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"Noah" is a bizarre movie.

It's a modern blockbuster, chock full of the visual and aural and narrative tics we expect from modern blockbusters: flash-cut nightmares and hallucinations, prophecies and old wise men, predictions of apocalypse and a savior's rise, computer-generated monsters with galumphing feet and deep voices, brawny men punching and stabbing each other, and crowd scenes and floods and circling aerial views of enormous structures being built, scored to tom-toms and men chanting and women wailing.

But wait: this is not the latest Marvel Comics epic. Nor is it a standard-issue messianic sci-fi film along the lines of " Star Wars " or " The Matrix ." "Noah" is more of a surrealist nightmare disaster picture fused to a parable of human greed and compassion, all based on the bestselling book of all time, the Bible, mainly the Book of Genesis.

More specifically, "Noah" is writer-director Darren Aronofksy's interpretation of the story of Noah and the flood. He's made a few changes.

Okay, more than a few. Way more. This is the Book of Genesis after a page one rewrite.

Among other things, Aronofsky has stirred in ideas from earlier film versions of Noah's story, plus bits from other religions and mythologies, including the Kabbalah, pre-Christian paganism and, it would appear, J.R.R. Tolkien and "The Neverending Story." And he's worked in what comic books or long-form TV watchers would term "callbacks" to earlier parts of the Old Testament, including the slaying of Abel by his brother Cain, the death of Noah's father Lamech, and Adam and Eve's ejection from the Garden of Eden. The film's most visually inventive sequence is an ellipsis in the main narrative: a self-contained, time lapse retelling of the birth of the universe—essentially a Big Bang story that could be dropped right into either version of the great science show "Cosmos." And of course, the international cast speaks with English accents, or tries to, English accents being Hollywood's way of conveying "foreignness" or "antiquity" without making ticket buyers read subtitles. All the actors have elegantly sculpted eyebrows and gorgeous hair, particularly Russell Crowe 's Noah, who in one scene sports a teased-up 'do that makes him look like a beefy version of Christopher Walken in "The King of New York."

Noah is still the anchor of this partly-waterborne epic. But in this version he is more of an action hero. When the flood waters rise, he changes again, becoming an antihero, and a menace to his own family; their ranks include Noah's wife wife Naameh ( Jennifer Connelly ), his sons Shem ( Douglas Booth ), Ham ( Logan Lerman ) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem’s wife-to-be Ila ( Emma Watson ). The latter was adopted by Noah as an infant. Much is made of the inferiority complex Ila suffers because of her infertility. She has a supernatural scar on her stomach and cannot bear children. Or so we're told.

Ila's infertility proves important later, when she ends up in the belly of a 300x50x30 cubit ark alongside the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects under her adoptive daddy's protection. Before the flood, God spoke to Noah, not in a voice but through a series of mysterious dreams that connect the events of Genesis 6-9 with earlier sections. It goes like this: Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden after Eve fell prey to the serpent's charms and ate the forbidden fruit (from a tree that looks very much like the Tree of Life in Aronofsky's " The Fountain "). The descendants of Cain and Abel waged war against each other. The descendants of Cain allied themselves with the The Watchers, a race of fallen angels or seraphim who were encrusted by hardened magma created when they fell from Heaven to earth like shooting stars and smashed craters in the ground; these creatures now lumber across the landscape like Transformers, or like the Ents as visualized in Peter Jackson's "Rings" movies, grumbling and roaring and making pronouncements in the heavily-filtered voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella (who were probably told they had gravel voices at various points during their lives, but never imagined they'd be put to use in quite this way). The Watchers are big and scary, and at first they seem as though they'll be obstacles to Noah's mission, but they soon have a change of heart and end up helping Noah and his family build the Ark to beat the flood. But it's not all hearts and flowers after that, because Noah's gotten it into his head that only the animals should survive—that after the flood he will have to kill his wife and children and himself, to prevent sinful humanity from angering The Creator again.

And it's here that things take a turn toward modern-day allegory. As Time's Richard Corliss points out in an excellent long analysis of "Noah," the last "adaptation with anything like Aronofsky’s sociopolitical seriousness was the 1928 silent film Noah’s Ark , which compares the flood ('A deluge of water drowning a world of lust') to World War I ('A deluge of blood drowning a world of hate!')."

Aronofsky's film seems to have the same aims but different concerns. "Noah" ties God's wrath to the indiscriminate despoiling of the land and the slaughter of earth's animal population by greedy and hungry humans. (Noah and his family are vegetarians and view the consumption of meat as a sin against God, referred to here only as "the Creator.") The deluge, vividly described by Noah as "the waters of the earth meeting the waters of the sky," is depicted as kind of a nautical version of a panini press that sandwiches the earth's creatures between slices of roaring water and crushes the life out of them. In this Biblical epic, water doesn't just rain down and creep up toward the Ark, it gurgles up from the soil, the cracked earth filling up like blood welling in wounds. Sometimes it erupts with geyser-like force. An aerial view of the flood spreading across the land evokes cancer spreading. A spectacular pull-back from the endangered planet shows the atmosphere dotted with dozens of hurricane cloud-whorls.

Aronofsky has also added an action film subplot bulked up with obsessive antihero craziness and daddy issues. He's inserted the chieftain of Cain's descendants, Tubal-Cain, described in Genesis as “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron," into the story. The character is a warrior-despot enemy of Noah's and (intriguingly) a dark mirror of Noah's gravest flaws and worst impulses. As inhabited by Ray Winstone , who plays this sort of raging bull character better than anybody, Tubal-Cain is a creature of pure appetite, and super-macho. The dude put the patriarch in "patriarchal." He's all privilege, all entitlement; he thinks everyone and everything (including life itself) exists for his sake. He thinks Noah's concern about the rape of nature is just a bunch of girly-man whining, stopping just short of calling him a hippie or a tree-hugger. He is determined to take over the Ark and fill it with his own tribe, or barring that, to get on board himself, to survive the flood he once dismissed as false prophecy.

Get on board he does, and once Tubal-Cain and Noah are trapped within the same space: Tubal-Cain peeling off the dissatisfied members of the clan and working them, the way the serpent worked Eve; Noah losing his grip on sanity and goodness and turning into a mad sea captain. Suddenly it's a haunted-house psychodrama, with two bad daddies terrorizing women and children in the bowels of a waterborne Hotel Overlook. As Noah becomes more unhinged, he starts to physically resemble Tubal-Cain. By the time the two men trade blows, Noah isn't just fighting a murderous stowaway, he's fighting to suppress he own worst impulses.

This is, as you've gathered, an immense, weird, ungainly, often laughably overwrought and silly movie, an amalgamation of elements from various literary and cinematic forebears. Some elements fuse beautifully and others seem to repel each other; still others float onscreen in isolation, like bits of wreckage carried along by floodwater. Aronofsky will rightly be criticized for adding a lot of images and notions that make Noah's story less, rather than more, special—elements you can't escape at movie theaters because every modern fantasy and sci-fi film and disaster picture seems to have been imagined by the same screenwriting hive-mind, and envisioned by the same boring CGI software. The Watchers with their clomping feet; the early scenes of tribal combat and "You killed my daddy!" emoting; the scenes between Noah and his aged grandfather Methuselah ( Anthony Hopkins ) that turn the latter into sort of a Biblical equivalent of Yoda or E.T.; Noah and Tubal-Cain whaling on each other in the belly of the ark: you've seen it all in recent years, over and over, in all manner of Hollywood blockbuster.

And yet there's still a ferocious originality to "Noah." Despite its assemblage of borrowed and stolen and re-imagined pieces, you have never seen anything quite like it. It's a disaster movie with environmentalist overtones and CGI rock-beasts and animals and apocalyptic events, and musings on the primal roles of the father and the mother, and the parents' desire to control their uncontrollable children, and all of this is periodically interrupted by flash-cuts of the serpent in the garden, and a glowing hand picking forbidden fruit, and Cain bashing Abel's brains in silhouette. Aronofsky's "cubits" are actual cubes: the finished Ark is comprised of blocks, and when it bobs on brackish waves it looks like a giant wooden Lego brick. Sometimes Aronofsky puts everything else on hold so that Ray Winstone can deliver a monologue about why man is not just entitled but obligated to kill and eat animals and use the land however he sees fit, or so that Russell Crowe can tell the story of the Big Bang by candlelight or sing an infant to sleep in a quieter version of his Inspector Javert voice from "Les Miserables."

Throughout the movie's running time, a word kept flashing in my head: "fervor." Aronofsky is a fervent filmmaker. He always has been, from his debut feature " Pi " onward. Many aspects of "Noah" feel like an organic continuation of themes and elements that have obsessed him for the past fifteen years: husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters protecting, dominating, excluding and terrorizing each other; the alluring power of obsession, be it for drugs (" Requiem for a Dream "), romantic nostalgia and denial of death's finality ("The Fountain") or artistic ambition (" Black Swan "); the intrusion of supernatural or mythical or uncanny events into "normal" life; the notion that sanity and rationality are fragile mental states that can be easily shattered by trauma or disaster.

