FILM REVIEW OF ''NOAH'' (2014)

Visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is an acquired taste.   The Brooklyn-born, Harvard University graduate makes esoteric films with a film festival-oriented sensibility, and he dabbles in subject matter and story-lines that may strike some audiences as provocative but offensive.   Most of the time, Aronofsky helms R-rated movies that are far from being family friendly.   “Black Swan” (2010), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000) and “Pi” (1998) carried R-ratings, while the MPAA gave “The Fountain” a PG-13 rating.   Despite his debatable subject matter and storylines, Aronofsky takes his movie-making efforts pretty seriously.   Indeed, Aronofsky lives up to his provocative but offensive reputation with his sixth feature-length film.   “Noah” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) should not be mistaken for a conventional Christian movie.   Writer and director Aronofsky and co-scenarist Ari Handel draw not only on the Biblical Book of Genesis: Chapters 6-9, but also the apocryphal Jewish Book of Enoch.  Mind you, Aronofsky has described “Noah” as “the least biblical film ever made.” This ambitious but uneven 138-minute Old Testament tale bristles with surprises that drastically differentiate it from most theatrical Christian films.     According to Aronofsky, he wanted to explore the Great Flood as “an environmental apocalypse,” and he classifies Noah as “the first environmentalist.”    Superficially, the “Black Swan” filmmaker’s adaptation adheres to the broad, general outlines of the Biblical saga of Noah and the Great Flood.    This Paramount Pictures release, however, constitutes the first Biblical blockbuster to incorporate supernatural elements which have been confined traditionally to either science fiction or fantasy films.  The supernatural elements in part come from the Book of Enoch, principally the fallen angels referred to as ‘the Watchers.’  

“Noah” opens with the title hero as an adolescent.  Noah’s father Lamech (Marton Csokas of “Kingdom of Heaven”) unravels a sacred snake-skin and tells Noah about it when Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone of “The Departed”) and henchmen interrupt them.  No sooner has Tubal-cain shown up than he murders Lemech without a qualm.  He smashes Lamech in the skull with a hammer.  Decades afterward, Noah (Oscar-winner Russell Crowe of “Gladiator”) has grown up.  He has a wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly of “Blood Diamond”), and three children, Shem, Ham and Japheth.  Noah and Naameh have kept   themselves busy raising their three sons.  They behave like hermits and shun city-living.  Since Adam and Eve have been exiled from Eden, the Earth has degenerated into a desolate, inhospitable Hell on Earth.  Indeed, “Noah” resembles “Mad Max” because everything looks sun-scorched, and everybody dresses as if they were in a leather-clad, medieval movie.  At one point, Methuselah appears as a warrior clad in full body armor with an extraordinary sword.  As vast armies of men charge headlong toward him, Methuselah hoists his sword and then plunges it in the ground.  Miraculously, when he sinks the sword into the Earth, the effect is comparable a modern-day fighter jet dumping napalm, and Methuselah incinerates the entire army!  Much later, Noah has a dream.  He finds himself underwater with thousands of corpses.  When he awakens, he has his marching orders.  He visits Methuselah, now an ancient man in a remote cave atop a huge mountain and explains that the Creator plans to destroy the world with water instead of fire.  Along the way, Noah and company come across some brutal but sad looking hulks of giants referred to as Watchers.  The Book of Enoch contains references to these Watchers.  In this instance, the Watchers are fallen angels. They are mentioned briefly in Genesis as the Nephilim. Eventually, Noah recruits the Watchers to help him construct the Ark.  For the record, it takes Noah and company ten years to construct the Ark.  The novelization of the film is more explicit about the time factor than the film. Once the villainous Tubal-cain learns about Noah’s plans, he arrives with his dirty, filthy army to take advantage of this golden opportunity.  Tubal-cain demands that Noah assure him passage aboard the ship, but our hero defies him.  When Tubal-cain makes threats, the Watchers line up ominously behind Noah to defend him.  Meantime, Noah and Naameh have taken in a poor girl left-for-dead, Ila (Emma Watson of the “Harry Potter” movies), and she becomes Shem’s playmate.  Family tensions arise between Ham (Logan Lerman of the “Percy Jackson” movies) and Noah, when Ham is not allowed to take a girl for himself from Tubal-cain’s kingdom. 

