Da'ud Bob's Movie Review
for
September 2019 


Movies about Bible stories can be a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, you can end up with movies like The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, epic movies, starring “a cast of thousands,” with lines that you will remember for years afterwards. (Yes, I’m thinking about you, “So let it be written; so let it be done.”) Moving down the scale from that, you get some of the 1940s and 1950s Bible stories, movies that try to be another Ten Commandments but don’t quite pull it off. Movies like Samson and Delilah with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr. Decent movies, movies that someone put a lot of money into to make, with high production values. And then, finally, we come down at the other end of the scale to the subject of this month’s review. Another Bible story, but clearly shot on a limited budget, written and directed by one person, which is something that can lead to the creation of a cinematic gem, but far more often leads to cinematic disaster. As seems to be the case here. And so it is that this month, Da’ud Bob reviews for you Timothy Chey’s 2015 cinematic effort, David and Goliath.

Starring Miles Sloman (who actually bears a more than passing resemblance to Michelangelo’s David) as David, Jerry Sokolosky (at 7'8", Canada's tallest man) as Goliath, Paul Hughes as King Saul, Joseph Emms as Eliab, Richard Summers-Calvert as Abinadab, Makenna Guyler (blonde and blue-eyed, hardly a good match for an ancient Hebrew) as Michal, Jared Morgan as Jaggar, Simon Davies as Commander Ahren, Tom Bonington as Armor-Bearer, Neder Ghouati as Caleb, Mohamed Abdallah as Hosea, Zaff Malik as Commander Eli, David Wade as Commander Jacob, and Joshua Diffley as Aaron, this is the classical Biblical story of, as the movie’s tag line says, “Against all odds, one man will rise.” Put another way, young boy takes on giant warrior, and wins! Or as the synopsis put it, “Against a vast enemy, they didn’t stand a chance. Till one underdog rose to the challenge. This is how history is made.” And sometimes, good movies. But not this time.

Good points: The movie is only 92 minutes long. (The downside of that is that the movie is 92 minutes long! A shorter movie would have been a better movie, since it wouldn’t contain all of the filler and repetition and repetition and filler, or the repetition.) David really rocks that scarf.

Bad points: The helmets. The armor. The costuming. The tents. The script. (For example, “That’s okay, I’ll pass,” and “Sorry, David. No worries.” And did I mention that there’s a lot of repetition in it? How many times does David have to go to Saul to say he wants to fight Goliath, and how many times do his brothers have to try to talk him out of it and to go home? It all becomes the “same ol’, same ol’” after a while.) The soundtrack has a donkey braying while the camera is showing us a horse. The long shots of scudding clouds, which appear to have no purpose other than to pad out the length of the movie. (Filler. The word I use for it is “filler.”) Sharpened wooden poles used as spears. Goliath eating a raw cow’s head. Stirrups on all the horses. All the Philistines seem to speak in “I’m Batman” voices.

Zero breasts. ½ pint of blood. Four dead bodies. Scimitar fu. Quarterstaff (“spear”) fu. Sword fu. Sling fu. Wrestling. Soldiers roll. Clouds scud. Gratuitous sand dunes. Gratuitous goats. Gratuitous eyeliner. Gratuitous partial psalm recitations. Gratuitous thunder. (Lots of thunder, but it never rains.) Gratuitous soldiers walking back and forth in front of the camera. A 97 on the Vomit Meter. Zero stars. Anna Sue says, “I have seen better church plays than this.” Da’ud Bob says, “This movie is almost physically painful to watch. Check something else out.”


 

Upcoming movies and miniseries to watch for!


I got nothin'. I keep checking for new and upcoming releases, but the medieval/Renaissance/fantasy market looks like it's being ignored, at least for the next several months. Sorry! Until someone releases something new, I guess were' all going to be stuck seeing what's on Netflix or Hulu.




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