Eye Candy #68 - "Outlander"

Outlander: I don’t know quite what The Weinstein Company is thinking in how they distributed this film. It recieved a wide release smaller than some art house films (only 81 theaters, some of them for a single weekend with no national ad campaign), and their exclusive with another video rental joint, I honestly don’t know how they plan to recoup any of the budget. A mix of sci-fi and period action piece, a spaceship from another planet crashes on Earth, in pursuit of a monster called the Moorwen, a bioluminescent beast with long tale and big pointy teeth. The native inhabitants of the time, Vikings, don’t know quite what to make of the spaceman and his story about a “dragon” until it begins to attack their settlements. It’s a take on “Beowulf”, this time with Grendel being a space monster of sorts. Not a bad cast here, with Jim Caviezel, John Hurt, and Ron Perlman. The script is a little trite (the dialogue is mostly anachronistic). And there are certainly worse movies that released longer distributions from the Weinsteins that much less deserving (including the awful “Superhero Movie”). Not as good as “The Thirteenth Warrior” in re-telling this particular tale (“13th“ did have a stronger script), but still entertaining for what it is. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”