If I had to compare "Noah" to any previous Biblical movies, I'd go with Mel Gibson's " The Passion of the Christ " and Martin Scorsese's " The Last Temptation of Christ ," not because the stories are similar (obviously they aren't; Old Testament vs. New) but because, even when you're confused or disgusted or bored, you still feel the director's mad passion radiating from the screen. Aronofsky has made a major, perhaps catastrophic tactical error, in that we can always feel his obsessive certainty but we can't quite translate it into our own terms, as we should be able to do with any fable or cautionary tale that's meant to illuminate or instruct. What's onscreen often feels more like a visual transcript of one man's fantasy or nightmare, with all the baffling or nonsensical juxtapositions of this and that and the other thing left intact, exactly as Aronofsky's sleeping mind first encountered them.

The net effect reminded me of one of my favorite passages from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14.4: "Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but the one who prophesies edifies the congregation." Aronofsky is speaking in tongues here, edifying himself but not the congregation. But it's not every day that you get to see a major American filmmaker speak in tongues, babbling to a theater full of strangers about the astonishing dream he had, a dream that he's sure is important, even though he can't explain precisely why. You don't see movies like this everyday. You don't see movies like this ever. That's not nothing.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Noah (2014)

Rated PG-13

Russell Crowe as Noah

Jennifer Connelly as Naameh

Emma Watson as Ila

Logan Lerman as Ham

Douglas Booth as Shem

Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah

Ray Winstone as Tubal Cain

Kevin Durand as Og

Darren Aronofsky

Director of Photography

Matthew Libatique

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Common sense media reviewers.

Dark biblical tale is brutal, violent, gory.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a hu

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prep

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory.

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to b

"Damned" is as salty as it gets.

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It'

Positive Messages

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a human, you also have the power of choice. Man's connection to and responsibility toward the environment is also a theme.

Positive Role Models

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prepared to do anything that God requests. His wife Naameh is devoted to Noah and their family. But they're not depicted as perfect. In fact, they struggle with their humanity.

Violence & Scariness

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Enemies club, stone, stab, or spear each other to death. A few scenes show mass graves, underwater and on dry land. Corpses are shown close up, some without limbs. A character threatens to kill babies. Humans resort to violence in a fight to stay alive. Lots of destruction shown from flooding, as well as fires and battles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to bed people of the opposite sex in order to procreate.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It's not clear what it is. Later he's shown what appears to be a substance that makes him drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this epic tale from director Darren Aronofsky ( Black Swan , Requiem for a Dream ) takes on a character of biblical proportions, Noah. As befits the mayhem recounted in the bible, Noah is filled with catastrophe. The skies rain down from the heavens, drowning nearly everything, and humans are nearly feral as they battle each other for survival. There's no real swearing, just the word "damned," but plenty of brutality and gore: mountains of dead bodies are shown, sometimes close up, humans beat each other to death, sometimes with rocks, knives and spears. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (34)
Kids say (52)

Based on 34 parent reviews

Violent and deviates from Biblical story, but still compelling

What's the story.

Russell Crowe plays Noah, a descendant from the line of Seth, son of Adam and Eve, who's beset by visions that reveal God's plan for the future: a devastating flood that will wipe out humans and help the remaining beings, including a pair of each animal roaming the earth, start over. But first he must build an ark, one that can withstand the assault of a massive flood, as well as the humans who want a place on the ark even if Noah doesn't want them in it. He must also struggle to make real God's plan while balancing his God-given ability to make choices. Meantime, his wife Naameh ( Jennifer Connelly ) and sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter Ila ( Emma Watson ), struggle to be by Noah's side, even as they balance their own needs and doubts about Noah's big plan. All this, as Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) vies with Noah for supremacy -- and the ark.

Is It Any Good?

NOAH is a feat of filmmaking. Every frame, every angle, every shift speaks to the able hands of director Darren Aronofsky. It's a dark and gloomy version of the Biblical tale told here: Noah is tortured -- yes, tortured -- by his visions, not always at peace with the mission God sends his way. Anyone expecting an uplifting version about a man of deep faith heeding his Creator will be disappointed. Yes, Noah heeds. But he does so with plenty of doubts about his and his family's worthiness to survive, a complex and unnerving concept that some young teens may grapple to understand. This Noah doesn't pull its punches.

The film's laden with special effects, most of which is deployed in a way that serves the story. But some audiences may balk at the Watchers, hulking beings made of stone and gifted with Herculean strength that look like they belong in a Star Wars movie, not a Biblical epic. (Also, not sure these beings appear as they do in the Bible's text, one of many parts of the movie that could incite debate.) The film's mid-section feels paunchy and a little plodding, and the music gravitates toward ponderous. All this to say it's imperfect, but its epic sweep and grandeur deserves an audience.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence depicted in this movie. Is it necessary? What's the appeal of watching so much brutality? How else could this story have been told effectively?

Is this a religious movie? Who is the target audience for this film? How can you tell?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 28, 2014
On DVD or streaming : July 29, 2014
Cast : Russell Crowe , Jennifer Connelly , Emma Watson
Director : Darren Aronofsky
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Brothers and Sisters , History
Run time : 138 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content
Last updated : December 15, 2023

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Noah Reviews

The film questions a creator’s obligations at earthly and spiritual levels, with complications that concern masculine privilege to color the margins. "Noah" doesn’t preach to the choir. It dares the choir to keep up amid minor chords & melodic inversion.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 7, 2024

As an exercise in retelling the story, it'll draw more laughs and grunts of incomprehension than actual admiration. Still, Noah is a brave film – and that's always worth appreciating.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2023

Ancient mythology and modern cosmology come together in the story of Genesis, told in Noah’s own words and illustrated with imagery reminiscent of Cosmos, a wedding of science and religion in a way respectful of both.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2023

It’s a movie that teases us with what it could have been but ultimately stumbles because of what it actually is.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2022

In the end, perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to Aronofsky is that he’s made a compelling discussion piece, but a frustratingly uneven one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 15, 2022

A thought-provoking take on a familiar story that will keep you guessing until the end credits roll.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

It's a film that makes one think and feel and, yes, wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

The film is a visceral spectacle in Darren Aronofsky's catalog. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

I didn't hate it.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2020

Who knew that the infamous 40 days and 40 nights could have that much of an edge to it?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2020

Missed opportunities.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2020

If any disclaimer is necessary concerning its loose inspiration from Christian mythology, it's that the ambitious venture is colossally silly and unerringly stale.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 29, 2019

Bolstered by strong performances by the entire cast, strong visuals, and a filled out script, "Noah" may be one of the better biblical adaptations.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2019

It takes all of five minutes for Noah to deliver a Dikembe Mutombo-like swat to expectations of Sunday school bible study.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 6, 2019

However conflicted this flawed representation of archetypal mythology may make you feel, it is certainly worth seeing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 31, 2019

Despite Noah's vivid surface appeal, it ultimately fails to recreate the tale's original sense of thematic unity, and thus becomes acutely aware of its own deprived meaning.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2019

A cinematic enigma -- both maddening and magnificent... "Noah" requires a leap of faith, but if you are willing to take a chance it is a film that will challenge and impress.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2019

Throw in some plot holes that left me annoyed, and it was a rough way to spend two hours and 18 minutes.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2019

Noah is a worthy, ambitious mess of a movie, and as a deeply personal new take on an old tale, it's the kind of mess we could use a bit more often from Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 22, 2018

Once the film has blown it's CGI load, it turns into a kitchen sink drama, an episode of Eastenders as directed by Mike Leigh.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2018

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Noah: film review.

Russell Crowe stars in Darren Aronofsky's Bible-based epic.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture’s most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah . Whereas for a century most Hollywood filmmakers have tread carefully and respectfully when tackling biblical topics in big-budget epics aimed at a mass audience, Aronofsky has been daring, digging deep to develop a bold interpretation of a tale which, in the original, offers a lot of room for speculation and invention. The narrative of the global flood that wiped out almost all earthly life is the original disaster story, one that’s embraced by most of the major world religions, which means that conservative and literal-minded elements of all faiths who make it their business to be offended by untraditional renditions of holy texts will find plenty to fulminate about here. Already banned in some Middle Eastern countries, Noah will rile some for the complete omission of the name “God” from the dialogue, others for its numerous dramatic fabrications and still more for its heavy-handed ecological doomsday messages, which unmistakably mark it as a product of its time. But whether you buy these elements or not, this is still an arresting piece of filmmaking that has a shot at capturing a large international audience both for its fantasy-style spectacle and its fresh look at an elemental Bible story most often presented as a kiddie yarn.

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Entertainment
REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s <i>Noah</i> Movie: Better Than the Book

REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah Movie: Better Than the Book

M ovies aren’t supposed to be this good this early in the year. The first three months of 2014 have served up a top animated feature ( The Lego Movie ), a splendid documentary about a mad artist ( Jodorowsky’s Dune ) and that indescribable delight of The Grand Budapest Hotel . Now, to round out the trimester, Darren Aronofsky brings wild ambition and thrilling artistry to one of the Old Testament’s best-known, most dramatic, least plausible stories — Noah and the ark — with Russell Crowe infusing the role of God’s first seaman and zookeeper with all his surly majesty.

In Genesis 6:8 , God is displeased with the wickedness of men and resolves to kill all humans along with the rest of the earth’s creatures. (What did they do?) “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created — people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” God commands the one righteous man, Noah, to build an ark, summon his family and two of every kind of living thing, and fill it with provisions for the entire menagerie. SPOILER ALERT FOR INFIDELS ONLY: After many months at sea, the water subsides, the ark’s inhabitants disperse and God promises Noah, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind … nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done … Be fruitful and multiply.” Like a golfer with an indulgent scorekeeper, humanity gets a mulligan. The penalty: all but one family must die.

