I am having a tough time trying to figure out which was worse. Being the only person at the press screening who liked outlander, or waking up at 9 am to see outlander by choice?

You see all the critics there had to be there, they were pretty much forced. Me? Hell, no I jumped at the chance to see it. 6 months ago while playing “how much useless crap can I learn from imdb?”, I stumbled upon outlander. It looked damn good to me, not “Dark Knight” good, not “American Beauty” good, not “Lord of the Rings” good but “Willow” good “Legend” good.

It looked to me like good popcorn fun. I could write for 20 minutes what the movie is about but I won’t. This movie doesn’t need that, in a perfect world this movie would be called; “Outlander: the Real Story of Beowulf”. That’s what this movie is, its Beowulf except Beowulf is named Kainan and he is from outer space and Grendel is called Moorwen and he isn’t the son of any one. Now if you’re the kind of person asking how, who, what, where or why? Then this movie isn’t for you. It’s stupid popcorn fun, and it kills “In the Name of the King”, a shittious movie (itnotk). It’s also a 100 times better Beowulf movie then the Robert Zemeckis snore fest known has Beowulf.

Jim Caviezel manages to do something here he hasn’t done since Frequency, be likable. And sorry Jesus doesn’t count, how are you not supposed to like Jesus? So not counting Passion of the Christ this is Jim’s 2^nd movie playing a likable character. And he isn’t just likable I would love to see him play more good guys. Gunnar, played by Ron Perlman is one of the reasons I wanted to see this movie. He was even good in itnotk, sadly here he yells a bit then goes away. Now I will tell who steals this movie, John Hurt, the man doesn’t play King Rothgar, he is King Rothgar. Sadly I believe this is due to his age I bet he thinks he is whatever character you tell him he is. But it’s still a damn good performance. Sophia Myles plays Freya, in all honesty any actress could of played this part, but to her credit most of them would of become annoying after midway through the movie she manages to not hit any nerves. Jack Huston plays Wulfric next in line to be king he plays the role well but that’s about all I can say for him. I am sure you can tell this is Jim Caviezel’s movie and its better for it.

The only other major character I am forgetting is the Moorwen itself, it’s a foul and brightly lit creature, sometimes it glows neon red, sometimes neon blue and sometimes it acts as a strobe light. At one point while I was watching I thought, “How cool would it be to have a Moorwen in a night club?”

The movie is fun. Its better then a lot of the horrible sci-fi and fantasy we got for the last 3 years. Does the movie have plot holes? Huge ones, giant even. Does the movie have a lot of stupid errors in it? You bet it does. But I am sure the cast and director knew that and didn’t care. They delivered a fun light weight sci-fi fantasy movie.

A lot of the critics I saw this film with could not stand it. I don’t blame them, they put Outlander with Itnotk but Outlander is not Itnotk. Itnotk is a piece of crap by a piece of crap director who thinks he is Steven Spielberg. And Outlander is a popcorn fun lightweight movie by a up and coming director named Howard McCain.

I think it’s a shame crap like Itnotk gets a wide release and Outlander gets dumped in limited release. If you have a chance to catch Outlander I recommend you do. Its most likely the last decent sci-fi fantasy film you will see this year.