Beowulf

Beowulf (2007) is Robert Zemeckis's performance-capture action epic — watch it online on iFILM. Zemeckis put the Old English poem through a $70-million motion-capture pipeline, casting Ray Winstone as the legendary Geat warrior who sails to Denmark to rid King Hrothgar's mead-hall of a monster. The result earned nearly $196 million worldwide and looks unlike any other animated film of its era.

Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) has a problem: every night the creature Grendel (Crispin Glover) tears into the hall and slaughters his men. Beowulf kills it. Simple enough — until Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie) emerges from her underwater lair and offers a bargain that rewrites the rest of Beowulf's life. John Malkovich plays the scheming Unferth, Brendan Gleeson the loyal Wiglaf, Robin Wright the queen who sees through everything.

The screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary grafts a hidden legacy onto the eighth-century source text, turning a heroic poem into a story about pride as a trap. Stream Beowulf (2007) online on iFILM.