In pop culture, the ark story has multiplied dozens of times, usually with a smile. John Huston played Noah as a benign patriarch in his 1966 The Bible … In the Beginning . Danny Kaye sang his way through the role in Richard Rodgers’ Broadway musical Two by Two ; and in Evan Almighty , Steve Carell was a modern Noah who got pooped on by birds and beasts alike. A rare adaptation with anything like Aronofsky’s sociopolitical seriousness was the 1928 silent film Noah’s Ark , which compares the flood (“A deluge of water drowning a world of lust”) to World War I (“A deluge of blood drowning a world of hate!”). Opening a year before the stock-market crash — which could be seen as heavenly judgment on the Jazz Age — and meant as a message of peace, Michael Curtiz’s movie stoked its own fatalities: three stunt players died during the shooting of the flood sequence.

(READ: Tim Newcomb on the battle over Noah )

The waters are mostly digital now; no humans were killed in the making of this Noah . But Aronofsky, emboldened by the $330 million worldwide box-office take of his last film, Black Swan , took some huge artistic and canonical gambles with this dead-serious, borderline-delirious movie. (So did Paramount Pictures and the movie’s other backers; Noah cost about $130 million to produce.) Sampling from the Old Testament and its apocrypha, plus bits of The Whole Earth Catalog , the director has hatched his most daring film since the 2006 The Fountain , a sadly underappreciated work that imagined the world’s violent past and utopian future through the eyes of a man (Hugh Jackman) trying to find a cure for his wife’s spreading cancer.

Noah is about a man whose mission is to obliterate Earth’s past and godfather its future. Replacing the word God with Creator and taking other scriptural liberties, the movie risks confusing those who don’t take the Bible literally and alienating those who do. The movie has been banned in several Muslim countries, including Indonesia , Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates . In the West, it has won some converts. Crowe and the Noah team secured an audience with Pope Francis , and an urgent campaign from Paramount brought a flock of evangelicals aboard Aronofsky’s ark.

(READ: Religious leaders give their blessing to Noah )

That’s a coup in itself, for Noah recasts the first doomsday story as the first climate-change tale — a disaster-movie scenario that could soon recur. For the Old Testament God, simply insert nature’s God (the Founding Fathers’ name for the Creator) and see the flood as a predictor for nature’s rebuking modern industry for polluting and overheating the atmosphere. Scientists predict that within decades most of the world’s coastal cities will be underwater if emissions are not drastically curtailed. Aronofsky’s text, disguised as a fable, is a warning of this inconvenient truth . He might be paraphrasing the old spiritual: “No more fire, the flood this time.”

In Aronofsky’s Bible-era setting for this toxic environment, Noah is a survivalist taking revenge on urban iniquity. Seeing the industrialized cities around him as wicked for their destruction of the environment as much as their sensual excesses, Noah assumes power of life and death over all living things. This fable of early man is The Croods with a Mensa IQ — and when the rabble storms the ark, it’s a home-invasion thriller of a family taking refuge in their divine-fallout shelter. As the unsaved hordes climb the hulls of the boat like zombies scaling the Jerusalem walls in World War Z , our hero fights to keep them out. It’s the end of the world as they know it, and he feels fine: Apocalypse Noah.

(READ: TIME’s reviews of The Croods and World War Z )

In the Genesis version, God does all the talking; Noah is his silent servant and enabler. But in the gospel according to Aronofsky and co-screenwriter Ari Handel, the Lord doesn’t boom basso profundo or soothe in Morgan Freeman’s baritone. Indeed, he speaks not in words at all but in visions that might be dreams aided by hallucinogens. The Aronofsky Israel is a land of magic, where rock giants that were once men (the Nephilim) stride the earth, where trees instantly bloom around Noah to provide wood for the ark and where animals flock to the building site as if from supernatural bidding. (Once inside, they are sedated so as not to devour one another.) In this mythic realm, Noah’s trance-revelation — of being submerged as creatures swim past him toward a boat on the surface — has to be the Creator’s command to build the ark. “Fire consumes, water cleanses,” Noah says. “He destroys all, but only to start again.”

To buttress the biblical recounting, Aronofsky imports elements of fantasy literature — the Nephilim, the stone-man Watchers, similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, who help Noah construct the ark and fend off invaders — and Shakespearean tragedy. From Genesis 4 the movie borrows the character of Tubal-Cain, “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.” (Called the King of the Nephilim in the 1928 Noah’s Ark , he nearly succeeds in stowing away on the boat — a plot device Aronofsky expands on.) Here, as played by the fiercely swaggering Ray Winstone, Tubal-Cain is not only the thug chieftain of the city sinners, leading the charge on the ark, but also the man Noah saw kill his own father. One of his sons is Ham, but Noah’s true spiritual kin is Hamlet.

Ransacking genres far and wide, Aronofsky also samples art-film cosmology. He recapitulates the first chapters of Genesis (Noah was just the ninth generation after Adam) with quick images of a snake and an apple that pulses like a human heart, and when Noah briefly doubts his mission, he sees himself in reptilian form, as if he were in danger of becoming his own evil-twin snake. Aronofsky’s visual summary of the world’s creation, a story that Noah tells his sons, is like the 17-min. history of the universe in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life retold in a minute or two, but no less imposingly oneiric.

(READ: Corliss on The Tree of Life at Cannes and beyond )

This Noah is not a genial Doctor Dolittle. Burdened by his foreknowledge of the flood and its consequences, he’s in no mood to talk with the animals. Even in the early scenes, he’s more herbalist than PETA activist. He is sobered by the realization that his awful task is to save his family — wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar as Crowe’s wife in A Beautiful Mind ), sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem’s betrothed Ila (Emma Watson) — while letting everyone else die. Naameh and the rest realize that too. They respect Noah’s leadership even as they must question some of his decisions.

ACTUAL SPOILER ALERT: Once devoted to replenishing the earth with his children’s spawn, Noah now accepts his and the world’s mortality. “Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered,” he says, proclaiming, “We will work, complete our task and die with the rest.” Naameh is past child-bearing age, and Ila was rendered barren from a beating she endured as a child. Noah is disturbed when he learns that his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) has laid a shaman’s hands on the girl and restored her fertility.

(SEE: The trailer for Noah )

In the movie’s two most intimate and shocking sequences, Noah keeps Ham from saving Na’el (Madison Davenport), a sweet refugee from Tubal-Cain’s land, and bringing her on the ark as his bride. He then tells the pregnant Ila that if she bears a daughter, he will kill the newborn. He has become the angry Old Testament God who ordered Abraham to slay his son Isaac before calling off the sacrifice. Apparently the Almighty’s genocidal impulse in his flood scheme is contagious; it has spread to a man who has an even more severe view of humanity, deeming it unworthy of a do-over.

In the 1967 comedy Bedazzled , when Peter Cook as the devil boasts of his satanic powers, Dudley Moore as a modern Faust shouts, “You’re a bleedin’ nutcase!” “They said the same of Jesus Christ,” Cook protests, and Moore retorts, “They said it of a lot of nutcases too.” The very pertinent question in Noah is whether its hero is God’s chosen or a nutcase. Is he a visionary or just seeing things? Methuselah has told his grandson, “You must trust that he speaks in a way that you can understand,” so viewers are encouraged to take on faith Noah’s decision to build the ark. Later, when he must rely not on the whispers of the deity but on his own fallible resources, he may be only a willful man — a beautiful mind — driven toward fatal delusion. END SPOILER ALERT.

(SEE: Seven other movies based on the Bible )

In this Old Testament passion play, the director seemingly had the same influence on his actors that the Creator did on Noah. Along with Crowe, giving his strongest performance in years, they rise to meet Aronofsky’s ferocious commitment. Connelly, who looks as if she had been hewn from flint, is the voice of reason, the heart of besieged humanity. Watson reveals a mature intensity far beyond Harry Potter ‘s Hermione; her tears could be mankind’s own keening elegy. Hopkins, the one jolly soul in the family, is a sage from an earlier age — the mesmerist as optimist. And Winstone, representing all that is wily and rapacious, works from an animosity toward a God that will speak to the ark builder but not to him.

As Noah threatens to go off the rails, so does Noah . But that’s inspiring too: proof of a grownup artist struggling with big issues, and then resolving them to create a crazy-great statement that is also a superb entertainment. In its grand recklessness the movie is closest to Aronofsky’s debut feature, the 1998 Pi , in which Max Cohen, a neurotic mathematician, gets mixed up with a Hassidic sect that believes the string of numbers Max has discovered is a secret code sent by God. That movie cost $60,000, this one about 2,000 times as much. But both films live by Max’s creed: “I’m on the edge, and that’s where it happens.”

(SEE: Corliss’s review of ᴨ , aka Pi )

Big-time directors and the studios that bankroll them prefer to dwell in the comfortable, familiar center, where mammon is God and the only divine word comes from focus groups. So for Aronofsky to construct an expensive spectacle, and to throw liturgical and dramatic challenges like lightning bolts at every member of the audience, is hardly less an achievement than to build and float an ark 300 cubits long (450 ft., or 137 m). Rarely has a film that flirts this solemnly with ambition bending toward madness been so masterly in carrying its spectators to its heights and through its depths. On both levels, Noah is a water thrill ride worth taking.

