Cruising Netflix looking for movies on the Europe site?

 Here are some to consider.  Many of these are new to me but interesting; many I know and seem good to revisit; some I am putting in just in case you never saw them in days gone by.  Just a few comments.  I hope they help!

‘Scarface’ (1983)  Pacino and Pfeiffer, based on the 1938 movie by John Huston and Howard Hawks, updated by Brian De Palma.  

‘Da 5 Bloods’ (2020)  Had mixed reviews, but..

‘What Happened Miss Simone?’ (2015) A heart-breaking bio, but the blues are ways rooted in pain. she always was one of the greats.  

 

‘Springsteen On Broadway’ The reason I got Netflix in the first place.  The Boss tells tales and plays his tunes. This stage show ran for a year, and is now coming back.   

‘Marriage Story’ (2019). Johansson and Draper.  

‘The Dead Don’t Die’ (2019) Jim Jarmusch, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Adam Driver…that tells you all you need to know

. 

‘Roma’ (2018)  Alfonso Cuaron who explored space in Gravity here looks at the life of a Mexican family.  Hugely acclaimed. 

‘Atlantics’ (2019)  ‘A French supernatural romantic comedy’ says wiki.  I want to see it! 

‘Okja’ (2017)  Delightful Korean satire, by Bong Joon Ho, with Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal. 

‘Hugo’ (2011)  Scorsese’s kid’s movie? Yes, and also about the start of cinema in France, with Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley.  

‘Rain Man’ (1988) We can forget just how good an actor Tom Cruise is, here matching Hoffman in a virtual two-hander. 

‘Annihilation’ (2018) Very very strange offering from Alex Garland, with a great female cast, including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson.  Just don’t ask me what it’s all about! 

‘Booksmart’ (2019) Olivia Wilde’s coming of age comedy with Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as graduating High Schoolgirls. Funny and perceptive.  

‘Enola Holmes’ (2020) The Stranger Days star, Millie Bobby Brown, stars and shines in this fun Sherlock Holmes spinoff with Helena Bonham-Carter as her mum. 

 

‘The King’ (2019) Shakespeare for teenagers maybe, but not dumbed down at all, with Timothee Chalamet as the young Henry who became The Fifth.  Co-written and directed by Joel Edgerton.  

‘Atonement’ (2007). Just a great movie shaped by a great movie.

‘The Old Guard’ (2020)  Comic book based, but deeper than I expected…and with Charlize Theron, Matthias Schoenaerts and Chiwetel Ejiofor. 

‘Spotlight’ (2015)  If this had been made when I was training people about Safeguarding I would have used it.  A true story about clerical abuse in Boston, eventually revealed by local journalists who won a Pulitzer Prize for their work.  Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Stanley Tucci star in this subtle telling of an important story.

  

‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ (2020)  Aaron Sorkin’s movie about the 1968 American political trial that still reverberates today on both sides of the Atlantic. With Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella.

‘The Two Popes’ (2019).   A fictional meeting between Pope Benedict and the Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis.  Based on the actual speeches and writings of the two men.   Beautifully acted by Antony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. 

‘The Dig’ (2021)  Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan in the tru(ish) account of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo Anglo Saxon hoard. 

‘Donnie Brascoe’ (1997)  Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, based on the true story of an FBI agent infiltrating one of the 1970’s NY Mafia clans by winning the trust of one of their hitmen.  

‘Blinded By The Light’ (2019) A comedy-drama based on the teenage experiences of the British-Pakistani journalist Sarfraz Manzoor in Luton, and his love for Bruce Springsteen’s music. The Boss approved and let them us rare recordings of his music. 

 

‘Winter’s Bone’ (2010) Debra Granik’s tough film about the dark side of rural Ozark America; poverty, drugs, crime and the violent family tensions they induce.  Jennifer Lawrence was Oscar Nominated as the 17 year old struggling to save her family from eviction by finding her bail-jumping father.     

 

‘Your Name’ (2016) Makoto Shinkai’s anime teen romance with mystical threads proved to be second only to Spirited Away in domestic sales in Japan, and very popular world wise.  Beautifuly drawn, funny and moving. 

