ANTEDILUVIAN FANCIES: DARREN ARONOFSKY'S "NOAH"

"It's gonna rain..." Noah (Russell Crowe) guards the Ark against raiders.

by Andy Nowicki

As audacious, ambitious, heterodoxically-conceived Biblical epics go, Darren Aronofsky’s new movie Noah somewhat recalls The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese’s 1988 adaptation of the controversial Nikos Kazantzakis novel.

Both films were subjected to a pre-release drubbing by conservative Christian groups, who in each case complained of disrespect for Scripture and overall theological untenability (though the deluge of condemnation rained down upon Temptation—which featured a doubt-plagued and carnally-tormented Jesus—easily drowns out the contemporary Noah imbroglio, a fact which I daresay ought to demonstrate to right-wing pagan critics that Christianity, far from being a radically “egalitarian” monstrosity, is hardly without its hierarchy of heroes).

THE JEW OF WALL STREET

by Andy Nowicki

Martin Scorsese’s sordid, obscene, spiritedly profane, and epically hilarious new film The Wolf of Wall Street is an unflinching depiction of unfettered greed and unrestrained sleaze amongst the ethically challenged and the morally retarded. Yet as comprehensive a catalogue of depravity as the movie is (clocking in at a near three-hour running time), there is a significant piece missing. For one reason or another, Scorsese has rendered protagonist Jordan Belfort’s Jewish identity cryptic at best.

TARANTINO UNCHAINED

by Andy Nowicki

Many in the Alt-Right have grown quite angry with Quentin Tarantino of late, due to the subject matter of his latest two movies: Inglourious Basterds, which depicts a fictional Jewish squadron wreaking unholy (and ahistorical) havoc against the German high command during World War II, and now Django Unchained, which features a righteous black runaway slave exacting bloody revenge against a bunch of mean, depraved, and rapacious white slaveowners in the antebellum South.