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'Noah' Review: A Powerful Reimagining Of One Of Humanity's Most Iconic Stories

I've been a fan of director Darren Aronofsky since I first saw Pi . His film Requiem for a Dream remains one of my favorite movies of all time. Aronofsky has yet to make a movie I have dislike; his last few films were all in my top ten films of those respective years. Over the last decade, Aronofsky has become attached to a bunch of big budget projects including the films that later became Batman Begins, Watchmen, The Wolverine and Robocop . I've been itching to see what Aronofsky could accomplish with a larger budget. Noah is that film. Read my Noah review after the jump.

A larger budget also means more studio interference. We've heard reports of Paramount editing and screening their own cut of the movie to religious test screening audiences. It seems to me they were hoping for a Passion Of The Christ scenario where they would be able to sell tickets in bulk to church groups who would bus their congregations to the sold out screenings around the country. This is not a film that caters to that crowd, unlike the recently released Son of God .

I was brought up catholic during my preteen years, but I'm not a religious man. I'm not sure I believe in God, at least in the same kind of God I read about in regions texts. I believe in science, but even that at too times is so beautifully constructed to completely deny the existence of a supreme architect. If anything I would classify myself as agnostic yet spiritual.

Something has always drawn me to the great biblical epics of film history. I can't tell you how many times I watched the Ten Commandments . There is a reason why so many people have connected with the stories of the Bible — some of the tales are hugely impactful pieces of storytelling. It probably doesn't hurt that they are probably some of the first serious superhero movies captured on celluloid.

But I'm not a fan of all biblical films. I didn't connect with Mel Gibson 's Passion of the Christ because it felt like only a sliver of a story, stretched to a manipulative guilt-inducing feature length torture porn extreme. I completely understand those of you who connected with the movie — the power of that film comes from the external, from what you bring in to it.

Before giving my reaction to this film, it should also be noted that earlier this month I flew out to Mexico City to see Noah at the world premiere as a guest of Mr. Aronofsky (if this bothers you, please stop reading now — there will likely be other reviews from other /Film contributors closer to release). I have since taken in a second screening of the film as the world premiere experience is not as great as you may expect. (Imagine projecting a subtitled movie and Clint's score in a arena called the Pepsi Center, with a crowd of people on their phones and a not-so-quiet baby). So my following review/reaction is after having seen the film a second time in a more proper setting.

I have also tried to avoid delving deep into the plot of the film to keep this reaction mostly spoiler-free. You think you know the Noah's ark story but there is a lot in Aronofsky's adaptation that is either created or sourced from other places. I'd rather not delve into details to keep the story a new experience for those who buy a ticket.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah Reviewed

Aronofsky chose not to make a standard biblical adaptation, and the result is an interesting, complex, imaginative expansion of the classic flood myth we've all grown up on. It's a powerful epic reimagining of one of humanity's most iconic stories. Aronofsky, with his tag-team writing partner Ari Handel, expand upon the short story, extrapolating questions and developed into complex situations.

The film is a much different movie than is being advertised. It features mystics with magical powers, fantastical creatures, a bleak apocalyptic wasteland and angels imprisoned on earth as giant rock monsters. The story is somehow still grounded in the face of the fantastical. Noah brings a Lord of the Rings -style epic take on this classic story of mass genocide, mixing myth with fantasy to create a biblical mash-up that has me more interested in re-exploring the mythic stories of the bibles than I have been since childhood.

And so this isn't the Noah story you might remember, or think you remember. Aronofsky cleverly weaves other portions of the Bible, stories of Genesis, Adam and Eve, Cain & Abel into the story to give his myth a sense of it's own history. He also mashes the story with some of what, in one conversation, Aronofsky jokingly referred to as "the extended universe." For example, Aronofsky includes the Watchers, a group of angels who were dispatched to watch over the humans and are now imprisoned on earth until Judgement Day. That story comes from Books of Enoch, a Jewish publication while considered outside of traditional biblical canon, is attributed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah.

And then there is the fact that many of us remember the story of Noah and the Flood, but few of us have either read the actual bible scripture or remember the details. For instance, the Bible says that Noah turned 560 years old before the flood begins, and (spoiler warning) lived 950 years before dying. And you might not remember the part where after the flood, Noah builds an alter where he sets some of the innocent animals he saved on fire, sacrificing them for God (who "smelled the pleasing aroma"). The Bible even has a story in the later years of Noah's life, where the savior of humanity passes out drunk and naked on the beach. Not all of these tidbits factor into Aronofsky's story.

One of my favorite parts of the film is Aronofsky's beautiful retelling of Genesis, which will please pro-science and will likely piss off creationists. Its this kind of passionate visual storytelling that mixes bible verse with science fact to present one of the most well-known stories in existence in a completely new light. For me, the beauty contained in the construction of this segment is worth the ticket price alone.

While I really enjoyed the film, I suspect many people will have a problem with Noah . The film's five-act structure might make the film feel longer than other studio movies, and the non-traditional heroes journey might pose too much of a challenge for mainstream audiences. Our hero, the titicular character in this story, struggles between doing God's bidding and doing what he might otherwise believe to be right. Its this struggle and challenge that may lose some viewers, but it is thematically one of the more interesting things Aronofsky explores in this film — the challenges of fanaticism. And of course, it wouldn't be an Aronosfky film if it didn't follow a character through obsession, to the point where he approaches the edge of insanity.

Clint Mansell 's score shows shades of The Fountain , but is bigger and louder, feeling both galactic and mythic. I can't wait to blast his score at home. Russell Crowe delivers his best performance in almost a decade.

Noah might be the most ambitious piece of cinema ever produced on this big of a budget (reportedly $140-160 million) and released by a major studio. The film isn't something you would expect — the moments of spectacle promised by the advertising peak about half-way through the film (the big battle that happens when the flood finally hits). The film is much more complex than an action scene, delving into interesting ideas, grappling with morals and developing the story we all think we knew into an incredibly imaginative character drama at the edge of the end (and beginning) of the world as we know it.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Screen Rant

Russell crowe's $359m epic movie finds new success on netflix 10 years later.

Russell Crowe's 2014 epic biblical drama finds new success on Netflix as it reaches the streaming service's Top 10 weekly list in the United States.

Darren Aronofsky's 2014 movie Noah entered Netflix's top 10 in the U.S., ranking 5th for the week of March 4 through 10.
While praised by critics for its visuals and performances, the adaptation was divisive among audiences, receiving a 41% audience score.
Despite mixed reviews, Noah was a box office hit, grossing over $362 million worldwide.

Russell Crowe’s 2014 epic biblical drama movie Noah has become a global Netflix hit. Directed by Darren Aronofsky and inspired by the scriptural story of Noah’s Ark, the movie stars Crowe as the titular lead, who God chooses to build an ark to save his family and the world's animals from a great flood that the deity has summoned to wipe out the evil of men. In addition to Crowe, the Noah cast includes Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Anthony Hopkins alongside the voices of Frank Langella, Nick Nolte, Mark Margolis, and Kevin Durand as Watchers.

Netflix has now calculated their Top 10 most-watched English-language movies in the United States for the week of March 4 through March 10. The Noah movie has landed on the list at No. 5 alongside more contemporary Netflix original hits such as Damsel , Spaceman , and Code 8 Part II and major non-original releases including The Super Mario Bros. Movie , Think Like a Man Too , and 27 Dresses . This resurgence in interest has come almost exactly 10 years after the release of the Aronofsky biblical movie, which originally debuted on March 28 in 2014.

Noah Was Divisive Upon Its Original Release

Critics and audiences didn't agree.

Since he made his debut in 1998 with the highly-rated conceptual psychological thriller Pi , many entries from Darren Aronofsky's filmography have generally been polarizing . Even his Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning titles including The Whale , Black Swan , and The Wrestler have divided critics and audiences either due to their subject matter or the approach they take to it. Below, see the Aronofsky movies other than Noah that have featured the widest divide between critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes:

Aronofsky's movies have such a tendency toward divisiveness that there is not any major consistency between whether critics or audiences prefer his movies. Indeed, this is borne out by the general reception to his Russell Crowe biblical epic during its original release. Even though the drama was well received by most critics, who praised the Noah cast as well as its sweeping visuals, audiences gave the movie less favorable reviews , resulting in the biggest divide of the director's entire career.

While Aronofsky's Noah boasts a fairly impressive 75% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score was a lot less impressive, with viewers only giving it 41%. This results in a difference of -34% , a massive gap for any movie on the platform. There are several reasons why many who went to theaters to watch Noah weren’t impressed with Aronofsky's adaptation, as expressed in their reviews. However, one of the major reasons is the significant number of changes that Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel made to the original Noah story .

Noah's Netflix Success Makes Sense Despite Its Original Audience Reception

The movie was a financial success in 2014.

Although Noah received such mixed reviews, this success on Netflix isn't entirely a surprise. After all, in spite of negative audience reactions at the time, the movie was a major box office hit . Though its huge budget, which was estimated somewhere between $120 and $160 million, likely means it didn't earn too much of a profit at the end of the day, it was a major success compared to many other blockbusters of the time. This was the case from the very beginning, as it earned $43.7 million during its opening weekend, debuting in first place at the box office.

Noah took No. 1 over other major 2014 titles including Divergent , Muppets Most Wanted , and The Lego Movie .

