Longer than the average Hollywood feature film and shorter than the average Passover Seder, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” tells the well-known story of how Moses led the enslaved Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. The timing of the movie’s release — a few days before Hanukkah — may be a bit puzzling, but it does provide a nice bookend for 2014. We had a blockbuster Sunday school lesson in March in the form of Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” and now we have Ridley Scott’s attempt to bring another famous chunk of the Hebrew Bible to life, in 3-D no less.
“Noah,” with its stone giants and Emma Watson, may have been too strange for some viewers. “Exodus,” by contrast, crowded with well-known actors, is nowhere near strange enough. More than anything else, it recalls the wide-screen, Technicolor biblical pageants of the 1950s and early ’60s, bland and solemn spectacles that invited moviegoers to marvel at their favorite stars in sandals and robes.
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