As historical Biblical films go, “Noah” is nothing like the earlier release “Son of God.”  Moreover, little in “Noah” resembles the 1966 epic “The Bible: In The Beginning” that cast John Huston as Noah, with an ark that looked more like a ship more than a rectangular wooden cargo container box.   Russell Crowe’s darkly-clad Noah qualifies as much as an action hero as a patriarchal figure who shuns meat as a part of his diet.   He can wield a knife with the best of them, and he acquits himself admirably in close-quarters combat when he clears the deck of the Ark of intruders before the rain launches the vessel.   In fact, Noah is terribly obsessed with the awesome duty that he must do for his 'Creator.'  Initially, he believes that he must preserve the wildlife for a new world even though he thinks that his own family is condemned to perish!  The performances are all above average with Ray Winstone making a thoroughly evil villain Tubal-cain.  Anthony Hopkins shows up occasionally as  Methuselah.  Jennifer Connelly makes quite an impression, too, as Noah's long-suffering wife.  For the record, nobody utters the name ‘God’ anywhere in “Noah,” and this crucial omission may be more than traditional Christians may tolerate.   In the novelization of the film, the word Creator is substituted for the name God, too.  Indeed, Aronofsky takes full advantage of poetic license in his interesting but awkward re-imagination of the Great Flood.  Throughout “Noah,” the principals entwine the snake skin that the serpent shed when it slithered into Eden, and this birthright is deployed for its magical properties.   The character of Methuselah provides Noah with a seed from the Garden of Eden that enables him to build the Ark.   Aronofsky changes several things, eliminates certain characters from Noah’s family, and allows a treacherous stowaway to slip aboard the Ark. If you are a stickler for fidelity, you aren't going to like this beautifully lensed opus. Ultimately, the supernatural creatures that will spoil it for Bible purists.  Secular audiences may enjoy “Noah” more than their spiritual counterparts for Aronofsky’s radical departure from the story and the new design of the Ark.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST EXORCISM" (2010)

"The Last Exorcism" (**** OUT OF ****) amounts to something more than the abysmal "Blair Witch Project." This above-average, 87-minute, Lionsgate release doesn't rely entirely on wobbly camera movements for its impact. Indie Teutonic director Daniel Stamm lenses the action as if it were a straight-forward documentary. Meantime, a sense of irony permeates this unobtrusive epic that isn’t entirely apparent on initial viewings. The chief difference between "The Last Exorcism" and "The Blair Witch Project" is its sophistication that I missed when I saw it the first two times. Stamm employs the cinema vérité camera style when he wants you on the edge of your seat. Mind you, nothing scary happens up front. Audiences who crave blood and gore may feel cheated. Just when you think you might see something bloodcurdling, Stamm cuts away to a reaction shot of people looking at what you want to see. Any shots in "The Last Exorcism" that would have required blood and gore as well as slashed up body parts were omitted. In one scene, the demon-possessed girl kills an angry white cat, and its remains look like a heap of bloody rags. Rated PG-13, "The Last Exorcism" uses the single-camera approach to accentuate its suspense and the tension.  Nevertheless, Stamm spawns a surfeit of suspense and tension by playing it cool. "The Last Exorcism" does pale by comparison with the mother of all exorcism movies "The Exorcist" and lacks a tenth of "The Exorcist's" impact.  Meantime, Stamm and his scribes create some genuinely creepy atmosphere in the remote backwoods settings where "The Last Exorcism" occurs and many of the home-grown performers are convincing, especially Patrick Fabian as a minister who is having a crisis of faith.  This one point eight million dollar film was a success, earning over $40 million domestically.

