CHRISTIANS DISGUSTED WITH 'NOAH' MOVIE
official indication of the Vatican's views on the film, which has been the subject of criticism from religious groups in the US and is currently banned in a number of Muslim countries.
The pope's views on the movie became the subject of heavy media interest after star Russell Crowe took to Twitter to offer the pontiff a private screening of the $130m film last month. Crowe and Aronofsky went on to briefly meet Pope Francis in Rome, though it later emerged that the latter had not watched the movie
The Vatican's verdict won't be much help to Christian audiences wondering whether to see the film, regularly cited as a key demographic target for studio Paramount. The issue may now be somewhat moot: NOAH, which also stars Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone and Emma Watson, opened in No 1 spot at the US box office last month and has so far taken $182m worldwide.
I consulted my first choice movie critic, Digital Journal after reading this and that about NOAH and this is what in their typical blunt and straight to the point way had to say after seeing the movie.
The realD 3D movie experience itself
Firstly, we were seated somewhere in the middle of the theater. We suggest you reserve a seat somewhere in the back as far as possible from the screen, as the movie with its abundance of 3D close-ups on the characters' faces full screen get extremely tiring on the eyes. A good distance away from the screen might be more comfortable on your peepers.
The watching of the movie
We found the pacing of the film extremely slow. We had trouble sitting still. You might do well to take along some knitting work or something you can do silently and with minimum movement.The actors are of course all well-known so try not to confuse them — Russell Crowe is not the Gladiator this time, and no, Emma Watson doesn't know spells to get them out of tough fixes.You will have to sit through a very long piece of the movie before it gets to the flood water outburst, which is a rather short and about the only climax in this movie, so take along extra reserves of patience.
What do we think after watching the whole thing?
The story falls flat right after the flood waters have hit and the screaming subsided. The filmmakers tried to spruce up the boredom of sitting in the ark by making Noah into a crazy psycho killer who wants to butcher the babies of Shem's wife, so as to make sure all of mankind is dead when all is said and done. For some reason Noah thought all of mankind must die, including themselves, right after they have saved and re-released the innocent (the animals). Not much is made of their landing back on solid ground, or the bird that brings the olive branch. There is more like a transition from a scene where there was still water but the ark has hit a mountain top, immediately to a scene from where all the animals are already gone and Noah and his people are outside somewhere doing mediocre things with long faces. Here the filmmakers tried to put in some last emotional impact with the characters talking overserious with each other, but really all the impact the movie might have had is behind us by now. It wasn't the time to put in emotional driveltalk, as it wasn't convincing to believe that characters who were actually in that situation would actually talk emo rubbish like that. Probably it would have been more convincing to portray them as playing in the waves or enjoying baby booming.Also, if you're waiting for the rainbow, there is no rainbow. More like the movie ends with some silly circles of feint color in the sky. Not a rainbow though. Not sure what that was supposed to be.
Our verdict
More over-melodramatized, too slowly paced Hollywood drivel. Not all boring though. People will probably like all the violence and killing of the group of people who want to take the ark right before the flood. But don't expect it to be more special than just about every other movie made up of violence and cgi.One difference though is that there wasn't that much sexy sex in this one. Just some clothed lovemaking of Shem and his wife, and a rather untasty Noah lying naked on the ground after drinking grape juice. And his sons didn't walk backwards when they put a blanket on him. Personally we had trouble associating with any of the characters. There's not anyone you can relate to. Noah is a psycho killer who wants to kill everybody outside and inside the ark, the others are just there, the animals are CGI, and most everything just happens up there on the screen. One can't care for anybody really, because nobody and nothing is charming. Even the ark is too simple a box. Where is the Hollywood artistic freedom when you need it?
Recommendation on whether to go watch it or not
Yeah, go watch it. It's not like you have anything other to do with your life than watch movies for excitement to forget about your own boring life.If you watch movies for entertainment, you might as well watch this one too. No reason not to. It's there, just like any of the steady supply of others.
So where is the controversy?
In our experience, there is no controversy. No idea what all the banning and spazzing of some is all about.You have to be a religious fanatic who tries to see threat in everything that depicts his religious imaginations differently than he expected, or have severe chemical imbalances in the brain, or be mad beyond help in order to find this movie any different from watching Transformers 2 or any other such sci-fi drivel. Sorry to disappoint.If you don't care much for religious drivel, or you are religious but you don't believe some flash-in-the-pan guy-rides-shipping-container-on-waves depiction will cause your God to die on the spot and you need to save your helpless God from this movie that he's helpless against by spazzing out like a maniac, you will find this film has just about as much impact, or lack thereof, depending on your taste, as most every modern movie.
Anything that teased the imagination?
In the movie are extremely fugly characters made of stone, called The Watchers. They have some divine connection, and are actually made of light but were encrusted in stone for having fallen like fallen angels and landing in lava that dried around them. And of course they were uglified and deformed as only the sicko Hollywood cgi artists can make them, with scrawny misshaped limbs of sort and all.That is in this movie. In the real world, there is a lot of interesting reading you can do on the concept of The Watchers. Do an online search and see what you find. All sorts of interesting ancient godly divine things to stimulate the imagination. Some reading will claim mankind's first civilizations and cities, as well as later ones such as Jerusalem, were cities of The Watchers. Who were "The Watchers"? Go find that out. Go on, get out of here.
Anyway, I'm going to see this movie tomorrow. So if you're planning on doing so too, let's form a curious risk taking tag team.
Mature Minds Talk.
disgusted or not...I'm so seeing it. *tongue out*
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