Noah

Epics about biblical characters have been around as long as there has been cinema. And the list of actors who have played them is long, Charlton Heston as Moses, Willem Defoe as Jesus, Graham Chapman as Brian(?) Now to that list we can add Russell Crowe, a man who has long sought to corner the market on historical epics.

I'm going to keep my explanation of the plot to a minimum, partly because the story is so epic and partly because the story of Noah is so well known. After Man has become corrupt and evil from the power it has gained from fallen angels, called Watchers, God (known as the Creator) decides to punish everyone by sending a flood that will destroy all humanity. The Creator picks Noah (Russell Crowe) to build an ark that will carry all the animals of Earth, which the Creator deems to be innocent. Noah travels with his family to his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) who helps him in his task along with the Watchers. King of Men Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) discover what Noah is doing and rallies Man to stop him.

Surprisingly for a movie based on a religious story, you'll find very little preaching going on. It is an interpretation of what is in the book of Genesis and I can only imagine a fair bit of creative licence. There is a sequence that I thoroughly enjoyed where Crowe narrates the story of Creation and a montage that includes the Big Bang and evolution is played. I thought this was a great merging of religion and science.

One aspect of this film that really appealed to the filmmaker in me was that up until the flood occurs, most of the special effects are done in a practical way and not computer generated images, well I think they were and if they weren't, it certainly fooled me. An example of this are the Watchers. These are huge rock monsters, reminiscent of the Rock Biter in The NeverEnding Story. To me, they looked like they were made with very advanced claymation techniques. Again, I could be wrong.

My feelings toward Russell Crowe have always been a bit tenuous. Everyone loves him for his roles in films like Gladiator and Romper Stomper, but I've never been able to get behind him. However, with this film I think I might have taken a turn. His gruffness turned to softness at parts and he wasn't putting on an affected accent that he does with all his other films.

Emma Watson has really been proving herself the last couple of years outside of the Harry Potter franchise, appearing in films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Bling Ring. Here she plays Noah's adopted daughter Ila and really showcases her emotional talents in the films more pressing scenes. Ray Winstone always is able to throw himself into his roles. He is a perfect pick for the earthy and somewhat demonic Tubal-cain.

Throw in some good performances from Jennifer Connelly, who must like being in Darren Aronofsky's films, and a berry-obsessed and humourous role from Anthony Hopkins.

Verdict: A good biblical epic that doesn't preach too much about the story's original message.

Classic Movie Review: The Last Exorcism (2010)

Found footage movies are films that are supposedly found after people have gone missing and a camera is found showing the events of what happened to the people. These films have been around since the 70s, but were highly popularised when The Blair Witch Project (1999) came out. Throughout the subsequent decade, a number of these films were released until, what I think is the best example, The Last Exorcism.

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) is a church minister and amateur thespian from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who conducts exorcisms. After the birth of his son and the death of a young autistic boy during an exorcism (not one of his), he decides to out the lies and tricks behind exorcisms. He does this by recruiting a camera man and producer to make a documentary of him performing his last exorcism. Marcus gets a request from Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), whose daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is possessed by a supposed demon.

After an initial exorcism in which Marcus shows the tricks that he uses to fool the people, things start to get weird. Nell shows up at the hotel where Marcus and his crew are staying and starts showing signs of being truly possessed, although Marcus believes that she just needs psychiatric help.

The film's greatest asset is it's ambiguity that so perfectly comes through it's writing and performances. The story has you guessing until the final minute about the possibility of demons actually existing. The film is definitely for fans of the horror genre or skeptics of supernatural entities.

The two stand out performances come from Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell. Fabian essentially acts as an extension of the audience. At first, he is extremely cynical toward the supernatural, but soon his beliefs are tested when strange things occur. He portrays the pastor incredibly and addresses the camera superbly.

Bell, too, is a powerhouse in this film. Her ability to contort her own body into poses that Linda Blair could never achieve in The Exorcist is haunting. She occasionally stares right into the camera in scenes where she is possessed and it is really quite chilling.

Verdict: A haunting film and my favourite horror movie. The story is great and has one of the most ambiguous endings I've ever seen.

Need For Speed

For a movie based on a series of video games based on a quote from Tom Cruise in Top Gun (1986) and made by the people who make the video games, Need for Speed is not that bad a movie about street races. Now I have to admit that I am somewhat partial to the series of games, so I am going to try and be objective as I can in this review.

After a long and sometimes confusing prologue where our hero Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul) is framed for murder and a scene that has us believe kids hang out at drive-in cinemas like it's still the 1950s, we get to the meat of the story. After serving two years in prison for the murder (it was downgraded to manslaughter), Tobey is out to get the real culprit, Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper). He is joined by Julia (Imogen Poots), a British car dealer who lends him a car to take part in a race set up by the reclusive Monarch (Michael Keaton) to clear his name.

So somehow the producers of this film managed to take the premise of two of the games (Need for Speed: The Run and Need for Speed: Most Wanted) and bash them together to get a movie. A very convoluted plot about betrayal and revenge is peppered in. The main characters of this movie are the super cars, all of which are playable in the games.

Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) has done an okay job trying to move away from the role that made him famous. There's no Jesse Pinkman in this movie. Although trying to play a tough guy doesn't really suit him.

Dominic Cooper (Captain America: The First Avenger) does a serviceable job as the slimy bad guy. He gets under your skin with his ability to make the audience's skin crawl. Imogen Poots (Filth) does have the best acting ability out of the entire cast and I felt it was kind of wasted appearing in a film like this.

Verdict: Fans of the series of games or high end sports vehicles will enjoy. Way better than those Fast and Furious movies. 

Tracks

Tracks begins with a quote from Robyn Davidson (the subject and main character of the film) on the nature of nomads. You don't know it at first, but this quote is a great foreshadowing about, what I think anyway, her feelings toward people as well as places.

In the late 1970s, Robin Davidson (Mia Wasikowska) decides to make an overland trek from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. To help her on the journey, Robyn acquires three camels, that will help carry supplies. She gets funded by National Geographic, who insist that photographer Rick Smolan (Adam Driver) occasionally takes photos of her on the journey.

Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) is normally a good actress with a strong emotional range, but I felt as though she was very passive in this film. There are a lot of blank stares off into the desert, but I couldn't read any emotion into them. The only time I felt convinced by her performance was when she was confronted by big groups of people and showed obvious discomfort.

Adam Driver's (Inside Llewyn Davis) character had a very interesting arc, having started off as an American uncomfortable with the outback and always taking pictures when he should be helping to showing respect for Davidson's discomfort at being on camera.

I felt that the explanation that bookended the film was overkill. It did help to explain the history of the film but it told me the same things at the start and end. The ending came a little anticlimactically for me as well.

Verdict: A visually spectacular film with an interesting story but not something to get too excited about.

300: Rise of an Empire

Or 300: On Water. This prequel/sequel takes the scenario of the first film and puts in on the sea in a slightly boring, albeit actual, naval battle. Despite the rampant action set pieces that are paraded around, this film could not capture the magical essence of the original film and I feel as though part of this stems from the fact that so much effort was put into creating elaborate 3D visual effects.

The film takes place alongside the events of the original 300 film. So while Leonidas and his 300 Spartans are fighting the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae, Athenian statesman and war hero Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) engages the Persian fleet, commanded by Artemisia (Eva Green), in a series of naval battles with a pitiful fleet of ships.

I think the main problem with the film is that it is trying too hard to recreate the underdog feeling of the original and falling short, as well as recounting a lesser known battle. I would have rather seen an adaption of Xenophon's Anabasis, but alas that exciting epic came much later in the Persian Wars and has already been perfectly adapted as The Warriors (1979).

It also seems to me that ancient Greece was populated by mostly Australian and British people, for there is not a single American (or Greek, for that matter) actor in sight. Sullivan Stapleton (Animal Kingdom) does a passable job as Themistocles, but somehow I felt he was channeling either Mel Gibson or Russell Crowe in his rallying speeches. A lot of the original cast have returned, with Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) getting the most screen time of them.

The only noteworthy, although flawed, performance comes from Eva Green (Casino Royale). She plays a female character that is as hard and tough as the men in the film and I was happy that she was treated with the same brutality as those men. I was unhappy, however, with the one massively out of context sex scene in which she dons a pair of fake breasts that are way too large for her slender frame (anyone who's seen her debut role in The Dreamers (2003) will spot this immediately).

Verdict: A seemingly passable movie on the surface, but once you scratch a little deeper you can see that even Green's performance can't save this sinking ship.

Nebraska

For a movie that says so much about family, Nebraska is very simplistic. Not only is it minimal in terms of story, but also visually, not to mention the fact that it's in black and white.

Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is a pensioner living in Billings, Montana. One day in the mail, he receives a letter telling him that he has won a million dollars and that he must go to Lincoln, Nebraska to retrieve it. Despite the obvious reluctance from his family to help him, his son David (Will Forte) decides to drive him down to Nebraska, where they stop in Woody's hometown, where he soon becomes a celebrity. This celebrity status attracts the attention of Woody's sinister old business partner, Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach).

This movie is an exceptional tale of a father and son and rather than they being on the younger end of the spectrum, they are both older and discovering about each other's life. Bob Nelson's heartwarming story, coupled with Alexander Payne's experienced direction when it comes to emotional family dramas, make a potent mix.

The cast is phenomenal. Veteran actor Bruce Dern is magnetic as the doddering Woody. His years refining his craft has let him go all in with this performance. Stacy Keach (American History X) is also a great veteran actor who excels at playing villains, although I'd hardly call him a villain in this lighthearted drama.

But for me, the real drawcard came from the two comedic actors turned serious. Both Will Forte (Saturday Night Live!, MacGruber) and Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, Breaking Bad) steal the show as Woody's sons who just want their dad to be safe.

Verdict: An excellent drama/comedy about dealing with growing old.