 

Indeed, "Broken Condom" scenarists Huck Botka and Andrew Gurland establish the character of the protagonist, Reverend Cotton Marcus of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a sympathetic fellow who wants to expose exorcism as a scam. In Cotton's own words, he doesn't want to read about another unfortunate adolescent dying because an exorcist wrapped a bag around the child's head in his zeal to oust a demon. Cotton (Patrick Fabian of "Must Love Dogs"), has been preaching since he was knee high to a pulpit. He comes from a long family line of preachers who also served as exorcists. His father, Reverend John Marcus (John Wright, Jr. of "Waiting Room"), has performed 150 exorcisms, and Cotton carried out his first exorcism when he was age ten. Cotton's father owns a 'who's who' of all the demons. He keeps this vintage leather-bound volume written in Latin locked up in an office safe. Nevertheless, Cotton isn’t entirely happy with his career as an exorcist and he wants to atone. 

Like the religious figures in all exorcist movies, Cotton is wrestling with his conscience about what he has done in the name of God. Cotton confides in us that exorcisms are more popular now than ever. He brandishes a newspaper article about an exorcist academy that the Vatican has instituted to help combat the scarcity of exorcists. He makes his agenda clear from the beginning.  "What I want to do is expose exorcism for the scam that it really is, and that's why we're doing this.  So if I can help expose it for what it really is and save one kid from having a plastic bag wrapped around his face that sounds like God's work." Cotton has a pile of exorcism requests stacked up on his desk. He selects an 'urgent' letter at random. A single-parent, Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum of "In the Electric Mist") of Ivanwood, Louisana, who believes his 16-year-old daughter, Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell of "The Truth about Angels"), is afflicted with demonic possession. Of course, Cotton thinks all the poor girl is suffering from is schizophrenia. Louis shows Cotton a disemboweled cow in his barn. When Cotton talks to Nell, he finds some disturbing artwork, but he believes he can handle this case with relative ease.
 

Unfortunately, Reverend Marcus finds himself in a bigger predicament. Initially, he conducted an exorcism—that he faked with a magician's finesse—and everything went off without a hitch. Nell recovered. Cotton counted Lewis' money. Cotton and his camera crew left the premises to spend the time in a motel. Cotton didn't tell the Sweetzers where they were checking in for the night. Imagine Cotton's surprise when Nell shows up at their motel. He carries Nell to the local hospital, and they discover Nell is pregnant. When Louis learns the truth, he swears that a demon has raped his virgin daughter. Earlier, Louis' oddball son, Caleb Sweetzer (Caleb Landry Jones of "No Country for Old Men"), had told Cotton that his father was a drunkard. Predictably, Cotton suspects Louis may have raped his daughter. Meantime, Louis demands that Cotton perform another exorcism. Louis is fully prepared to kill his own daughter with a shotgun to save her immortal soul if Cotton refuses. Cotton and his camera crew find Nell's latest art work, and the unseen photographer doesn't like the idea that he is depicted in the picture as a man without a head. At this point, things really begin to twist and turn.
 

The genius of "The Last Exorcism" lays in its superb sense of irony. The first-act is flawless as we watch Cotton prepare his charade.  By the second and third acts, you realize this is more than just another found footage flick and that Cotton is battling more than simple superstition. This movie wallows in its own sense of irony because Cotton refuses to believe in demons. Since he rejects demons, Cotton has lost his faith. Indeed, he presents an expose of his own exorcism and demonstrates how he uses a sound system to frighten his clients. A local minister and his obese wife serve as comic relief, but "The Last Exorcism" doesn't conjure up many laughs because it is so powerful. Stamm knows how to generate suspense, without calling attention to his real agenda. This chiller boils down to a compelling an expose about a non-believer who confronts the reality of a world he abhors. "The Last Exorcism" succeeds as a memorable exercise of terror because the filmmakers shun blood and gore so we cannot take our eyes off the exorcism.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOOK OF ELI'' (2010)

