Noah

I did not have high expectations for Noah, and those expectations remain unmet. I am sad.

I can see what Aronofsky was trying to do, and I can appreciate his reasoning for doing it. He created a very powerful character drama with neat special effects and particularly strong tension, and I would have loved to enjoy it, but it was kind of boring.

Boring is not good. It's the opposite of how I want to feel in a movie theater. If I hadn't been bored, I wouldn't have minded Aronofsky's artistic license and his fascinating re-interpretation of a familiar story, but since I was bored, well, all that stuff fell flat. 

On the plus side, Jennifer Connelly did an outstanding job. Her big scene was simply amazing. Emma Watson was brilliant as well, though she didn't have quite as much room to shine. Sadly, Russell Crowe wasn't given all that much to work with, and he was given most of the movie. The story centers on him, and on his personal voyage, but he was usually the least interesting thing happening on the screen (except for the one scene where he was in it twice, because that scene was delightful, but it was also quite short.) I'm not sure who was at fault here, though I suspect directorial vision is the culprit. Aronofsky wanted a depressed, mournful patriarch who has lost all hope in humanity, and that state, played correctly, isn't particularly engaging for the audience. Maybe in small doses, but a great many of the film's 138 minutes were spent on that.

Noah comes in at #9 for me this year, falling below the Threshold of Disappointment. If it had been shorter and tighter it might have been wonderful, but it was neither of those.