Noah

The great flood of Genesis gets a typically idiosyncratic retelling from director and co-writer (with Ari Handel) Darren Aronofsky, as Noah (Russell Crowe), his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and eldest son Ham (Logan Lerman) prepare for rain, while Noah's grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) kibitzes from a distance and some rocklike fallen angels called Watchers help build the Ark. Not everything works—those Watchers seem to have beamed in from one of Lerman's Percy Jackson pictures—but the movie often has the raw energy of a primitive legend handed down from the prehistoric, torch-lit past. Crowe's Noah is more tortured prophet than white-bearded patriarch; it's a bold concept, and it works. Emma Watson plays an orphan adopted by Noah's family, while Ray Winstone plays a savage, sinful king.