 

‘Us’ (2019) Jordan Peele followed ‘Get Out’ with this far left-field horror movie, a deep critique on America’s society. Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex and Shahadi Wright Joseph play themselves and their terrifying doppelgangers, with Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker as their friends and neighbours.  Existentially terrifying.  Peele said he wanted to make ‘pure horror’, but for this non-horror fan it is so much more.   

 

‘My Octopus Teacher’ (2020)  Either you know about this documentary or you don’t.  If you don’t do give it try.

 

‘A Walk Among The Tombstones’ (2014)   I am absolutely NOT a fan of the Taken franchise but this movie is taken from a Lawrence Block novel, and part of a series about an alcoholic ex-cop, Matt Scudder, played by Liam Neeson.  ‘Intelligent Pulp’ is how one critic described it.  I think it is a much more complex role for Neeson than most of his pension building offerings.   

Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet is out in paperback...

  

“World is crazier and more of it than we think, / Incorrigibly plural,”

reads the epigraph to Maggie O’Farrell’s seventh novel — a quote from Louis MacNeice’s poem “Snow”

 

In “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty writes that “it is our inward journey that leads us through time — forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction.” 

 

If you are going to read one book in the coming months I strongly recommend Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, Hamnet.   It spins around the death, at the age of eleven, of William and Agnes Shakespeare’s son (yes, we know her as Anne, but O’Farrell has done her homework, and just as Hamnet

and Hamlet were used interchangeably in the 16^th century, so Mrs Shakespeare is recorded under both forenames in parish records.  

This beautiful and original story explores the relationship between Hamnet’s death and Shakespeare’s famous play, and how the boy’s death may have resonated through the whole family.  

 

His mother Agnes is at the heart of the novel and she is a wonderful invention, powerful and tender – a wise woman skilled in herbs and healing, with deep intuitions that seems strange and unworldly to us and to her neighbours.   She has a lot to teach us about old wisdom and lore.  Hamnet’s father (never actually named) spends most of his life in the wings, in London creating his plays, his company of players and his Playhouse.   We stay in Stratford (again unnamed but described in convincing detail) with his family; his wife and their children, the firstborn Susanna and the twins Judith and Hamnet,  all of them living with Agnes’s in-laws.   

 

I was caught at the first by O’Farrell’s writing.  It grabbed me by the sleeve and said ‘Come with me, now!’ and I had to follow.  I fell in love with Agnes, and I grieved with her for Hamnet. The whole book is about grief, but that means it is also, inevitably, about love.  We only grieve for those we love.   Being about love means that it is about hope.    

 

The ending is unexpected, makes perfect sense, and lifted my fallen heart.   It also offers a possible and persuasive answer to the question ‘why did Shakespeare name the character at the heart of his most famous play,‘Hamlet?’ 

 

A couple of years ago I first watched the film Arrival, a science fiction ‘first contact’ movie directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.   That film was also original, intellectually rigorous, convincing, revelatory,  and – unlike the majority of science fiction films – ended with a deeply moving punch to the heart.   Arrival’s medium, genre, narrative and denouement could not be more different to those of Hamnet – but both introduced me to clever, sage, loving and courageous women, and the emotional poignancy their stories delivered. 

 

If you read one more book this year…. 

Got a Top Five?

 Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo host a film review programme on BBC Radio 5 every Friday at 3.00pm.

Last week they asked for people's top 5 movies, and why we chose them.

I replied;

Five?

F-I-V-E??

I have been going to the movies for 70 years, ever since my grandmother tried to shape me into a Christian child by taking me to see The Robe, Demetrious and the Gladiators, The Silver Chalice, Sampson and Delilah and The Ten Commandments. Ironically, 20 years later I was ordained as a priest in the Church of England, but I think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest told me more about Christology than any of these Biblical epics.

None the less the cinema was, in effect, my first church, where I found an abiding love of the movies. For nearly 40 years I have brought the two churches together as I reviewed, preached, and led courses on movies for clergy and youth leaders, written booklets, and then a blog about them.

