Flick Picks 7/29/14: Noah, The Other Woman, Dom Hemingway, Cuban Fury

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: If you think this has been a rainy spring and summer, at least you haven't had to build a boat and fill it with animals. In Darren Aronofsky's Noah Russell Crowe plays the man with the plan, Jennifer Connelly is his wife and Anthony Hopkins and Emma Watson fill out the cast in a retelling of the biblical story of the flood that wiped out (most of) humanity. Aronofsky's films are both visually and intellectually stunning and you should expect no different from this one. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Cameron Diaz seems to be popping up everywhere these days, and in The Other Woman she shares the screen with Leslie Mann and Kate Upton in the comedic story of three women who team up to plot revenge on their cheating man.

Jude Law is the rude and crude title character in Dom Hemingway, about a criminal who is released from prison and reenters the criminal world he knows best, while trying to reconnect with his daughter. Cuban Fury pairs the hilarious Nick Frost and Chris O'Dowd in the story of an out-of-shape former salsa dancer who decides to reenter the dance floor and win the love of his beautiful boss. Robert Duvall fans will want to catch A Night in Old Mexico, which follows a rancher who heads for Mexico for one last thrill before he retires to a trailer park. Finally, the charismatic pair of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton star in an adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel about a love affair during the Nigerian-Biafran War during the late 1960s.

SERIES Gabriel Byrne plays the British Deputy Prime Minister who tries to discover the truth behind the connection between and industrial accident and the plane crash of the Prime Minister in the conspiracy-laden miniseries Secret State. The Danish series The Eagle follows a half-Icelandic half-Danish police officer charged with investigating international crimes. Finally, another week, another Midsomer Murders, bringing us up to set 24.

SUBTITLED: The Amazing Catfish is the debut film by a Mexican author-director about two women who bond while they are in the hospital. One woman moves in with the other's family and becomes a surrogate mother when the other one becomes more ill. The absurd and crazy world of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs as he breaks in a new speechwriter is hilariously portrayed in The French Minister.

All of our new and upcoming releases can be found in Bibliocommons.

Talking Pictures
Susan Benjamin hosts a screening of The Jewish Cardinal on Monday, August 4th at 1:00 p.m. The Jewish Cardinal tells the true story of the son of Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism while still maintaining elements of his Jewish identity. Eventually he became involved with a controversy involving Carmelite nuns who desired to build a convent within the walls of Auschwitz. The film runs 90 minutes and is free and open to everyone.

Bible Films

Noah is just the latest epic film based on the Bible to hit the big screen. Should you want to see more, the library will not let you down!

• Charlton Heston carries the tablets and demands his people's freedom in The Ten Commandments.
• Gregory Peck's King David enters into an affair with Susan Hayward's Bathsheba with tragic results in David and Bathsheba.
• Director Mel Gibson takes on the final hours of Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ.
• Though perhaps a little more melodic than the original story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat takes a fun and unique look at Joseph.
• If you want the best of the Bible, The Bible: The Epic Miniseries, made for The History Channel, is a good bet.
• Though not based on the Bible itself, the epic Ben-Hur tells of the life of a Jewish merchant turned slave during the time of Jesus.
• The conflict between early Christians and the Roman Empire form the story of Quo Vadis.