Beowulf – the iconic writer/director Robert Zemeckis, who brought us “Forrest Gump” and “Back to the Future,” further develops the “motion capture” brand of computer animation that he first took a crack at in “The Polar Express.” It’s 507 A.D. in Denmark, where the people are driven by fatalism, endurance, and a belief in heroism. As in the long narrative epic you studied in high school English class, King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) rules over a citizenry terrorized by the strangely sympathetic monster Grendl. When Hrothgar calls for a hero to save his town and his precious Mead Hall – a place where men cavort, drink and compare muscles – Beowulf (Ray Winstone) arrives and the action begins. The motion capture technique, in which the actors’ movement against a green screen is captured with electrodes and then turned into computer animation, looks even better in 3D, and so does Angelina Jolie as Grendl’s mother, totally naked and dipped in gold – the perfect boy-fantasy creature. The movie is about the mother-son relationship, about wanting to be loved no matter how hideous you might be, but it’s also more sexual than violent. This movie delivers everything that this year’s “300” only pretended to give us, with real thrills, real emotion, and real sensuality. Four tiaras
