QUICK COMMENTS ON BEOWULF

I didn't like BEOWULF, even after seeing it in the much hyped 3-D IMAX format. Sure, the technology is cool and the movie has a lot of fun moments, but I thought it was boring, cheesy and campy at times and not in good ways (like some of 300), and just not all that much fun. I'd give it two stars. You get to see Angelina Jolie naked (sans nipples) and her character is one of the best parts aspects of the movie but she's in it for like 5 minutes. I know that the filmmakers are basing the film on the poem, but c'mon...she's one of the coolest, sexiest, trippiest images in the piece and she's barely in it. I pretty much hate motion-capture. It looks like Playstation graphics. Sorry. Some of the renderings were amazing, I will say, but it was never consistent, and it just grew irratating. And while the 3-D was cool, it all started to feel like a pop-up book come to life and at times, looked childish and phony. The story was uninvolving, the film nice to look at on occasion, but overall, it just went nowhere. A huge step back for Robert Zemeckis, a filmmaker I have loved without reservation for many years. I found his last 3-D motion capture film, THE POLAR EXPRESS, be a truly thrilling cinematic experiene. You're positively on that gigantic train as it skids over that frozen lake, a feeling I never got once while watching BEOWULF. Zemeckis seems to have lost interest in making films...he's becoming an innovator, much like James Cameron, and I am disappointed by that. I love BACK TO THE FUTURE 1-3, CAST AWAY, FORREST GUMP, CONTACT (minus the McConahaey sp? stuff), WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (where Zemeckis was innovating AND telling a great fucking story). WHAT LIES BENEATH was cool but flawed, but at least it was stylish and human in a Hitchcockian way at times. But Zemeckis now seems more interested in figuring out new ways to film stuff, rather than advancing the art of storytelling. Imagine this: Zemeckis directing a $150 million BEOWULF movie in LIVE ACTION, and THEN it's put into the 3-D process. That would be utterly amazing. Imagine BRAVEHEART in 3-D. GLADIATOR in 3-D. Now were talking. Motion-capture is bullshit--why the fuck do we need to see Tony Hopkins's digitally smoothed over naked ass as he plays a younger version of himself? I just didn't get it.

Off to see ENCHANTED, looking forward.