The Noah Rotten Tomatoes score did not prevent its gross from climbing even higher in the weeks to follow, though it was knocked to No. 2 the next weekend by the release of the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit Captain America: The Winter Soldier . By the end of its run, the Aronofsky movie grossed $359.2 million worldwide, making it the 23rd highest-grossing movie of the year . It is also Aronofsky's highest-grossing film to date by a considerable margin, followed by Black Swan ($331.3 million) and The Fighter ($129.3 million).

In 2014, audiences may not have all liked the movie, but they did flock to see it. This trend seems to have carried into the modern era, which could explain the sudden success of Noah on Netflix. The movie's debut on the platform also comes during a time that faith-based titles have been thriving at the box office including The Chosen , Ordinary Angels , and Cabrini , all of which are in the Top 10 as of the time of writing. Audiences' hunger for similar titles does not seem to have diminished on streaming either.

Noah is available to stream on Netflix and Paramount+.

Source: Netflix

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Darren Aronofsky's Noah is an epic biblical drama starring Russell Crowe as the titular character. The film tells the story of the legendary man chosen by God and the ark he builds to save his family and the world's animals from a great flood. Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Ray Winston, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman, and Douglas Booth round out the rest of the main cast.

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Noah review – 'a preposterous but endearingly unhinged epic'

"The snakes are coming too?" Thus speaks Noah's wife, Naameh, as a carpet of slithering CGI serpents joins the menagerie of digital beasts in this utterly preposterous, often exasperating, but endearingly unhinged epic from the director of Black Swan . Adapted from a bizarrely enduring myth that permeates cultures both east and west, Aronofsky's long-nurtured pet project is a broadly non-denominational fantasia (he calls it "the least biblical 'biblical film' ever"), merrily lifting riffs from a range of canonical and gnostic texts, with a sprinkling of the kabbalism about which he obsessed in Pi . The beasts that Noah wrangles on behalf of "the creator" (the G-word is unspoken) range from the recognisable to the quasi-mystical, with cats and rats and elephants joining griffin-feathered hybrids in the race for survival. I didn't notice a unicorn getting left behind, but frankly it wouldn't have looked out of place.

While images of damned human flesh tumbling from mountaintops recall DeMille, and a shot following a drop of rain nods towards the "tear of God" from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ , Noah has more in common with the traditions of sci-fi and fantasy than with the Ten Commandments. Remember, this project first broke water when Aronofsky and screenwriter Ari Handel were working together on The Fountain , an insanely ambitious time-traversing fable tantalisingly tag-lined: "What if you could live forever?" Even the opening screed ("In the beginning there was nothing… ") seems less Genesis than George Lucas, with the action apparently taking place long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, upon landscapes that veer from Tatooine to Mordor via the forbidden zone of Beneath the Planet of the Apes , before ending up somewhere over the rainbow. Ominous scenes of blackened hordes descending upon Noah's wooden fortress call to mind the Orc attacks from The Lord of the Rings , while the floods themselves evoke the dystopian disaster of Waterworld .

As for the fallen angel rock monsters (gigantic Nephilim-era "Watchers"), they look like the boulder creature from Galaxy Quest and speak with the voice of Optimus Prime from Transformers . When one kneels to converse with Noah, you half expect to see Megan Fox bending over an ox cart while Shia LaBeouf utters biblical epithets. (Unsurprisingly, these bonkers creations were underplayed in pre-publicity, for fear of alienating the lucrative Congregational market who might object to film-makers messing with the gospel truth of a 600-year-old man being instructed by unearthly voices to build a floating zoo.)

Underneath all the madness is Clint Mansell's surging, swirling, haunting score, featuring a recurrent refrain that reminded me of the aching longing of David Bowie's Warszawa (some of the instrumental soundscapes from Low were originally intended as incidental music for The Man Who Fell to Earth – another genetic link to sci-fi). With its blend of eerie futurism and ancient bombast, Mansell's music lends harmony to the cacophony of human voices: Ray Winstone with a hint of pulpit-posh as Noah's meat-eating adversary Tubal-cain; Anthony Hopkins unashamedly Welsh as a wizard-like Methuselah; and Crowe doing all points Robin Hood in between bouts of sullen silence and teeth-gnashing roaring. While posters have portrayed Crowe's Noah as essentially " Gladiator in the rain" (John Logan did uncredited script rewrites), the titular figure is altogether less heroic, descending into swivel-eyed psychosis as he sacrifices children in favour of moths, driven to madness by the voices in his head – or absence of them.

Embodying the last gasp of the creator's pre-covenant vengeful tyranny (forgiveness comes later), Noah is an increasingly deranged extremist, a fundamentalist eco-warrior hellbent on wiping out mankind. In this breast-beating role, Crowe is all teeth, spittle and changeable hair arrangements, and if we believe in him at all (and, frankly, we often don't) it's because of the sterling efforts of Jennifer Connelly. As Naameh (a sorely underwritten role), Connelly anchors everything in credible human emotion, the devotion and anguish that her raging spouse inspires in her allowing us to engage with him. Without Connelly's mediating influence, Crowe's performance is a closed door – and if the movie has anything to say about faith, then it is largely by grace of her intercession.

Throw in a magical serpent's skin, a recurrent Garden of Eden flashback with pulsating apple heart, and a creation-of-life montage that plays like MTV-generation Terrence Malick , and Noah emerges as the strangest $125m ever spent by a major studio. When the film-makers shared an audience with Pope Francis a few weeks ago, Russell Crowe tweeted: " Thank you holy father @Pontifex for the blessing ", reminding us that The Passion of the Christ became a record-breaking hit after Pope John Paul II reportedly declared: "It is as it was."

The studio, which had struggled (and failed) to make Noah more orthodox, subsequently heaved a sigh of relief as Aronofsky's grand folly enjoyed a $44m US opening weekend. Yet if Pope Francis offered a whispered critique of the film (his thoughts remain private, although the Vatican says he hasn't seen it), it can only have been along the lines of: "It is as it wasn't, but hey – I always had a soft spot for Zardoz !"

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Is Russell Crowe’s Noah Biblically Accurate?

Noah director Darren Aronofsky greatly expanded upon the biblical legend of Noah’s Ark.

Noah film extensively developed Noah's family, featuring fictionalized characters to add depth to the biblical story.
Director Aronofsky introduced a fictional villain, Tubal-Cain, to create conflict and explore morality in the epic.
Aronofsky's unique vision for Noah, influenced by his graphic novel, added fantastical elements to enhance the biblical tale.

The 2014 epic biblical drama film Noah , which is inspired by the biblical story of Noah’s Ark from the Book of Genesis, is a testament to the courage and imagination of director Darren Aronofsky, who first became interested in Noah’s story when Aronofsky was a child. Noah stars Russell Crowe as the film’s protagonist, a righteous man who receives mysterious visions from God of an oncoming flood and subsequently builds an ark that’s large enough to hold Noah, Noah’s family, and pairs of every kind of animal before God’s wrath is unleashed through the apocalyptic flood.

While Noah , which grossed approximately $360 million at the worldwide box office, was a commercial and critical success, Noah was criticized by religious scholars for Aronofsky’s heavy reliance on creative invention and non-biblical sources in the making of the film. The sheer brevity and vagueness of Noah’s story, which is only mentioned in four chapters of the Bible, required Aronofsky to expand and speculate upon the various spectacular elements of Noah’s story, especially regarding Noah’s Ark.

Regardless of how much Noah departs from the biblical text, through Aronofsky’s visual artistry and Crowe’s majestic performance, it still passionately and thrillingly captures the integrity and spirit of the legend of Noah. Moreover, Noah exudes a sense of timelessness and universality, which enables the movie to appeal to believers and atheists alike.

Noah's Family Is Much More Fully Developed

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One of the biggest differences between Noah and the biblical story is how the film portrays Noah’s family. While the protagonist's family members are only alluded to in the Bible, the movie presents Noah’s family members as fully realized characters, each of whom plays an important role in Noah’s journey. Since Noah’s father, Lamech, and grandfather, Methuselah, are only mentioned in the Bible for the purpose of establishing his genealogy, Darren Aronofsky fleshed out these characters by altering the timeline of the biblical legend. While Noah was, according to the Bible, 595 years old when his father died, he is a teenager in the film when his father is murdered.

While Methuselah, played by Anthony Hopkins, is scarcely mentioned in the Bible, in which he has the distinction of being the oldest mentioned person, Methuselah serves as Noah’s mentor in the film. After Noah dreams of the oncoming flood, Methuselah helps Noah understand the visions from God.

The most significant invented character is Noah’s wife, Naameh, who is simply referred to as Noah’s wife in the Bible. In the film, Naameh, played by Jennifer Connelly , appears as Noah’s true soul mate. Naameh consults with Noah about their children and the construction and meaning of the Ark. In the Bible, all that’s known about Noah’s unnamed wife is that she was a passenger on the Ark.

Noah Has a Fictionalized Villain

Director Darren Aronofsky felt that it was necessary to include a tangible villain for Noah in the form of Tubal-Cain, a direct descendant of Cain and master blacksmith who attempts to steal Noah’s ark by sneaking onto the Ark and attempting to turn Noah’s middle son, Ham, against him in order to have him killed.

While the character of Tubal-Cain is mentioned in the Bible, specifically as one of Cain’s descendants, the biblical stories of Noah and Tubal-Cain are unconnected, and it’s unclear whether Noah and Tubal-Cain even lived in the same era. Moreover, while Noah presents Tubal-Cain as a stowaway aboard the Ark, where Tubal-Cain hides among Noah’s animals, there is no mention in the Bible of there being any stowaways on the Ark.