So just five favourites?

All I could do to limit my choices was to just look at the top shelf of my alphabetically arranged DVDs and pick these examples from it.

Arrival. I am a ‘hard-science’ fiction fan, but I did not know Ted Chiang’s short stories until I saw this adaptation of one of them. I love the way his aliens had not been learning Soap- Opera American en route to Earth, so our first contact required a human linguist to find out if they intended to help us or eat us - and that woman was played by Amy Adams! I am so happy that the film adaptation does not pass over the science and is beautifully directed, designed and scored. And then at the end this cerebral SF thriller delivers an emotional punch that meant I had to go and watch it again as soon as possible in order to ‘see’ it properly for the first time. Arrival also gave me the well founded – and fulfilled – hope that Denis Villeneuve would do a worthy job on Blade Runner 2049.

The Avengers/Iron Man series. Even more than the immaculate production design, direction, wit and acting I warmly welcome an epic mythology that is not only great fun to watch but also promotes commitment, teamwork, sacrifice and forgiveness. (I am, after all, a Christian Minister!).

Beasts of the Southern Wild. As much as I enjoy the MC Universe’s $150m blockbusters, the fact that Behn Zeilin’s first feature film was made for less than $2 million really gave me pause for thought. I am a great fan of some of the other 2013 Oscar nominated films, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook and especially Zero Dark Thirty, but none of them moved me as much as Beasts – and the way it came into being as a local community effort.

The Big Lebowski. Fortunately the alphabet allows me to include a favourite Coen Brothers’ movie, and one with some of my choicest actors, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman and David Thewless. But where oh where was Tilda Swinton? Well, nothings perfect, but this comes close.

Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049. Back in 1982 I praised Blade Runner in a SF Fanzine review, and was blasted for doing so as Ridley Scott had blasphemed by changing the Holy Word of Secular Saint Philip K Dick - and I even said that the film was not only better than the book, but the best SF movie I had ever seen. ‘What is Life?’ it asks me, and answers ‘Life is precious’. This seminal movie is precious too, in all of its evolving forms. And thank you Ridley and Denis for eventually giving us 2049.

Well that’s just 5 from the top shelf. They are not representative of the whole, 3/5th of these being SF, whereas only ¼ of my favourite 100 movies are.

And if you are nodding in agreement, Revd Doc Mark, you need to know that my all time favourite movie is Terrence Malik’s Tree of Life, which has intrigued, moved and challenged me – and the groups and congregations I have shown it too – over maybe 15 viewings.

Anyway, thanks for the invitation – impossible as it was for me to properly fulfil – and for your splendid prog.

Bridge of Spies revisited (its on the telly!)

 

This review is in two parts.   The film is ‘based on a true story’.    In the second part of this review I will ask ‘Who was Rudolph Abel?  and look at  the remarkable story that the movie does not tell about the true identity of the spy eventually swapped on the Bridge of Spies.  

Spielberg’s new film is as masterly as ever.  Much more masterly, I suggest,  than some of his more recent offerings.    It is constructed with immense care,  artfully but unobtrusively set and lit.   Every frame is skilfully  composed,  shot by Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can)  from a sharp script by the British Matt Charman and the Coen brothers.    The evocation of the late 1950’s and early 60’s is spot on.    It also has two remarkable acting performances.    Thomas Newman’s music is sometimes a little invasive,  but there is a wonderful opening sequence, which is wordless and unaccompanied.

Bridge of Spies  tells the story of the capture by the FBI of a Soviet spy, Colonel Rudolph Abel,  in the late 1950’s, and how he was later swapped for the American U2 spy-plane pilot,  F. Gary Powers.    Tom Hanks plays Jim Donovan, a lawyer who had worked for the prosecution at the Nurenberg Trials,  now appointed to defend the spy.    Mark Rylance, in his first major film role, plays the spy.  

