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This movie is amazing. Forget all the cynical fun-killers who said it sucked. They weren't paying attention! This is one of the best, most bizarre, expectation-shattering, visually stunning genre films I have ever seen... and I've seen 'em all!
For the literature professors out there, it cleaves so close to the 8th-century poem (translated, of course, into intelligible English) as to be almost embarrasingly faithful. I mean, seriously. Some of the stuff that happens in both the poem and this movie are just plain WEIRD.
But that's just the first half of the movie. The second half is... the word 'breathtaking' comes to mind. Mesmerising.
During the show, sitting in the theater behind my wife and me there was a group of snarky teenagers, who giggled and snickered like... well, snarky teenagers... throughout the first half of the film, which is admittedly somewhat cliched (13 centuries after the fact!). Then, when the story basically begins to become its own sequel, a tonal shift happens... and let me tell you, we didn't hear another peep out of those noisy kids! It was as though they each got a light slap across the face, simultaneously, and then sat there rapt along with the rest of the audience.
This is the kind of movie I wait all year for! It's the best fantasy film since the last LOTR in 2003, and that one (IMO) stretched credibility and patience.
Just don't take the kids, unless you (or they) don't mind witnessing acts of hideous violence perpetrated by unbelievably ghoulish monsters. Or Angelina Jolie's CGI simulacrum almost totally nude.
Like I said, a fine film.
For the literature professors out there, it cleaves so close to the 8th-century poem (translated, of course, into intelligible English) as to be almost embarrasingly faithful. I mean, seriously. Some of the stuff that happens in both the poem and this movie are just plain WEIRD.
But that's just the first half of the movie. The second half is... the word 'breathtaking' comes to mind. Mesmerising.
During the show, sitting in the theater behind my wife and me there was a group of snarky teenagers, who giggled and snickered like... well, snarky teenagers... throughout the first half of the film, which is admittedly somewhat cliched (13 centuries after the fact!). Then, when the story basically begins to become its own sequel, a tonal shift happens... and let me tell you, we didn't hear another peep out of those noisy kids! It was as though they each got a light slap across the face, simultaneously, and then sat there rapt along with the rest of the audience.
This is the kind of movie I wait all year for! It's the best fantasy film since the last LOTR in 2003, and that one (IMO) stretched credibility and patience.
Just don't take the kids, unless you (or they) don't mind witnessing acts of hideous violence perpetrated by unbelievably ghoulish monsters. Or Angelina Jolie's CGI simulacrum almost totally nude.
Like I said, a fine film.
-Tallahassee 
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