list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

In which Alfred Hitchcock plays catch-up with the more explicit modern kind of serial killer movie that he helped create with Psycho, which would afterwards mutate into the slasher. It takes a lot of time setting up the background for the plot and characters, perhaps a bit too many for modern viewers with the protagonist not being a much more pleasant man than the real villain, but a lot of those nuances end up paying off and really adding to the emotional impact once the conflict escalates. The camera work and "visual grammar" is also first rate, quite a few central scenes rely on the peculiar rhythm of the camera movement and editing to disturb so much.

I also quite appreciated the few touches of humour, which are actually very funny without coming across as out-of-place.

Noah



Errrrmmm...



Well....

It's entertaining, certainly. Very well made with cracking effects & cinematography, without doubt...

I have to say, it's been a while since I read the Old Testament, so I'll put my forgetting the following elements in the story down to old age:

1 - Rock Monsters/Watchers/Angels (or as I prefer to call them, stone Ents)

2 - Epic battle before the flood with the entities in #1 above acting like doormen denying entry to the ark to sinners (presumably for wearing sandals).

3 - Primitive firearms being used by the sinner-king to crack the stone skin/armour of the entities in #1

4 - The sinner king stowing away on the ark, being looked after & fed by Noah's son, Ham then recovering from an open leg fracture in time to have a fight to the death with Noah.

As I say, it has been a while since I read the bible, so it would be easy to forget such minor detail.

All the above aside - forget it's a re-telling of an epic tale, switch your brain off & go along for the ride; ridiculously entertaining, unintentionally funny in places but still very well made - there is a particularly chilling scene where those on the ark have to listen to the screams of those drowning outside.



Yep - recommended (sort of)

Edited by Jim Garten - October 21 2014 at 06:15

Dean wrote: ...so no two-headed animals then

Difficult to say - the king of the sinners took to killing & eating some of the animals during his recuperation, much to the consternation of Ham (there must be a joke somewhere about a jewish guy called Ham... ), so one assumes these included two headed animals, unicorns, honest politicians & Dream Theater vocalists with good voices

I liked Crowe in A Beautiful Mind but never been a big fan of his and I prolly won't bother with Noah. Giamatti was excellent in the cable  tv mini-series John Adams.

Atavachron wrote: Noah was surprisingly good; forget the Bible, it's cinema.

Absolutely - and entertaining cinema at that.

Could be interesting when Ridley Scott's 'Exodus' is released later this year with Christian Bale as Moses:



Not the usual cinematic image you associate with Moses

3 Days of the Condor

Potentially smart spy flick deflates into a third-rate thriller with Robert Redford the unlikely target of a secret hit squad in the CIA.   Cut down from the six days in the novel, this thing may've been edgy and modern in 1975 but has lost most of its credibility and barely holds up against similar films of its time.   Max von Sydow characteristically brilliant as a freelance killer but is unable to salvage this dated political commentary.

^ I have none, I find them unhelpful, but you're right I'm sure there are many good films you wouldn't see covered elsewhere.

It's funny, sometimes I'll glance at the blurbs for a certain film and can gain a sense of whether it's any good or something I'll enjoy; one little blurb that says "A thrill-ride" does not bode well.   But ultimately I have to watch it.
  

So do you feel the need to have seen the bulk of a filmmaker's work before analyzing a particular film?

Atavachron wrote: well I'll always give Ridley a shot