But this film is not primarily about the spy.  It is about the American lawyer, Donovan, chosen to defend him at what was always going to be a ‘show trial’, but who did so with remarkable integrity and courage,  knowing the public would despise him for his role.    Although Able was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment he was spared execution.    The film suggests that Donovan made the argument to the presiding Judge that this Russian should be kept alive as one day he might be a useful pawn to swap if any American spy was caught by the Soviets.  This proved to be the case.    Four years later Donovan was asked by the U. S.  Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,  to work with the CIA and secretly negotiate the swap of Abel for Powers.     

Donovan again conducted himself with courage and integrity, insisting to the CIA and the East Germans that a young American student, Frederick Pryor,  should also be included in the swap.  The Berlin Wall was being constructed and Pryor had just been arrested by the East German Stasi on the wrong side of the Wall.    The film tells us that the CIA were not at all concerned about this young man’s fate, but Donovan insisted, and  the Stasi eventually agreed.   So an individual American’s humanity and courage triumphed once again despite the heartlessness of Governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain.   Just as in Private Ryan Pryor was saved by the American Hero personified by Tom Hanks.   And the Soviet spy’s life was also saved. 

After the initial arrest of Abel Tom Hanks is centre stage.    We see a little of Powers, who is never portrayed as a hero.     Like the other U2 ‘drivers’ he was given explicit instructions on how to destroy the top-secret spy plane if it might fall into enemy hands, and given the means to self-destruct if he was likely to fall into enemy hands himself.   He failed to do so.    We are not told how much he revealed to his interrogators,  but I suspect he did not have a lot to reveal.

Tom Hanks plays Donovan with his customary skill, making an otherwise ordinary man quietly heroic, in the mold of a Jimmy Stewart character in a Capra movie or, more precisely,  Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch.   Hanks has done this many times before – and so, of course, has Spielberg.    I rather like the fact that an actor who is hardly handsome or sexy or has been an action movie hero, is actually the biggest box office draw in Hollywood.  They say his films have grossed 11 billion dollars.  

And what about the casting of the Englishman Mark Rylance as Rudolph?     It seems that when Rylance was approached by Spielberg twenty years ago he chose the Shakepearian stage instead.    I am delighted tht he accepted this role, and he has now been cast in Spielberg’s upcoming BFG.    Hanks recently remarked that  Rylance ‘ has a great future.’   I wonder if he knows how great a past he has.     Rylance is a luminary on stage – and was of course the star of the BBC’s six part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, but this is his first major film role.     Rylance can play ‘big’ if he wants to, as when playing Johnny ‘Rooster’  Byron in the award winning West End and Broadway hit  Jez Buttersworth's  Jerusalem.   But he can also play small, doing so little that every tiny inflection or facial shift catches our attention and tells us something significant.     He is perfectly cast here.    Surely a Best Supporting Actor nomination is on its way.   If he wins do listen to his speech.  Rylance does not do the expected thing when receiving awards. 

The Bridge’s script helps Rylance’s minimalism.   He says very little.   He says nothing that is unimportant.    His repeated response when asked by Donovan if he is worried  is “Would it help?”   That is wonderful.   Someone knows that being a spy is like raising teenage children - in this at least - when things look like going badly wrong it is far too late to start worrying.   You simply have to trust the work you did before, in the case of teenagers during those early years when you were bringing them up,  in the case of a spy the trade-craft employed when setting up your legend (your false identity) and the routines and systems to protect it.   In both cases you also have to trust those who support you.   Your family or your employers.   Abel had done the best he could.      Although he had been betrayed by his deputy he would not sell out to his captors.    If this loyalty cost him his life, so be it.   

The script is clear about the nature of Abel’s trial.   He was bound to be found guilty and nothing was going to stop that, including the carelessness of the FBI who failed  to get a  warrant for the search that revealed  his trove of  spying equipment.      The judge chose to ignore this legal lapse.    This obviously has  a contemporary relevance, and Spielberg is forthright is his criticism of extra-legal procedures in Camp X.  

