10 Underrated Recent Movies That Deserve A Second Chance

Unlike the western, the Biblical epic is one genre that modern Hollywood just can't get to work. The big problem is that the religious makeup of the audience is vastly different from fifty years ago; we're in a much more diverse (in the UK secular) society, so simply doing major Christian tales isn't enough. With that in mind, I'm surprised more movies of this type aren't marketed at the religious right - that's the only place where a remake of Ben-Hur could really work in 2016.

The one film that serves as an exception to the rule is Darren Aronofsky's Noah, which distanced itself from record-breaking set design to tell a wholly unique story that reframed the Great Flood as a parable about the trials of belief. Russell Crowe's Noah isn't some white-haired paragon with a penchant for incest, but a self-doubting, lonely family man plagued by incoherent visions, and the world isn't the desert just outside of LA, but a harsh, barren landscape completely removed from our own and populated by hulked fallen angels-cum-rock monsters.

Aronofsky took something so preachy and made it into impactful high fantasy, able to appeal to both religious types and non-believers alike. At least in theory; the film couldn't quite get past the genre's inherent prejudices, so remains patently misunderstood.