Amph aronofsky's "noah" (trailer)

Ah, didn't remember we had a thread for this. Oh well, I'll just repost my review from the "last film" thread:

Noah: aka "Right now, William Shatner is yelling 'See?! God *AND* rock monsters! What did I tell you?!'".

This was surprisingly good- it's a real deal, true blue movie trying to tell an honest story and experience, not some hammy faith-based flick trying to preach at you.

Way better than Crowe's Robin Hood (and his brief singing here is better than his Les Miserable efforts ) and one of Arnofky's most approachable films (it's not full of near-impenetrable metaphors like The Fountain, for instance) while still exploring the darker facets of the story (like the pseudo-suicide cult aspect of the Noah story) that you'd expect him to.

The cast is also quite solid all around- Crowe carries the film well, Connelly and Watson have a couple good scenes towards the end, Ray Winstone makes for a good antagonist (yet one that doesn't come across as a one-note villain either) and Anthony Hopkins looks like he's actually having some fun here. Kevin Durand even has a brief role (adding to his catalog of religious figures and psychos he commonly plays (and often at the same time- though not in this case)) and Frank Langella as one of the rock monsters.

Speaking of which, the rock creatures really steal the show here, bringing some much needed heart and sympathetic characters for the audience (since it's difficult to fully empathize with Noah given the nature of his task and how cruel his actions must be by necessity in order to carry it out to it's natural conclusion before, during and after the flood), or his family since they're going along with it, or the forces of Cain given they're either all a-holes or innocents caught between).

And I loved how they brought them to life- they have so much character and the way they move is reminiscent of an advanced Jim Henson creation merged with the stop motion animation greats of the past. They really are fantastic given they could have easily come across as some corny, overly-CGI rejected entity out of Lord of the Rings.

Combined with other smaller details introduced throughout the film, they turn a dated mythology into something that feels like a modern mythology with a fleshed out world- you almost wish there were other films exploring the pre-flood world depicted.

Lastly, they apparently filmed this in Iceland. If that cave beach exists in the real world in Iceland and isn't just a computer-enhanced location, I really must go there one day. That was absolutely gorgeous.

 

I think it depends on what you focus on- while the first half is an interesting fantasy epic, the second half of the movie explores the darker aspects of taking the suicide cult-like aspects of the Noah myth further towards a natural conclusion than is typically done. Not something one can often say about a 4,000 year old story. I'd hardly call that a Lifetime movie.

 

Eh, they don't tend to go into dark psychological territory though. The obligatory showdown with the villain was more distracting than the slasher melodrama.