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Does the movie resemble the actual Noah story enough to establish credible points of contact? No, it does not. The director himself has acknowledged that his rendering of Noah is like a midrash—an ancient method of interpreting scripture involving ahistorical embellishments. As far as midrash is concerned, Noah is the midrashiest midrash that ever was midrashed. Aronofsky’s Noah is nothing like the biblical Noah, the only righteous man on the planet. More seriously, Aronofsky’s god is nothing like the biblical God, a long-suffering sovereign who graciously condescends to reveal Himself and His plans to Noah and to save Noah and...

Director Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" is on pace to outperform this weekend with a $40 -$45 million haul at the box office, but moviegoers are giving Russell Crowe's epic a deadly CinemaScore rating of C. Deadline Hollywood called that "very bad news for word of mouth and next weekend’s drop." For some perspective, studios get nervous when a film only scores a B. Critics overall gave "Noah" a 76% Fresh Rating over at Rotten Tomatoes but the Tomatoes' audience score is a withering 57%. Next weekend "Noah" will not only have to deal with deadly word-of-mouth but also the Captain America...

Matt Drudge loves him some "Noah". I can't link his twitter acct. with this tablet, but you can check it out if you have Twitter. "May 'the Creator bless @DarrenAronofsky for bringing movies back to showbusiness! Epic Noah!!"

When atheist director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky promised that his epic "Noah" would be "the least biblical film ever made," that was not hyperbole. "Noah" is a brilliant, compelling, beautifully-mounted, beautifully-acted piece of storytelling conceived for the sinister purpose of leading people to believe that Christianity and Judaism are something they are not. And I ask you, could anything make Satan happier than something that leads people to believe they are saved when they are not? I have absolutely no problem with a filmmaker taking a biblical story and adding or subtracting from it as a way to craft a...

(Excerpt) Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky promised to create the least biblical, biblical movie ever made. And based on the early reviews of his film -- Mr. Aronofsky made good on his promise. He left the word "God" completely out of his movie and turned Noah into a crazed environmentalist with anger management issues who wants to slaughter his family. I also had some issues with the rock creatures portrayed in the film. Forefathers of "The Thing," perhaps?

by Ed Stetzer March 3, 2014 The following post is a guest post from Dr. Jerry Johnson. Jerry A. Johnson, Ph.D., is President & CEO of National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). He's a theologian who has taught on cinema and theology. This post is about the March 28, 2014 movie Noah. I interviewed Jerry about the film last week at the NRB meeting. In that interview, he mentioned asking Paramount to add a disclaimer and they just did (see the bottom of this post). Last Friday, Jerry shared five positives of Noah, and today he's sharing five negatives. Here are...

Most religious movies feel as if they’re made by a church committee, but every now and then a wild-eyed prophet wanders in and rattles the theater with brimstone. Regardless of your feelings about either movie, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” qualifies and so does Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Now director Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan,” “The Wrestler”) has ascended to the mountaintop and returned with the strangest, most visionary cinematic parable yet. “Noah” is equal parts ridiculous and magnificent, a showman’s folly and a madman’s epic. It elaborates on the Book of Genesis’s slender story of...

It is truly a Hollywood epic of biblical proportions, the original disaster story of the man chosen by God to undertake the greatest rescue in history before an apocalyptic flood engulfs the world. But even before it opens in America this week and Britain on April 4, Noah, a $130 million blockbuster with Russell Crowe in the lead role, is already awash in a turbulent sea of controversy. The film, packed with special effects based around a massive replica arc built in Long Island near New York, also stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah and Emma Watson, the Harry Potter...

God's Not Dead didn't have a massive marketing budget, a liberal A-list star above the title or even the same number of screens most mainstream movies receive. The film is still on pace to snare the fourth spot in the weekend's box office chart in a very competitive frame. What it had in its corner--a popular actor known for his work on TV's Hercules, the presence of one of Duck Dynasty's key stars and an unabashedly pro-faith message.

Expensive biblical epics haven’t been a staple of Hollywood for decades, but this week saw the release of the first trailer of Noah which will hit theaters in early 2014. Enter controversy. Some like J.W. Wartick have written on concerns over possible “divergence from the Biblical story.” Fair enough, but I don’t have a problem with divergence, if it is in the sense Brian Godawa describes: " …there is nothing wrong with engaging in creative license, whether it is magical seeds or six-armed Watchers, or even Noah as a warrior. I don’t even think there is a problem in using...

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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...

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Next week, the film Noah opens. Having taught the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) from the Hebrew for more than 40 years (hundreds of hours are available by download through my website), I consider the Biblical flood story one of the world’s most profound moral teachings. As I will show, it means that God cares about goodness more than anything else. Let me explain by answering the most frequent challenges to the story. Q: Why did God destroy the world? A: Because “the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth. . . . And the Lord regretted...

Siskel and Ebert they ain’t, but Islamic scholars, supremacists, jihadists and pressure groups have made their views known, often in quite colorful ways, about numerous motion pictures that you may want to catch. So grab some popcorn and some old tomatoes: it’s movie time down at the mosque!5. Thumbs down: Noah Russell Crowe’s lavish Biblical epic Noah is about to be released in the Middle East, and Muslim scholars are enraged. It has been banned in Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Cairo’s Al-Azhar, which Barack Obama has praised as “a beacon of Islamic learning,” issued a statement denouncing...

With the actual film due to come out in just a couple weeks — indeed, it had its world premiere just two nights ago — you might think that people would be less inclined to dwell on that early draft of the Noah screenplay that leaked a couple years ago and wait for the finished film. But no. Today, The Wrap posted a review of the script by Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, and it covers much of the same territory that has been covered by other early critics of the script. (Among other things, he assumes, as others have, that the...

Frozen might just be the most talked-about kids movie since Toy Story, but it’s not all accolades and awards for the Oscar-winning animated flick. There is a fear campaign mounting against the film, warning conservative parents and grandparents to keep their impressionable young children away from what some believe is a musical advertisement for the gay agenda.

Frozen, the Oscar-winning Disney cartoon adapted from Hans Christian Andersen, is a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda as well a promoting bestiality, according to a Christian radio show in Colorado. Pastor Kevin Swanson of the Reformation Church, who hosts Generations Radio, denounced the film as "very evil", and that Disney was "one of the most pro-homosexual organisations in the country". Swanson said: "You wonder sometimes if maybe there's something very evil happening here ... I wonder if people are thinking: 'You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality...

MEXICO CITY – Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah got a mixed reception at its world premiere in Mexico City Monday evening. Hundreds of screaming teens attended the red carpet event at the Pepsi Center, many on hand to see actors Logan Lerman, Jennifer Connelly and Douglas Booth. Co-writer Ari Handel also joined Aronofsky onstage before the screening. The film's star, Russell Crowe, wasn't present.

The director of the upcoming Bible epic "Noah" shot down rumors that the movie had caused a hullabaloo for himself and Paramount Pictures. "There isn't really a controversy," Darren Aronofsky told Variety on Thursday, at "Foundations of the Deep: Noah and the Flood," an art exhibition with work inspired by the story. The director of "Black Swan" and "The Wrestler" added that he made the film for both "believers and non-believers" and was especially interested in challenging any preconceptions that the latter group might have about attending a religious film. "I'm more concerned about getting non-believers into the theater or...