Writer-director Hal Hartley, maker of the abnormal and excellent Henry Fool, delivers a bizarre spin on the Beauty and the Beast story with this oddball monster movie. Sarah Polley plays a young reporter who goes to Iceland looking for a legendary monster (a hilarious Robert John Burke). The monster turns out to be alcoholic, angry and suicidal. The film is an interesting look at a society overrun with terrorism (oddly enough, shot before 9/11), and it is as quirky as they come. Hartley is not an easily acquired taste, but once his style—a lazy, sarcastic mode of moviemaking—sets in, he can be very entertaining. The film lags at times, but Burke is fun to watch, and Polley is characteristically great.
No Such Thing