Denzel Washington appears to be poaching on Will Smith territory in this post-apocalyptic yawner about a peripatetic loner hoofing his way westward through a vast wasteland on a special mission. This is the kind of high-octane, futuristic thriller that Will Smith makes. Indeed, we haven’t seen Denzel as trigger-happy as this since “Training Day.” Sure, Denzel is the hero, but he also kills with extreme prejudice. “Menace II Society” co-directors Albert & Allen Hughes make their monosyllabic hero humble enough to elicit our sympathy but skilled enough in close-quarters combat, like Steven Seagal caught between a rock and a hard place, to vanquish the villains without flinching. The problem with “The Book of Eli” (** our of ****)is it takes itself far too seriously so it is no fun. Humor is strictly peripheral. The Brothers Hughes and freshman scenarist Gary Whitta have not made a post-apocalyptic thriller in the tradition of the “Mad Max” movies. Mind you, “Eli” and “Max” were similar in that each occurred in arid terrain and both heroes survived outside of society. The villain that Denzel squares off against simply lacks audacity. Instead, the filmmakers appear to be channeling Randolph Scott and the westerns that he starred in for director Budd Boetticher in the 1950s. Usually, these oaters found Scott taking time off from the trail to tangle with his adversaries. As for our hero, Denzel tangles with the boys, but he wants nothing to do with girls. He struggles to mind his own business. Good post-apocalyptic thrillers are typically outlandish, over-the-top actioneers. The violence is brief and bloody, but Denzel doesn’t dispatch his opponents with a clever line. Despite its R rating, “The Book of Eli” eschews both nudity and sexuality.

The world lies in ruins after a nuclear war has devastated the planet. Two kinds of people exist in the aftermath: those who can read and those who cannot read. Eli--as we learn when we see his name tag in his bag--seems virtually indestructible. Hideously evil bad guys surround him, but he puts them down with the Seagal-like efficiency. He doesn't spare the knife nor spoil his vicious adversaries. Basically, Eli prefers to mind his own business, leave others alone, and keep himself
supplied with water. When scavengers and murderers try to interfere with him, he slices them to ribbons with a large machete and/or drops them with an automatic pistol or a pump-action shotgun. He is really good in a crisis until he meets the treacherous likes of Carnegie (Gary Oldman of "True Romance") who is desperately searching for the Bible. He wants the book for the power that comes with it that he plans to exploit for his own selfish gain. He has been sending amoral ruffians
out to scour the earth for a Bible. Ironically, the very book--the Bible--that Eli has been led to preserve for posterity was burned. He tells us in one scene that many people blamed the Bible for the destruction of society. Nothing remains of a once affluent society that had too much for its own good and obliterated it because it could not come to terms with religion. The survivors of the war destroyed all Bibles because they felt that religion triggered the catastrophe. When Carnegie discovers Eli has the Bible, he resolves to take it away from him. Earlier, Carnegie watched Eli defend himself in a bar against a number of thugs. Carnegie invites Eli to join him, but our hero tells him that he has other plans. Carnegie has a blind woman, Claudia (Jennifer Beals of "Devil in a Blue Dress"), and her daughter, Solara
(Mila Kunis of "Max Payne"), works for Carnegie. Carnegie tries to use Solara to entice Eli to stick around. Eli wants nothing to do with Solara. He escapes from Carnegie and his henchmen after a bullet-riddled street shoot-out. Predictably, Carnegie rounds up his hooligans and they pursue Solara and our hero.

Unfortunately, despite seasoned performances, "The Book of Eli" wears out its welcome long before its 118-minutes elapses. Although its action scenes are riveting, this lackluster saga seems long, drawn-out, and broods more often than bristles with excitement. The Hughes Brothers and Whitta never dwell on humor. What little humor there is remains ephemeral. For example, Eli washes himself with moisture packets from KFC. The irony is unmistakable here as the Colonel represents a racist era and Eli is an African-American using the KFC packets to keep clean. They play everything straight down the line, but they also pull a couple of things that remain unconvincing. Denzel lets the gray show in his hair and he does not make any moves on the comely Kunis. Denzel delivers a solemn, low-key performance as the
protagonist, and he acquits himself splendidly in the action scenes. Sadly, Gary Oldman is saddled with one of his least villainous roles. Jennifer Beals doesn't have enough screen time to make an impression. Meanwhile, the Hughes Brothers come up short here with this dreary,threadbare road trip about a Christian drifter, but neither they nor their hero proselytize to anybody. "Forrest Gump" cinematographer Don Burgess provides "The Book of Eli" with a desolate burned-out look with his subdued lensing that emphasizes the sheer nothingness that engulfs everybody. The ending bundles up three surprises. Two defy credibility while the third is tragic. After all is said and done, "The Book of Eli" is dreary melodrama.