There is nothing gung ho here and there are no grandstanding acting performances.   Even Donovan’s performance when appealing the conviction in The Supreme Court is cut short  (maybe a bad editing choice?).     All the actors  simply gets on with their jobs, from Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife,  Alan Alder as his boss,  Dakin Matthews as the presiding judge,  Sebastian Koch as the svelte East German official Donovan has to deal with in East Berlin – a lovely counterpoint to his role in The Lives of Others’ -  Mikhail Gorevoy  as the head of the KGB in Berlin is properly oleaginous.   Scott Shepherd is the rat-faced CIA man we love to hate.   Austin Stowel as Gary Powers is really a no more than a cypher, but the film is never about him.      He is a pawn in this game.   He is never the hero.    Donovan is.   Abel was also a hero however, as Donovan pointed out to the court.   A brave and true soldier in a Cold War.     

Some critics have complained about the film’s length.  I was surprised afterwards to learn that it is 141 minutes .   It did not feel like it.    It is a remarkable movie, and I strongly recommend it. 

But who was Rudolph Abel? 

It seems that there is a truer and even more interesting  story not told here.    The man caught by the FBI was not Colonel Rudolph Abel, but Colonel Willie Fisher.    A recent article by Simon Armstrong of the BBC (28/11/15) refers to  Vin Arthey’s book Abel: The True Story of the Spy They Traded for Gary Powers,  and David Saunders, a professor of Russian history at Newcastle University has also researched the full story of the spy's childhood and career.    Wikipedia also provides details of his career. 

According to a book by the Soviet former spy Kirill Khenkin Fisher was born on North Tyneside on the 11^th July 1903.   Sanders has seen his birth certificate.   Fisher’s  ethnically German parents were Russian Communist  agitators, forced to flee Russian at the turn of the century.    After the Revolution the family returned to Russia and Fisher  joined the Red Army.   He spoke English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish and was a gifted Radio Operator.    During the Battle of Stalingrad he played a crucial part  in an important fuhlspiel,  using false radio transmissions to convince the German High Command that one of their battle groups was operating behind Soviet lines and persuading them to send reinforcements.     This was a deadly trap that cost the Germans dearly.      Arthey considers this to be the most significant event of his career. 

After the war Fisher was trained in further spy-craft and rose in the ranks of the KGB.   In 1953 he was sent to New York with a false identity to take over the Soviet spy network in the USA,  "The FBI was working hard to disrupt Soviet spy rings, but Fisher kept the show on the road” writes Arthey,  “I don't think his job was seeking out military secrets, but he was an important cog in the wheel that got information back to Russia."   He may also have been regrouping the penetration of the nuclear research site at Los Alamos.   The arrest of the Atom Spies, the Rosenbergs, had thrown this mission into a spin.     Willies’ chief operator there was Kitty Harris,  another English born Communist spy  previously trained by Willie. (Wiki)    But his deputy Reino Hayhanen was incompetent.   Under the threat of being sent back to Moscow he defected and told the Americans everything he knew.    Despite the cut-outs and the fact that Hayhanen did not even know his boss’s name (standard practice) Fisher was eventually arrested by the FBI and charged on three counts.  

At this point Willie Fisher showed what a good spy he was.    He told the FBI/CIA that he was Colonel Rudolph Abel of the KGB.   The CIA knew such an officer existed, but they did not know that he had recently died in Moscow.     So now the KGB knew that their main man in the  USA had been arrested, but that the CIA did not know his real identity.   Willie Fisher maintained this pretense during the four years he spent in prison before he was swapped for Capt. Gary Powers,  shot down over Russia in 1960. 

Fisher had cleverly signaled to his superiors that he had not revealed his true identity.   He had not defected or betrayed his greatest secret.   The KGB bosses would decide if they believed him.   This would be  a question of life or death if he was swapped, but there was nothing more he could do.    Worrying would not help.     The film leaves his fate unclear, and rather suggests that it would not be positive.   In fact he was rewarded for his loyalty,  paraded as a hero in the KGB, and died in his bed in 1971.   

Steven Spielberg’s new movie tells of the arrest, trial and eventual release of this spy, but does not reveal this ultimate deception.     Nor do Spielberg and the script writers make it clear that Fisher was in jail for over four years before the swap. 