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However, while the character of Tubal-Cain, who is played as a young man by Finn Wittrock and an older man by Ray Winstone, was almost entirely invented by Aronofsky, Tubal-Cain embodies Aronofsky’s overall creative approach to Noah , which is a study of complex morality and stark contrasts. While the depraved and seemingly insane Tubal-Cain embodies the wickedness of humanity, he also appears in the film as a highly intelligent man who is consumed by feelings of abandonment, doubt, and fear.

Noah Was Inspired By Darren Aronofsky's Graphic Novel

While the vague elements of Noah’s story in the Bible required director Darren Aronofsky to invent many character and plot details for Noah , Noah has relatively few scenes in which the film directly contradicts the biblical story. The most notable exception is the degree of clarity with which Noah receives and interprets his visions and warnings from God .

In the film, Noah, after receiving mysterious visions of the oncoming great flood, struggles to make sense of the nightmarish sensations that he has of drowning. However, in the Bible, God communicates with Noah much more clearly and directly, in terms of informing Noah of precisely how and when the flood will arrive and what Noah must do to save his family. God even includes detailed building instructions and dimensions for building the Ark.

Russell Crowe's Best Action Movies, Ranked

To visually enhance Noah’s story, Aronofsky added The Watchers, massive rock monsters that are revealed to be fallen angels who were left stranded on Earth as punishment for helping Adam and Eve, after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating the Forbidden Fruit. While the Bible makes a brief reference to the existence of giant creatures on Earth during Noah’s era, the rock monsters were entirely invented.

The inclusion of fantastical elements in Noah is a testament to the influence of Aronofsky’s 2014 hardcover graphic novel of the same name, in which Aronofsky gives Noah’s story a science-fiction feel. This is consistent with Aronofsky’s ultimate directorial vision for Noah , which Aronofsky has accurately described as being the least biblical-biblical film ever made. Stream Noah on Netflix .

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Even Russell Crowe Is Surprised ‘Noah’ Is In The Netflix Top 10

Where to Stream:

American assassin (2017).

Russell Crowe

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New movies on streaming: ‘kung fu panda 4,’ ‘sleeping dogs’ + more, new movies on streaming: ‘bob marley: one love,’ ‘land of bad,’ + more, is ‘sleeping dogs’ streaming on netflix or hbo max.

Most viewing statistics provided by streaming services are too vague to have much meaning. Did 165 million people watch the first Rebel Moon movie, putting it on par with Barbie as one of the most-watched movies of 2023, or did 81.9 million Netflix accounts auto-play it while 100,000 people actually sat through longer than five minutes? From this morass of questionable statistics emerges the voice of the people, sort of: The Netflix Top 10 , which displays the ever-changing group of movies and TV shows that are most-viewed by the platform’s subscribers. Questions about what constitutes a “view” still apply, but this chart at least provides points of comparison – and there’s no greater evidence that these titles aren’t gamed by the system than the absolutely bizarre assortment of movies that surface here. Remember the 2017 Dylan O’Brien/Michael Keaton red-meat terrorism actioner American Assassin ? Neither do Netflix subscribers, who will ravenously consume it like it’s brand new, catapulting it into the Top 10 last month.

The reasons that certain catalog titles pop on Netflix are rarely easy to discern; apart from Christmas movies and the occasional sequel igniting interest in its predecessor, they tend to operate independently from traditional markers like anniversaries, seasonal changes, or a star’s recent activity. The chart is wonderfully unpredictable and mysterious. For example, is Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 Biblical film Noah currently occupying the Netflix Top 10 because it’s about a week away from its tenth anniversary? Or because Easter (not a holiday depicted in the film, but often a time for Bible-themed entertainment) follows a few days after that? Or because star Russell Crowe has a new movie out this week?

Likely none or all of the above. Noah is a particularly unusual case because, well, it’s a particularly unusual movie – a big-budget Bible story from the director of Black Swan , Requiem for a Dream , The Wrestler , and The Whale , starring Crowe as the ark-building Noah, attempting to save the world’s animals (and his family) from the impending world-cleansing storm brought about by the Creator (which is how everyone in the movie refers to God). It’s also a relic of a less-ancient time when auteurs of the late ’90s were given bigger budgets and, surprisingly, made hit movies out of their sensibilities: David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle ; Alexander Payne’s The Descendants ; David Fincher’s The Social Network ; and Aronofsky’s Black Swan .

Noah , Aronofsky’s follow-up to the hugely successful Black Swan — $330 million in worldwide box office plus five Oscar nominations, including a Best Actress win for Natalie Portman — came towards the end of this boomlet, and while it did reasonably well, it was also exactly the kind of movie studios looked at and thought, “This isn’t making as much money for us as a superhero franchise.” Now people are watching it en masse, a decade later. As Crowe himself recently noted online: “This is an interesting turn of events.”

This is an interesting turn of events. If you’ve never seen Noah , it’s currently on US Netflix. Check it out. https://t.co/cyhJK4HSN9 — Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) March 17, 2024

It’s especially interesting because Noah is both far weirder than most movies that hit the Netflix charts, and less aggressively off-putting to mainstream audiences than much of Aronofsky’s work. As a retelling of a Bible story, it has grit and substantial inner conflict (in addition to plenty of external conflict in the form of large-scale battle scenes around the film’s midpoint). Its inner turmoil recalls a contemporary crisis-of-faith narrative, but Noah’s faith in the Creator is never in doubt; rather, he seeks the strength to carry out what he sees as God’s will. Aronofsky unsettled some viewers by reframing his quest as a kind of environmental parable, with Noah convinced that he is helping God to wipe out humanity, so that non-human life may continue to flourish on Earth, unspoiled by humans. This, too, has familiar echoes; Crowe’s Noah is like a more richly imagined version of the semi-sympathetic ecoterrorist-who-goes-to-far of so many Hollywood blockbusters. Similarly, Aronofsky visualizes the fallen angels who assist Noah as gigantic (and eventually marauding!) rock-creatures, like something out of a ’80s stoner fantasy.

Compared to the ravaged psychology of other Aronofsky movies, though, Noah feels downright stately, more loopy than traumatizing. Compared to the audience rebellion spurred by his sci-fi epic The Fountain and his more obtuse biblical allegory mother! , Noah could be read as a reasonable compromise, just as the self-injuring performers of Black Swan and The Wrestler are more legible (and less punishing) to a general audience than his characters in Pi or Requiem . Within this slightly more mainstream-friendly sensibility, he finds new outlets for his show-offy visual intensity, like a three-minute sequence that he was clearly born to distill: A flickering, time-lapse-style history of creation, synthesizing Crowe’s “in the beginning” narration, CG images of evolution, and familiar Biblical images (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel), like a speed-run through Terrence Malick country. This version of Aronofsky was enough of a concession to get Noah past the $350 million mark at the worldwide box office – and it’s easily Crowe’s biggest leading-role movie of the past decade. Still, it wasn’t exactly The Passion of the Christ as far as Bible-inspired blockbusters are concerned.

So what are all of these presumably newfound viewers thinking about Aronofosky’s divisive project? It’s not the easiest movie to search on the socials, but mostly the attention to its Netflix success, driven by Crowe, seems to have brought the Aronofsky defenders out of the woodwork in a way that, say, The Whale did not, with plenty of folks telling Crowe how much they appreciated it. The word “wild” comes up.

Has anyone seen the movie Noah with Russell Crowe & Jennifer Connelly? Wild man. — James Arnold (@ADCoachArnoldCC) March 18, 2024

Have you seen the Russell Crowe movie on Netflix Noah? It's absolutely wild, I had no idea the Autobots helped defend the Ark. — destination: starlife (@CooperDowell) March 15, 2024

What’s especially wild about Noah is how this big swing from Aronofsky nonetheless feels more disciplined and accessible, in its way, than the superficially stripped-down theatrics of The Whale , which works up a sweat trying to control Aronofsky’s bombast, and winds up mounting a bizarre imitation of what audiences might want from him. Noah ‘s attempt at mainstream mythmaking feels serenely confident by comparison. Maybe Noah also looks more palatable after a full decade of Christian-themed faith-based movies that tend to offer unchallenging, inspirational stories. At the time, Noah appeared to have the makings of a major boondoggle. As the best movie in the Netflix Top 10, though, it’s practically a miracle.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

Stream Noah on Netflix

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Russell Crowe's Controversial 2014 Movie Is Getting A Second Life On Netflix

"Noah," Russell Crowe's controversial religious drama from 2014, is lighting up the Netflix charts. Crowe joined acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky for a cinematic adaptation of the life of the titular figure, who is revered in several religions, including Abrahamic faiths. Upon release, the film was mired in controversy for its subject matter and interpretation of Noah's life story, which is contested and debated amongst followers from different faiths. Each religion has different views on Noah as well as his actions, which require him to build an ark in the wake of a great flood.

Critically, the film was a success, as suggested by its 75% score on Rotten Tomatoes . Audiences on the platform largely detested the picture, awarding it a 41% audience score. Opening night viewers gave it a C CinemaScore, further solidifying how controversial the film was. But despite the hoopla it caused in 2014, audiences in the United States are enjoying Aronfosky's take. On March 8, 2024, it was the 7th most-watched film in the United States on Netflix, per FlixPatrol . This shows how viewers keep on watching Crowe's underrated films on Netflix .

