Take This Waltz.

If I remember correctly there were two reasons for seeing Take This Waltz (2011), the first was the lead actress. I initially encountered Michelle Williams in Thomas McCarthy’s 2003 debut feature film The Station Agent, which became one of my all time favourite films. Her other stand out movies have included Brokeback Mountain (2005), Blue Valentine (2010) and the exceptionally enjoyable My Week with Marilyn (2011), a film for which she should have won the Oscar for Best Actress which unfortunately went to Meryl Streep for playing The Iron Lady (2011).

The second reason was the Canadian actress, director and screenwriter Sarah Polley who had previously directed the award winning Away From Her (2006) about a couple whose marriage is tested when the wife, played by Julie Christie, begins to suffer from Alzheimer’s and moves into a Residential Care Home. 

Michelle Williams.

But I’m afraid that her latest film is not a patch on this previous movie, in fact it’s shallow, limp and boring with characters you would feel embarrassed to know. A 28-year-old freelance writer Margot (Williams) whose married to Lou Rubin, a lump of a man played by a so-called comedy actor called Seth Rogan. When a new neighbour (Luke Kirby) moves into the house opposite, Margot can’t help forming an attraction but spends most of the film desperately trying to stay out of the mans bed. Mind you when your married to an idiot that spends most of his waking day cooking chickens and playing silly games who would blame her from wondering.  Take my advice give this one amiss.

Beowulf and Grendel

Beowulf and Grendel get to know each other better!.

I must admit to a lack of familiarity with Anglo-Saxon literature, so when I get a chance to see a movie loosely based on an epic poem called Beowulf by an anonymous author I’m intrigued! Apparently according to the poem this Beowulf is the hero of the Geats who were a North Germanic tribe inhabiting what is now Gotaland in Sweden. The king of the Danes, a chap called Hrothgar, summons our Scandinavian warrior to help him out with a wee problem he was having with a nasty piece of work called Grendel, seemingly a monstrous character who attacks and kills people with his bare hands. According to the poem Beowulf slays Grendel and then proceeds to slay his mother after which he returns home and becomes King of the Geats. After ruling the Geats for fifty years up pops a dragon, which he manages to slay but he is fatally wounded and dies from his injuries. You would think that at his age he would have left it to a much younger man?

Gerard Butler as Beowulf.

Right, after this wee history lesson I’d best get back to the film, as I said Beowulf and Grendel (2005) is loosely based on this ancient poem. Filmed in Iceland and directed by the Canadian film director Sturla Gunnarsson the films narrative does indeed deviate from the poem, the monster is now depicted as a Troll, played by the Icelandic actor Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson you may have seen in Jar City (2006) and there are some additional characters including a rather attractive witch called Selma portrayed by Sarah Polley (Splice 2009) and by the way your be pleased to know I have not given away the ending because it’s different from the one I described. Also included on the cast list are Gerard Butler, who seems to appear all over the place at the moment, as Beowulf and Stellan Skarsgasrd as the Danish king Hrothgar.

This historical curiosity has some well-staged action sequences, but it’s bleak and cold looking mainly due to the inhospitable landscape and Iceland’s unrelenting weather. The main problem is the dialog, which is very difficult to understand at times. There’s a certain amount of madness about the whole thing, so much so you could imagine Werner Hertzog directing it!  

Splice

Dren plays with Dolly!

The third feature film from American-Canadian director and screenwriter Vincenzo Natall is the science fiction horror Splice (2010) starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as a pair of generic engineers Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast whose work involves splicing together the DNA of various animals to create a new hybrid for medical use. As always Doctor Frankenstein, these academic types get carried away and our two are no exception adding human DNA to the mix  (obviously for the benefit of mankind?) The pharmaceutical company that sponsor their experiments have got more sense, or is it lack of funds, forbidding the couple from carrying out their objectives. But come on we would not have much of a story, or Dolly the sheep, if all these mad scientists did what they were told!  An interesting slant on the way generic science is heading? Good acting from the two leads, not forgetting Delphine Chaneac as the feminized humanoid. With passable special effects it makes an entertaining movie but without the “punch” of David Cronenberg.