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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Noah (2014)
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Connor Wilson
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 190
From: Sterling, VA, USA
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 03-31-2014 05:29 PM
Regal Kingstowne Stadium 16, Alexandria, VA
March 31st, 12:30pm show
Theater #1
Presented in RPX, Dolby Atmos
Issues: Tiny blue dead pixel
Let me say I am non-religious, don't know the Bible by heart, and understand the controversy surrounding the film. What I understand is, well: Imagine some Hollywood director took your favorite book and changed it to his/her liking. Literary adaptations have always took creative liberties to update it for a modern generation, this isn't new to cinema.
From what I've heard, Noah didn't have a backstory laid out in the Bible. For a motion picture being driven by character, non-canonical material had to be made to flesh it out for a two-hour film. Add in to the mix with rock Transformers and the underlying environmentalist message.
"Man is evil, pollutes the Earth, therefore they will perish" is rather an extreme theory even for environmentalism. No wonder most of the humans in this film are spiteful and tyrannical. The more religio-political content the more detracted I am from the film. What really confused me was that Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
Noah starts out as an environmentalist, then a megalomaniac committing infanticide, then a nice guy at the end. These changes happen so abruptly that there is no gradual transition. At this point, the direction was merely attempting to manipulate the emotions of a casual viewer with such extremes.
The film is certainly beautiful to look at, with delicious scenery and colors. It is also fantastic in Dolby Atmos, with a tremendous dynamic range, multilayered effects, pinpoint positioning, etc. It is not a loud or explosive film, but once the action kicks in, it really kicks in. The subtle use of Atmos delivers a richer experience than your average 5.1 or 7.1 system. It's a good tech demo, but not really a good movie.
RATING: 4 out of 10
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-31-2014 11:34 PM
Cinema: Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16
Screen: Cine Capri
Format: 2K 2D, 1.85:1 on common height screen, Dolby Atmos
Presentation Problems: None
Rating: 2.75 stars out of 4
My girlfriend and I watched Noah this past Saturday evening after eating a pretty good dinner at Kevin Durant's new namesake restaurant in Bricktown. The movie was fairly entertaining in the conventional sense, although it dragged in a few areas -like after the flood had hit for instance.
Obviously Darren Aronofsky took some liberties with the story of Noah -like fleshing out enough of a story to fill a 2 hour movie. The biblical account of Noah is a little on the thin side. Some of the plot turns are obviously fabricated. Some of the characters are made up (like those big Transformers-like rock things called "the watchers"). Aronofsky also includes some style cues reminiscent of Requiem For a Dream. For the folks who are getting seriously butt-hurt over this movie they ought to look at the up-side. At least Hollywood is bringing some attention to this topic rather than making Lethal Weapon 10.
I didn't feel like this movie was beating me about the head, neck and chest with an overbearing environmentalism message. The way I took it was "the creator" was smiting mankind for his wickedness and hubris (rejection of the creator) rather than it merely being about industrialism spoiling the Earth. The movie does make some mention of industrialism, but to me it seemed much more like the flood was a response to evil.
Regarding the 1.85:1 ratio, it's difficult to tell why Aronofsky chose to shoot the movie flat. His previous two movies (Black Swan and The Wrestler) were composed for 'scope. All his other movies varied between 1.37:1 and 1.85:1. Nevertheless, I do think the increasing number of common width screens are going to influence movie studios to release fewer 'scope movies at some point.
The Dolby Atmos mix for this movie was pretty good. It didn't pile on as many sound object panning tricks as Gravity, but it had a few good ones. In one scene a character fired something similar to a flare and it made a well defined arc-like surround pan from the screen, tracking overhead and to the left rear speakers. There was a lot of localized audio in specific areas of the surrounds, a lot more specific than the quadrants of a 7.1 system. The mix had a lot of ambient sounds that completely filled the room, but without overpowering what was happening on the screen. If I had any complaint I just wish Harkins' Cine Capri theater had more punch on the sub-bass end of things.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 04-08-2014 04:38 PM
Not a bad film, Noah is the cast of Perks of Being a Wallflower meets the cast of A Beautiful Mind with the style and the music of The Fountain. I am not a big Bible fan and I barely know the story so perhaps that is why I liked it.
I don't really care if the movie is accurate to what the Bible says, the movie made me interested in knowing more about the story so I guess the movie did the job it was intended to do, at least for me that is. It appears there are a lot of articles comparing the truth to what is fictional.
The cinematography was the same guy who does all of the other movies by Aronofsky and while it was very good from an artistic point of view, I assume they could of used better cameras as the movie did not look like a modern film, it looked like an older film. I suspect that is the style that was intended as all of Aronofsky's movies look great artistically, but they lack high quality images.
The music was very similar to The Fountain, no surprise here as it was the same person who did the score of the fountain.
The sound was also awesome for this movie, it was loud and very engaging. The sound certainly helped with the impact of the movie. There was some serious bass in some scenes and it was the first movie in a long while where I could literally feel the bass while watching the movie.
My favorite character, creature or creation from the film was the watchers, I found them much more interesting than some of the creatures from Peter Jackson movies or anything from Michael Bay. I thought they were great. (I believe Nick Nolte did the voice of one of the watchers)
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 04-08-2014 06:48 PM
Well it's only a few chapters in the Bible, so they had to do a lot of "fleshing out" to make a feature film out of it. But from what I have heard, the Bible parts are:
- Noah, although much younger
- The flood itself, except some of it comes from underground (wtf?)
- Noah's wife
- Noah's sons
- Some of Noah's in-laws
- Noah's drunkenness after the flood is over
Not from the Bible:
- Giant living rock monsters (unless they are fallen angels, as noted above)
- Noah getting news of the flood in a dream (as opposed to hearing the voice of God, which is in the Bible)
- The giant battle, although if there was a huge flood and there was only one guy with an ark, what would you do?
- Noah thinking that ALL of humanity (including himself and his family) was due to be exterminated -- in the movie, he thinks his only job is to care for the animals to make sure they survived
- Several serious make-out scenes
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If you want the facts, why in the world would you need to "ask the pastor" instead of simply reading it for yourself? It's public information and not at all hard to find. I could understand this if they were a bunch of kids, but these folks were older than I am. Is original thinking and research that outmoded?
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