Aronofsky has largely been a divisive filmmaker, so it's interesting that he assembled a cast filled with heavyweights like Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and Emma Winston for a religious epic. But this isn't the first time the lead actor has taken on a faith-based film — Crowe starred in "The Pope's Exorcist," which was based on a real person.

Noah was banned in several countries

While Noah's story appears in several different cultures and is part of a number of key religious texts, Russel Crowe's film is a Biblical interpretation of the core material. But this is a Darren Aronofsky film first and foremost, which means that he took certain creative liberties. Perhaps the most obvious is the inclusion of the "Watchers," a race of giant rock creatures who work on behalf of God. Aronofsky also makes some bold decisions, such as showing Noah in a drunken stupor and depicting Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), an individual who didn't come across Noah in the Bible, as its villain.

Decisions like these may have come across as controversial to certain audience members. Upon release, the film received both positive and negative reception from Christians. Ray Comfort, a Christian filmmaker and evangelist, was notably critical of the creative liberties taken by "Noah." Kevin Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis and the future Ark Encounter, called the movie an "insult to Bible-believing Christians, an insult to the character of Noah and, most of all, an insult to the God of the Bible" in an op-ed written for TIME .

The film was banned in several countries despite being watched by so many. China and several Muslim nations such as Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain banned the picture. People from these Muslim countries were particularly concerned about how the prophet Noah was depicted. It should be noted that the Bible and Quran, the holy text for Muslims, have different interpretations of Noah and his Ark.

"Noah" is streaming on Netflix in the United States.

NOAH (2021)

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for a... Read all Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Josh Friedman
Amanda Silver
Freya Allan
Kevin Durand
Dichen Lachman

Proximus Caesar

Youngster #1
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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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When will Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes be released? Powered by Alexa
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All 39 Movies and Shows Leaving Netflix in May 2024

"This is how I win." for now...

As we approach the end of April, it's time to look forward to May. Like always, there are plenty of great titles leaving Netflix . From the first four Hunger Games films to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish , here are all 39 movies and shows leaving Netflix in May 2024.

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Leaving May 1:

'magic mike's last dance', magic mike's last dance.

Mike takes to the stage again, following a business deal that went bust, leaving him broke and taking bartender gigs in Florida. Mike heads to London with a wealthy socialite who lures him with an offer he can't refuse.

Also Leaving May 1:

Bennett's War

Leaving May 2:

Survive the Night

Leaving May 3:

Arctic Dogs

Leaving May 8:

'uncut gems', leaving may 9:, 'puss in boots: the last wish', leaving may 10:.

St. Vincent

Leaving May 11:

'where the crawdads sing', where the crawdads sing.

Where The Crawdads Sing was adapted by Lucy Alibar and directed by Olivia Newman. The film, which takes place in the deep, forested marsh lands of North Carolina between 1952 and 1969, follows the story of a young woman named Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones), whose life takes a turn for the worse when she’s named the number one suspect in the murder of her ex-love interest. Starring alongside Edgar-Jones is a call sheet consisting of Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., and David Strathairn.

Leaving May 14:

Fifty Shades of Black

Leaving May 19:

Rosario Tijeras (Mexico): Seasons 1-3
Sam Smith: Love Goes - Live at Abbey Road Studios

Leaving May 22:

'the boxtrolls', the boxtrolls, leaving may 26:.

Mako Mermaids: An H2O Adventure: Seasons 3-4

Leaving May 31:

'the hunger games: catching fire', 'noah'.

Noah is chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission before an apocalyptic flood cleanses the world.

'You've Got Mail'

You've got mail.

Also leaving May 31:

Boyz n the Hood
The Disaster Artist
Forever My Girl
The Great Gatsby
Happy Gilmore
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
The Impossible
L.A. Confidential
Lakeview Terrace
The Mick: Seasons 1-2
Oh, Ramona!
The Other Guys
Silent Hill
Think Like a Man
Think Like a Man Too

Liam Neeson thriller proves to be huge hit on Netflix despite critics' reviews

L iam Neeson's most recent movie has just landed on Netflix for viewers in the UK and Ireland and it is a big hit. In the Land of Saints and Sinners is set in Ireland and stars a host of familiar Irish faces, including Kerry Condon , Colm Mean, and Ciaran Hinds .

The film follows former assassin Finbar Murphy, played by Neeson , who lives a quiet life in a rural seaside Irish village. Finbar hopes to leave his troubled past behind him and stay far away from The Troubles in 1970s Ireland.

However, he soon discovers that a member of the newly arrived group of sketchy men has been abusing a local girl and he is drawn into a vicious game of cat and mouse.

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He must choose whether or not he wants to protect his friends and neighbors and expose his secret identity.

Despite many negative reviews upon its initial release, the film has shot up the Netflix charts. It first premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September and is now available for many to watch at home.

The film was met with mixed reviews when it was first released. Many reviews criticized it for its portrayal of Irish stereotypes .

The Hollywood Reporter's review of the film reads: "The paddywhackery’s as thick as the Oirish brogues and flavorful caricatures in Robert Lorenz’s In the Land of Saints & Sinners.

"Not since the merry blarney of Wild Mountain Thyme has a movie leaned so hard into Emerald Isle stereotypes, which makes it remarkable that Liam Neeson as a pipe-smoking, Dostoevsky-reading assassin manages to play it straight."

Meanwhile, Screen Daily said: "For some, that film was a little too bleak and the humor a bit too black: The Land Of Saints And Sinners will be the more palatable Irish thriller for those in that market. And Neeson looks as strong as ever in the ‘big lad’ role: he’s 71, and signs are that he will just keep on sinning – as long as there is a child in distress."

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Despite this, it currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 81 percent and an audience score of 75 percent. In the Land of Saints and Sinners is available to watch in the US on Amazon Prime Video but for a rental price of $19.99.

For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here .

Lian Neeson stars in In the Land of Saints and Sinners

Badass Moms. Short-Ass Movies. How Netflix hooks you with catchy categories.

Two years ago, a Saturday Night Live skit sang the praises of shorter movies. “Gimme that short-ass movie, a 90-minute movie,” Pete Davidson rapped in the pre-taped video with musical guest Gunna, actor Simon Rex and fellow cast member Chris Redd.

Netflix was only too happy to oblige. The following morning it rolled out a new category of bite-sized entertainment like “Happy Gilmore,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “Jurassic Park III.”

“Short-Ass Movies” was an instant hit with subscribers frustrated by marathon running times. “ Yea Baby!!!! ,” one commented on social media.

Netflix creates tens of thousands of catchy categories like “Short-Ass Movies” to help subscribers find their groove on the streaming platform. In fact, curating categories is one of Netflix’s superpowers. Netflix says categories slice through thousands of titles to recommend TV shows and movies that match the tastes and viewing habits of its nearly 270 million subscribers.

The categories range from the mundane – “Action TV” or “TV comedies” – to the intriguing – “ Heartfelt Underdog Movies ” or “ Drug Lords and Mob Bosses .” Then there are the oddly obscure themes.

“When I started getting really niche category recs on Netflix , like ‘Critically Acclaimed Canadian Satires with Strong Female Leads,’ I was like, finally, someone gets me,” one Netflix subscriber wrote on social media, “and unfortunately it’s this algorithm.”

How Netflix categories shape what we watch

Categorizing content is a prime directive for Netflix. The more Netflix shows it gets you, the likelier you are to stick around.

It also has another subtle yet significant effect. Taking cues from Netflix on what to watch shapes and influences us in ways we might not always realize.

While 50 years ago, we discovered new music through friends or flipping through bins of vinyl at the record store, today we are more likely to be guided by Spotify’s unseen algorithms.

“The positives are obvious – personalized recommendations from Netflix and Spotify help us find exactly what we like in an incomprehensible number of options,” David Beer, a professor of sociology at the University of York in the UK, wrote in a piece for The Conversation.

Should we passively accept the recommendations of black-box algorithms and filter bubbles that hew to our tastes and biases? Bespoke categories can become limiting, even harmful, by insulating us from new voices and different perspectives, Beer says.

“The question is: who decides what the labels are, what gets put into these boxes and, therefore, what we end up watching, listening to and reading?”

Meet Netflix’s team of tastemakers

At Netflix, a 20-person team led by Mansi Patel is responsible for adding new categories that show up in neat rows on the home screen, navigation menus and search.

“It’s the cornerstone of how we organize and bring all of our titles together,” said Patel, a director of product management at Netflix.

She says Netflix began creating categories back in its DVD days. “Categories on Netflix are crucial to helping members find the right series and films for them,” she said.

On average, members watch movies and shows from six different genres every month. With the help of algorithms that analyze viewing habits and underlying data that tags movies with snappy descriptions, Netflix categories can make highly customized recommendations, Patel says.

Its "Pop Culture Now" category features rows based on trending pop culture topics.

A recent addition is "u herd of baby reindeer? ok more like it" referring to the Netflix limited series "Baby Reindeer," based on creator Richard Gadd's real-life experience being stalked.

Patel's team created a "because you watched" row using the tone of stalker Martha as an Easter egg to recommend similar films and series.

Popular appeal is not a prerequisite. What’s relevant to one person won’t be relevant to another. Some categories have big followings, others not so much. The goal, Patel says, is to create genres that reflect Netflix’s broad cross-section of viewers, from Afrofuturism to Out, Proud & Authentic .

