NOAH

If you loosely identify yourself as a practitioner of a Western religion, then chances are you know the story of Noah. Just encase you have forgotten, here's the quick run down —God becomes upset with his SIM CITY and decides to flood it. Before doing a big reset on earth, God informs Noah of his plans and tasks him with building a giant boat. Noah and the animal folks then spend 40 days and nights on the worst cruise ever. After surviving all that, Noah and the critters are encouraged to be fruitful and multiply. It’s an easy moral story for kids. It gives a good message about behaving or the world will punish you. It also has a bunch of furry creatures. Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) ditches the Sunday-school telling for a biblical fantasy epic. This is a stroke of genius as it s way more enjoyable than the last two Hobbit movies. Noah is told as a catastrophic disaster movie, making this old story seem fresh yet newly strange. Here is the lowdown for the gritty biblical reboot. Earth is taken over by Cain’s descendants, who have multiplied across the world. Cain’s descendants have caused major environmental harm by barbecuing animals and digging up precious ore.

These acts of sinfulness make God decide that the World has to be cleansed. Noah, a hippie, dreams of blood and ash, and vast seas washing the world clean. These visions are a message from the Creator – the word ‘God’ is never used – who has a plan in mind for this .This naturally leads onto the whole boat-building task to save the natural creatures, which the descendants of Cain are naturally jealous of.

Add in some glowing minerals that tremble with holy power, quasi-baptismal rites performed with snake skin and a fire sword to give a biblical epic. The most bizarre thing in the movie is the six-armed, rock-skinned fallen angels that look like the love children between the Ents from LOTR and Rockbiter from the Neverending Story. These creatures are, of course, pretty awesome.Noah is provocative, flawed and mostly astonishing: an outsider blockbuster with a mythic texture. 

3 biblical waffles out of 5