All this must have been known by the film makers, as attested by the way Mark Rylance speaks his lines in rather Scottish, rather than Geordie,  accent.     "I've met everybody who knew him as an English speaker," says Dr Arthey.  "They said he didn't speak anything like [a Geordie]. The best we've got is that he spoke with a kind of Scots-Irish accent, which he told people was down to being brought up by an aunt in Boston.  Abel died in Moscow… where his remains were interred at the city's Donskoy Monastery.   His tombstone bore his birth name of William Fisher - the identity that was never exposed during his captivity.”     

Professor Saunders says “We make a lot in this country about Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, but those British spies didn't have any rank in the KGB.   Abel is the only British-born ranking officer in Soviet external security services that we know of.”

It seems that Willie Fisher was much more remarkable in life than he is in this film.    Despite his politics I feel rather proud of him. 

 If you have read my previous post on this film (Who's who on the Bridge of Spies, 5/12/15) you will know the true identity of  the spy ‘Rudolph Abel’.      Obviously the CIA/FBI were ignorant of this until after the fall of the Wall, and must have been somewhat embarrassed by the way they were fooled by the man they had caught.   Spielberg must have been aware of it, but maybe he was persuaded by the powers that be, or by his own patriotism, to hide this fact.    Nor is it referred to in the documentary ‘extra’ on the DVD.   However, early in the film Donovan is told that ‘Abel’ has a false British Accent, and asked if he is ‘keeping it up.’   Donovan says that he thinks it is real, and that ‘we think he might be British’.  Who ‘we’ are is not made clear, not is why this is thought to be the case.   So maybe Spielberg simply wanted to signal the truth, that ‘Abel’ was not Russian – in fact was not Abel.                                    

The film does not tell why this man was under surveillance either.   It was not due to his faulty ‘tradecraft’.    He was betrayed by his subordinate, an incompetent drunkard in danger of being shipped back to Moscow.   But this man did not know his boss’s  identity, so all he could do was set up a ‘dead-letter drop’ and tell the FBI where it was.   The FBI would not have followed their target from his home or work place.  They would not know where they were.  If they had they would have raided them straight away.    So they would have put the riverside bench under surveillance until their target arrived and then followed him home.     

 

I share Donovan’s admiration for this British born Russian spy, who did his duty well,  refused to betray his own cause and was prepared to serve 30 years in jail  - or be executed - in order to keep his secrets.   

Grace and Danger; The Tree of Life's implicit Theology.

 

In Terrence Malick’s  film The Tree of Life we learn of the death of a 19 year old boy, known as RL.   Most of the film in concerned with his elder brother, Jack, and the spiritual crisis he experiences on an anniversary of RL’s death.  But at the beginning of the film we are with his mother, and her immediate response to this tragedy.  She loves God,  and has been taught that ‘those who follow the way of Grace come to no harm.’   She believes that we have to choose between Grace and Nature,  nature ‘red in tooth and claw’.  But her teenage boy was full of Grace, and he has come to harm,  he is dead.

The mother questions God, but God makes no verbal reply.   Instead Malick offers us a visually spectacular 15 minute sequence telling of the creation of the Universe, the formation of planets and the emergence and evolution of life.    Some find this section of the film incomprehensible, or irrelevant.    Having seen and discussed this film many times I offer this, my response to it,  putting these words into the mouth of the Creator. 

Your child has died.  He was 19 years old.  This is tragic.  Because you love your child you scream and grieve and weep and rage and question.     You question me, asking

Why?

Did I know?

Where was I?

What do you mean to me?

Let me answer you.

You conceived your child in love, carried him in hope, birthed him in joy and pain.    You were pregnant for nine months.    I waited nine billion years for life to be conceived on planet Earth.   And four billion years more before it could give birth to you, my children, made in my own image.    You too were conceived in love, carried in hope, birthed in joy and pain.  

Life itself is my Creation gift to you, and it takes time.   Just as your beloved child grew slowly, cell by cell within your womb, my universe also grew slowly.     I spoke and the Universe sprang into existence, and then particle by particle, photon by photon, atom by atom, element by element, grain by grain, it grew within my womb.  