“We want to be constantly thinking about our different members in terms of who they are and making sure our categories reflect that,” Patel said.

In weekly meetings over Google Hangouts to brainstorm new categories, her team obsesses over the latest in pop culture and mines internet search queries, trending topics and buzzy hashtags.

They also draw on their own experiences logging into Netflix in search of that next great series or film. That’s how “ Watch in One Night ” (for people who want to stay in and binge) was born.

Other brainstorms include: “ Swipe Right ,” (romance in the digital age); Need for Speed (adrenalin-pumping adventure); Love in Any Language (romance from around the world); Truth is Stranger than Fiction (real-life events so bizarre they could only be true).

Some ideas don’t pan out right away. “ Choose Your Superpower ” took a while to create, Patel says. “Some of these categories, we will have the idea and we need to work toward it as new films and series are launched,” she said.

How Netflix curates categories

One of Patel’s favorite categories is “ Badass Moms .”

“Someone came into the room and pitched the idea of thinking about moms as superheroes in their everyday duties,” she said. “I’m a mom and the idea of having a category based on how badass we all are, that was a really fun one.”

Each row of themed suggestions is calibrated to an individual’s taste. So, too, is what shows up at the top of a category.

For example, Patel watches a lot of Hindi content so “Masaba Masaba” – a scripted series starring fashion designer Masaba Gupta and her mother Neena Gupta – is a No. 1 recommendation for her in “Badass Moms.”

Some other titles included in the category are what you’d expect, from “Workin’ Moms” to “Good Girls.” But Quentin Tarantino's “Kill Bill”?

“‘Kill Bill’ was an interesting choice,” Patel conceded.

Netflix categories get mostly good reviews

That kind of zing has turned Netflix categories into a pop-culture phenomenon of its own.

The New Yorker magazine had some Netflix-inspired tongue-in-cheek suggestions : “Nature Documentaries That Will Make You Want to Save the Planet Until You Really Need That Thing from Amazon” and “Independent Art-House Movies That Will Make You Call an Ex and Give Yourself Bangs.”

Some poke fun but Netflix categories get mostly good reviews on social media.

“I watch so many horror movies that Netflix recommends them in several different categories. My favorite is this one, ‘ High Brow Horror .’”

“ Netflix does categories right . They have VERY specific stuff. "Buddy cop road trip movies with friends on the rocks" or "soft sci fi with fantasy elements for kids."

“Netflix categories make you laugh nearly as much as the comedy,” commented one person above a screenshot of “Politically Incorrect Stand-up Comedy” featuring Richard Pryor and Louis C.K.

In fact, sometimes the categories are so insightful, they unnerve Netflix subscribers.

“Nothing makes you take a pause like Netflix suggesting the category of Gory Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead ,” one subscriber said, adding: “Please note that I don't hate the suggestions.”

COMMENTS

Noah movie review & film summary (2014)
This is, as you've gathered, an immense, weird, ungainly, often laughably overwrought and silly movie, an amalgamation of elements from various literary and cinematic forebears. Some elements fuse beautifully and others seem to repel each other; still others float onscreen in isolation, like bits of wreckage carried along by floodwater.
Is Noah Worth Watching? Breaking Down The 2014 Russell Crowe Movie's
Darren Aronofsky's 2014 biblical epic, Noah, has found its way to trending on Netflix, but its reviews indicate the film isn't for everyone. Orchestrated by one of the most fascinating 21st-century filmmakers, Noah is an off-beat addition to Darren Aronofsky's filmography, as it's his only massive blockbuster.Biblical stories tend to be divisive in film, with movies like The Last Temptation of ...
Noah
Jun 18, 2016. Rated: 4/5 • Apr 7, 2024. Apr 18, 2023. Jan 7, 2023. When God decides that mankind has become too sinful and must be wiped off the Earth, he chooses Noah (Russell Crowe), a pious ...
Noah (2014 film)
Noah is a 2014 American epic biblical drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ari Handel.Inspired by the biblical story of Noah's Ark from the Book of Genesis and the Book of Enoch, it stars Russell Crowe as Noah, along with Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Anthony Hopkins.. The film was released in North American theaters on ...
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Noah review. Matt reviews Darren Aronofsky's Noah starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Ray Winstone, and Logan Lerman. ... The 7 Best New Movies Coming to Netflix in May 2024
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Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prep. Violence & Scariness. The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Sex, Romance & Nudity. Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to b. Language. "Damned" is as salty as it gets. Products & Purchases Not present.
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Noah's middle son, Ham (played by Percy Jackson's Logan Lerman), becomes the lightning rod of dissent, rebellion and betrayal; in the bible, he is the one whose child is cursed after witnessing ...
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Nick Rogers. Midwest Film Journal. The film questions a creator's obligations at earthly and spiritual levels, with complications that concern masculine privilege to color the margins. "Noah ...
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March 20, 2014 10:00pm. Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive ...
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The waters are mostly digital now; no humans were killed in the making of this Noah. But Aronofsky, emboldened by the $330 million worldwide box-office take of his last film, Black Swan, took some ...
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The film is much more complex than an action scene, delving into interesting ideas, grappling with morals and developing the story we all think we knew into an incredibly imaginative character ...
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Noah: Directed by Darren Aronofsky. With Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins. Noah is chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission before an apocalyptic flood cleanses the world.
Noah
The epic, biblical tale of Noah and the ark. X. Games Explore Games 2024 GAME PUBLISHER RANKINGS ... Best Movies on Netflix Best Movies on Hulu Best Movies on Prime Video ... Generally Favorable Based on 46 Critic Reviews. 68. 74% Positive 34 Reviews. 24% Mixed 11 Reviews. 2% Negative 1 Review. All Reviews;
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Noah review - 'A big, muscular movie'. Darren Aronofsky's roaring biblical action-adventure is buoyed by Russell Crowe's mighty Noah, but some of the story's simplicity is swept away. Peter ...
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The resulting film, Noah, has its flaws but ultimately is a fascinating achievement - a continually ambitious undertaking that swings for the fences and then some. It doesn't all work, but you ...
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Darren Aronofsky's 2014 movie Noah entered Netflix's top 10 in the U.S., ranking 5th for the week of March 4 through 10. While praised by critics for its visuals and performances, the adaptation was divisive among audiences, receiving a 41% audience score. Despite mixed reviews, Noah was a box office hit, grossing over $362 million worldwide.
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Sun 6 Apr 2014 04.00 EDT. "The snakes are coming too?" Thus speaks Noah's wife, Naameh, as a carpet of slithering CGI serpents joins the menagerie of digital beasts in this utterly preposterous ...
Noah (2014)
This movie is about a guy who, for some reason, becomes God's darling, even though he is so full of ego as to think he knows anything. He goes from being a loving father to being tyrant and, basically, an abuser. At no time in this film are we privy to God "talking" to Noah. He simply decides what the plans are.
Is Russell Crowe's Noah Biblically Accurate?
The 2014 epic biblical drama film Noah, which is inspired by the biblical story of Noah's Ark from the Book of Genesis, is a testament to the courage and imagination of director Darren Aronofsky ...
Watch Noah
After a pious man receives a vision of an apocalyptic flood sent by God, he begins building an ark large enough for his family and pairs of every animal. Watch trailers & learn more.
Even Russell Crowe Is Surprised 'Noah' Is In The Netflix Top 10
Maybe Noah also looks more palatable after a full decade of Christian-themed faith-based movies that tend to offer unchallenging, inspirational stories. At the time, Noah appeared to have the ...
Russell Crowe's Controversial 2014 Movie Is Getting A Second ...
By Aahil Dayani / March 8, 2024 7:33 pm EST. "Noah," Russell Crowe's controversial religious drama from 2014, is lighting up the Netflix charts. Crowe joined acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky ...
Official Discussion: Noah [SPOILERS] : r/movies
Official Discussion: Noah [SPOILERS] Synopsis: Noah sees visions of an apocalyptic deluge and takes measures to protect his family from the coming flood by building an ark. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Writers: Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel. Time lapse sequences and the dreams were by far the sickest parts.
NOAH (2021)
Visit the movie page for 'NOAH' on Moviefone. Discover the movie's synopsis, cast details and release date. Watch trailers, exclusive interviews, and movie review. Your guide to this cinematic ...
Netflix's Biggest Movie Is A Controversial Jenna Ortega Feature
Netflix is positively dying to get Wednesday back on screens for season 2, and I do wonder if Ortega's busy schedule may be a touch problematic.I have to believe that she's prioritizing her ...
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Directed by Wes Ball. With Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Dichen Lachman, William H. Macy. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.
All 39 Movies and Shows Leaving Netflix in May 2024
The film, which takes place in the deep, forested marsh lands of North Carolina between 1952 and 1969, follows the story of a young woman named Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones), whose life takes a turn for ...
Liam Neeson thriller proves to be huge hit on Netflix despite ...
The film follows former assassin Finbar Murphy, played by Neeson, who lives a quiet life in a rural seaside Irish village.Finbar hopes to leave his troubled past behind him and stay far away from ...
What to watch, what to watch...Netflix's catchy categories can help
Two years ago, a Saturday Night Live skit sang the praises of shorter movies. "Gimme that short-ass movie, a 90-minute movie," Pete Davidson rapped in the pre-taped video with musical guest ...

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