Noah
It ‘aint your old Sunday School class: this Noah tale is a little biblical and a lot supernatural, with giant rock creatures (The Watchers), some evolutionary theory, and artistic license in spades. It’s a bloody and very muddy tale about the man (Russell Crowe) who heard God’s call and gathered his family and two members of all life on Earth into a mammoth ark. There are grand moments and intimate ones (Noah’s crisis of conscience after leaving humankind behind) but the film is always interesting. Co-starring Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and Emma Watson. The blu-ray’s special features include an extra on the shooting location and Darren Aronofsky’s logic behind using the “new land” of Iceland; an extra that opens with Genesis 6:17 and chronicles the challenges of building the exterior of the ark (a three-month journey); plus a corresponding look at building the arks’s interior in a 165,000 sq ft armoury in Brooklyn. Chats with director, DOP, producers, production designers and stars accompany all.
The Other Woman
Leslie Mann is a hoot in The Other Woman, a sisterhood revenge pic co-starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton as women who find out they are all sleeping with the same man (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), forge an unlikely friendship, and decide to get even: With “the lawyer, the wife and the boobs” together anything is possible. Wisely, the film’s focus is more about friendship and empowerment than catfights and hair-pulling. Directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook), with bit roles by Nicki Minaj and Don Johnson, but Mann shines brightest: she’s a hysterical mess to whom we can all relate.
Divergent
Based on Veronica Roth’s wildly successful books and starring “it” actor Shailene Woodley, this post-apocalyptic survival tale takes place in the former city of Chicago, now walled, which has split society into factions with similar virtues in order to make the machine work smoothly. Tris Prior (Woodley) bucks the system by picking an unexpected faction and then causes trouble because she’s “divergent” and doesn’t strictly fit into any category. That means she has to elude the clutches of Kate Winslet, among others. The story may be set in a future world, but the themes of family expectations, first love, and the yearning for adventure and a sense of self is timeless teen fare.
