Double Kill

Once again the battle rifle was set aside this holiday weekend and I grabbed my favorite Easter candy, a box of marshmallow peeps (surprisingly no invert sugar either), and watched two movies.

First up, Beowulf. This is one of the few stories from high school that I remember enjoying, so I was looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation. Beowulf is the story of a young warrior who fights and kills the monster Grendel, then Grendel's mother and finally a dragon. Reading all of this in high school, I had imagined some pretty epic battles against some really scary monsters. Flash forward to the movie and WOW! what a disappointment! Grendel looks like a zombie Gollum from Lord of the Rings - not even as scary as he is written about in the original story; and Beowulf kills the monster by cutting off his arm - pretty much as the original story is told.

From here, the writers of the movie thought they were better than the anonymous author of the legendary, epic poem so they re-wrote the story to have Beowulf not kill Grendel's mother but rather be seduced by her and have a demon child - the dragon. Now Beowulf must kill the dragon (his son) to save the kingdom. Why the writers thought they could re-write the story and make it "better" is beyond me. The final battle between Beowulf and the dragon is pretty cool to watch but other than that, this movie is terrible.
Exp. Rating -10

Next up was Drillbit Taylor. Owen Wilson, one of my favorite actors, plays a homeless, ex-soldier who is tired of his life and has an idea to move to Canada, "Where the government pays you to take the land". In order to get the money, he tricks three kids into hiring him as a bodyguard, so he can steal their rich parents' belongings to sell at a pawn shop. While this movie is not one of Wilson's best, it still has a lot of funny stuff in it to make it worth checking out.
Exp. Rating +1