NOAH

What was I thinking? Seeing this overlong and ponderously righteous movie was like being back in religion class at St. Simon Grammar School.

Noah played fiercely by Russell Crowe was a real prick having convinced himself that he had received messages and a mandate direct from god (though that name is never used in the movie; instead The Creator is used.) that all of humankind was evil and the only innocents were animals. His job was to herd all the animals onto a boat (the ark) so they could be saved when the "creator" started a flood. After this job was done by Noah helped by his family (the adopted daughter was Emma Watson from the Harry Potter series and she was pretty good; the wife was Jennifer Connelly who acted her usual vapid martyr role; slowly caressing the cheeks of her husband and sons and smiling or crying a lot.), then they would die out with no children being born and i guess the world would spring back to life populated by a lot of reindeer and polluted by piles of dog shit.

However, the adopted daughter who supposedly was barren had that condition reversed by Noah's grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) so Noah let it be known that this was NOT part of the creator's plan so he would kill the babies if they were girls and naturally they were girls - twins.

There was no tension in the movie because you knew Noah would build the ark and that there was going to be a lot of water and the ark would be filled with animals and they would make it to land safely and Noah would not kill the babies. I guess at the last minute when Noah had the knife poised over them; the creator said "oh never mind; just fuckin' with ya".

Another thing that bothered me about the movie was the insertion of video game like battles between sci-fi terminator like stone monsters; also there was an endless battle between the king of the land who wanted to be on that ark  and Noah who shined in all his judgmental splendor proclaiming the unworthiness of this king and undeserving of a boat ticket.

I rated it a 4 and Bill gave it a 5.