portrayal of the enemies, but entertaining still somehow.

A retelling of (2/3rds of) Beowulf refocused on family and vengeance, in a partially modern vernacular. Butler's not much fun, but Polley, Skarsgård and Sigurðsson especially (his Grendel/Frankenstein's monster hybrid gleefully bowling for heads, or at one hilarious point echoing Monty Python's French soldier on the ramparts) do fine. The true star here is the beautifully sparse Icelandic landscape, nicely captured, composed and colored into mossy greens and lavender skies.

Grimy, grueling, gory, and gross. Some parts hilariously bad, but mostly just painfully, boringly bad. Veered from the epic story for rambling anti-religion sub-plot. Most characters were annoying. The troll/Neanderthal costume was ridiculously awful. Hearing the multinational cast speak in their own random accents--Scottish, Swedish, American, Cockney, what-have-you--was bizarre. Felt much too long. Lovely Icelandic scenery, though. And cute Icelandic ponies.