New movies include love, independence, special effects

“Love in the Time of Cholera” has a title which attracts audiences into what is nothing more than a well-done two hour and eighteen minute love story.

Cholera occurs in hot, humid places such as Cartajena and causes the victim to suffer a high fever, heavy sweating and stomach problems.

Both cholera and lovesickness are similar when a person is in a very intense relationship, as are the two young lovers in the movie: paleness of skin, emotional instability and panic.

Looking back, an older, more stable person realizes he was in love with the idea of being in love and thought suffering was a very necessary part of this love. If a person takes that love seriously, spending the rest of his life regretting the loss of this love, in a nutshell that’s “Cholera.”

Dr. Juvenal Urbino (played by Benjamin Bratt) leads the town though the years with stability. His wife harbors long-lasting fantasies which impair the true mature love from ever developing.

“Juno” is about the adolescent rebellion of a young woman, Juno McGuff (played by Ellen Page), a free-spirited teenager who knows exactly what to do when she gets pregnant.

Juno doesn’t miss a beat in all the twists and turns of her unplanned pregnancy. She has all the answers and the adults follow her lead, not vice-versa.

She breaks an unwritten rule when she starts going over to the adoptive parents’ house and visiting with the father, Mark (Jason Bateman), unwittingly just to show them the ultrasound pictures.

Even though Juno is more mature than most adults, which some pregnant teens seem to be, no one beshrews Juno for what she calls her “shenanigans,” especially her supportive parents.

The father, Bleeker (Michael Cera), while not involved, stays Juno’s loving boyfriend and races to the hospital in his track uniform to comfort Juno after she has the baby she is giving to the adoptive parents.

“Juno” is a must-see movie for the rebellious teen in all of us.

“Beowulf” is based on the epic poem and is intended to fill in gaps in the poem, which didn’t include Beowulf providing any signs of having killed Grendel’s mother and which has a long time lapse between the slaying and the attack by the dragon.

To best enjoy the movie one needs not to read the poem but might consider attending the Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGGRAPH computer graphics convention, such as the one which took place at the San Diego Convention Center this past August.

SIGGRAPH combines industrial applications such as medical imaging and computer-aided design with entertainment applications such as video games and movie special effects.

The technology known as image capture enhances “Beowulf;” an actor’s true body can be replaced with scales or features of an older or younger character and also allows the lead character to be larger than actor Ray Winstone, while motion rendering allows the characters to move more freely than they could on a stage.

In some theaters “Beowulf” is shown in 3-D, which sends axes and arrows toward the viewer and provides other more interactive perspectives of the scenes.

The plot doesn’t stand out from other action movies, but the special effects, especially in 3-D, make the movie unique.