My womb?     Where else?  There was and is nowhere outside me, beyond me, outwith me, so the only place my universe could be is within me.    That genesis created everything you see and know, and everything you cannot see and will never know.     

Gravity was in my left hand and randomness in my right,  and these tools brought order out of chaos,  and then life out of the inanimate.      I created my Universe to live and to bear life itself, and more – life that is in my own image, the image of love.     Giving, self-giving, compassionate, forgiving love.  Love that cares,  love that hurts and grieves.    Grieves because there is no creation without destruction and no life without death.   That is the story of this Universe.    

Every atom in your body was created in the furnace at the heart of some distant sun.    Hydrogen and helium, the only atoms in that first moment,  had to be remade there, fused together under unimaginable pressure to form oxygen, carbon,  nitrogen, iron, calcium and phosphorus,  potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium.  You need all of these elements to simply be.    These suns burned for billions of years and then they had to die, burn out, explode and seed the interstellar space with these new atoms.    Atoms that gathered under gravity’s gentle push, gathered and clumped, formed dust clouds, then rocks, asteroids and planets.     

How many planets have to form before one can be a cradle for life?    The number would be meaningless to you, as would the trillion of minute actions and reactions needed for these earth-bound atoms to be combined and recombined, to mutate as randomness did its amazing work,  countering entropy by bringing order out of chaos, complexity out of simplicity, forming chemical compounds, amino acids, bacteria,  single and multi-celled beings;  all your ancestors.    Some think that evolution is not miraculous, but that is only because they want miracles to be instantaneous.    My Creation miracle took thirteen billion years, and turned hydrogen and light into love.   Is that not miraculous enough?

You were taught that you must choose between Grace and Nature.   That is a false dichotomy.    You thought that your child could escape the dangers of Nature by choosing Grace.    But Grace needs a natural form to inhabit.   Grace needs the cradle of Nature to find a home in.    And do not presume that you are the only living things capable of Grace. 

You are compassionate. You feel the pain of others.  The suffering of others stirs deep feelings, often of anger, in your hearts.   Of course you want a world where there is no suffering.  Sometimes when you see suffering you call it evil and are angry with me.   

How can a loving God allow such suffering?      So they blame me for allowing harmful as well as beneficent bacteria to evolve, or for allowing the movement of tectonic plates to cause earthquakes.   Some would like me to temporarily suspend the laws of gravity when falling objects hurt, or when falling hurts bodies.    Some people seem to want fire that does not burn, water than does not drown.      To eat without killing.   But do you think that if I could have created you, and your beloved children, without suffering and death being part of it, without Nature being as it is, without your Universe being as it is, I would not have done so?    

I also have to live, like you,  with the necessary randomness that makes life possible and unpredictable.    Randomness and gravity, my necessary creative tools,  mean that life is fraught with  danger.   Maybe that danger makes it precious.   Would I not have spared myself the waiting, the dying, the grieving, if I could?    

If you look at Nature and hate it, and me, if you blame me and fear me, reject me for the death and loss and destruction you see in the world,  then before you condemn me, consider this.   It has taken your kind half a million years to learn how to take atoms apart.    How long do you think it would take you to put them back together, to create them, to create enough to make your own Universe,  and to breath life and love into your creation?    How long would it take you to make a Universe in your own image, because you despise this one, made in mine?

You husband is an inventor, proud of the patents for his devices.   I am proud of my devices too.    Your eldest son is an architect.  He knows that form has to follow function.  

Function dictates form.      Otherwise building fall apart.     I am the architect of the Universe, and it also has a function.    Love is that function; to love and to be loved.   

This Universe has become aware, and has learnt to love.   It took thirteen thousand million years for you to learn this, in your tiny corner, but in all that time my Universe has not fallen apart.    It is well made.    And just as your child grew from its conception as a single cell, with no interference from you, save sustenance, my Universe grew from a single moment, just one event, and grew to what it is, with no interference from me, save sustenance.  As it is, it was from the beginning. 

