I have been reading Beowulf as student and teacher for thirty years and have no idea what the following sentence means: "Like the poem it's based on, the movie is partly about the dangers of having power."

In what way is the poem about that incredibly banal subject?

You left out Robert Zemeckis' greatest cinematic achievement: the incredibly funny "Used Cars". Far better to remember great moments like that, rather than the cinematic abortions which crowd the latter half of his resume.

And I have to agree with you: "The Polar Express" was creepy, creepy, creepy. Although I thought I was the only person who noticed that. All those damned little animated elves saluting Santa in that giant, windy, icy-sounding echoing central square...it was like some hellish cross-breeding of Hallmark Santa schmaltz with "Triumph of the Will".

Heil Santa!

(Damn it, I still say that the original BOOK of "The Polar Express" was nothing more than a cynical, deliberate attempt to manufacture an instant Christmas "classic" - the author just forgot to put in any heart. And the movie SUCKED. It didn't even succeed in making its basic point! All that repeating over and over again, "Believe, believe, believe!!!" could only make any moderately intelligent six-year-old perk up their ears and wonder why they were pushing the whole point so baldly - there must be some doubt on the subject. It was pretty much a dead giveaway that Santa didn't exist.)

AND the Polar movie was much too loud and scary. My little boy burst out crying within the first ten minutes - I had to take him out of the theater.

DAMN YOU, ROBERT ZEMECKIS!!! :D

(Hey, if Angelina Jolie was naked, how the hell did the movie get a PG-13 rating?)

It looks like the mountain they are climbing is taller than they had thought...

Yep. It looks like the uncanny valley is particularly treacherous for neurotic movie critics. Look out! You may be eaten by a Grue...

Golly! And someone else dared to have a different opinion than you?

Since I'm fond of the original, I think I'll skip the Gaiman version. This sounds almost as soulless as Mirrormask.

1) Steven Spielberg was smart enough to realize that FX-just-because-you-can is a moviemaking dead-end. Is Zemeckis trying to pick up his slack or something? WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? was a perfect blend of smart script and ace special effects--and as far as RZ should have gone in that direction.

2) The most entertaining thing about THE POLAR EXPRESS (movie) was the studio/moviemakers' determined attempts to hype it into being a new holiday "classic." :) Otherwise, the movie had no plot, no interesting characters, and was (as another poster noted) sublimely creepy to watch. IIRC, some critic called it TRIUMPH OF THE ELVES, and they were dead-on.

Oh, please.

If you have a chance, it's a lot of fun.

"Find some gold -- but not my gold -- and sit on it."

Thanks for pinpointing why I will avoid this film -- the faces and, well, whole bodies of the characters look creepy. Not just creepy, but creepy in a blank, stupid way.

I confess to having played a few videogames in my day. Many videogames have little cinematic "cutscenes" that advance the game's storyline. Those cutscenes have computer-generated people whose faces somehow seem less real the more they appear realistic. "Beowulf"'s faces remind me of those games.

Why is any of this necessary? I would love to see a well-paced, exciting "Beowulf" movie that was done with real actors and well-rendered digital backgrounds. Why pay for A-list actors and then digitally re-do their faces? Take Angelina Jolie for example. If she's in a movie I want to see her directly, not through pixellated gauze. What a waste of a face.

By the way, Stephanie Zacharek, I like you in funny mode.

I thought I was safe; I thought I was happy. Believe it or not, I had completely blanked "The Polar Express" from my mind.

Then you mentioned it in your review.

Neighbors and friends found me a half hour later, still screaming in some sort of blackout/fugue state. I had forgotten... I had... forgotten.

Lordy, that was a creepy movie.

Just finished seeing Beowulf, and what a disappointment. The rendering technique used is just strange and creepy. Some things were incredibly finely detailed, with others so obviously fake they looked like they were borrowed from Shrek. I fail to understand the appeal of taking perfectly fine actors and painting over them to make them so much less than fine. Outside of a few zoomy action shot moves (which any decent CGI technician could have pulled off better), it all seemed totally unnecessary and just plain hard to look at sometimes, although the gallumphing stuffed-animal-like horses were at least funny.

The story? I liked the fact that they kept elements of the poem, like the boasting and the swimming contest, as well as other aspects of the overall story that were woven into this new narrative. But, seriously, Angelina Jolie as Grendel's ancient crone of a mother because those darned uptight monks just left out how smokin' she was? Give me a break.

If you want a real epic story, read the original Beowulf. There are any number of interesting translations. If you want technological mastery in an action film, rent 300. They got it right.

>(Hey, if Angelina Jolie was naked, how the hell did the movie get a PG-13 rating?)<

Boy, some people are so ungrateful. Instead of leaving you and other parents stranded in the middle of what could be Kiddie Movie Hell, the moviemakers were kind enough to toss in Jolie so you folks will have an additional reason to see this besides giving the kids something to do. (Granted, RZ and crew are probably more after the teen-guy audience, but be thankful for small favors, okay? ;))

"Death Becomes Her" was a preview of the kind of soulless crap we're seeing from Zemeckis now. I agree with previous posters that there was an awesome spark to his filmmaking in "Used Cars" and certainly "Back to the Future" (the rest of the trilogy less so), but this weird crappy computer animation seems to be an indulgence in the worst kind of technical fetishism that made "Death becomes Her" so painful to sit through.