O yes, I know some believe I could create this Universe and all living things in days, not billions of years,  and  make you out of mud in an instant.   They wonder why I did not make a Universe in which there was no suffering.   Maybe I could have done so.   It would be a different Universe.   And in such a Universe would you be truly human?   Would you have your capacity for costly love, for compassion, for Grace.   Would you be made in my image?   Would you be so intimately connected to the whole of creation?      And could I be truly incarnate?    At One with you?    

Your beloved son has died, and you grieve.  How many of my beloved have I seen die?     If you believe that I love, then you know that I grieve for your boy too, and for every living thing.     You live today in the shadow of his death.   Because I gave you the capacity to choose love and Grace I had to also give you the capacity to turn away from them.   So I too live in the shadow of death.   The death of the Cross, of the Holocaust, of Hiroshima, of the Gulags and the Killing Fields.    I live in the darkness cast by the fear that lives in the heart of every child, every woman, every man subjected to abuse, to violence, to hatred.     These are not my actions, but yours. 

You grieve for what you value.     So add this to the value of your boy.  In him his elder  brother, Jack, found me.   Found the love and trust and forgiveness and Grace – and the creativity – that are my image.   For RL, his brother, your child and mine, lived and lives in love.   All who live in love live in me.  And I live in them.    In all eternity.    

Because you love your child you grieve and weep and rage and question, asking 

Why?   

Because there is no other way.

Did I know?   

Yes.

Where was I?   

With you.  Within you.

What do you mean to me?   

Everything.

So there's nothing good on Netflix, except maybe...

The I was a late convert to Netflix.  It took the first too items on my list to get me two sign up, but I am glad I did.

Here's my current top 70.   They might not al  be available in your regions, but it's worth having a look if you are reminded or intrigued.

The Two Popes, with Antony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce impersonating Pope Benedict and the future Francis in imagined meetings, but ones  that draw their dialogue from their own real writings and quotes.  Maybe thought a bit specialist, but I really don't think so. The acting is superb. 

    

Springsteen On Broadway, a man, a piano, a guitar, sometimes Patti joins in too as he tells his life stories illuminated by his music, sings his songs, illuminated by his stories – and his passions.       

 

Inception, Christopher Nolan’s mind bending SF thriller,  with de Caprio,   

  

Blackklansman, Spike Lee’s retelling the true story of the infiltration of a black LA cop into the KKK back in the 70’s, shockingly relevant today.  The film is dedicated to Heather Heyer, and opened in the US on the anniversary of her death, hit by a car in Charlottesville, VA while protesting against the Unite the Right rally there on Aug 12. 2017.  Starring   John David Washington and Adam Driver.       

 

The Trial of the Chicago Seven.  Aaron Sorkin’s script and a great cast make some sense out of the chaotic Chicago ‘riots’ and political trial of the Yuppies and Black Panthers who were jointly charged with inciting it.  Topical?   

 

The Truman Show, Jim Carey , not gurning here,  in Peter Weir’s intriguing parable.   

 

 I Lost My Body, a delightful French  animation.  

 

Okja, I love Bong Joon Ho’s movies, all the way back from his 2006 Host to  Parasites, and this one has Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano in it.   Another parable, this one on our consumer society, made with wit and affection.  

 

Children of Men,  Alfonso Cuaron’s brilliant take on P D James (non-crime) novel, with Clive Owen, Michael Caine and Julianne Moore.     

 

Ex Machina, one of the most intelligent movies about A1, written and directed by Alex Garland,  with Domhnall Gleeson. Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander.  

 

Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman's truly bonkers movie, with John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and the eponymous Malkovich.      

 

The Imitation Game.  The tragedy of Alan Turing’s persecution frames the WW2 Bletchley Park Cyber-breaking story.   Cumberbatch as Turing is, as usual, brilliant.   

 

The Martian, a Ridley Scott SF movie, but a long way from Alien, with a very realistic – and surprisingly funny – account of what surviving on, and being rescued from, Mars might mean, with Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain heading up a great cast. 

 

The Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).  Alejandro Iñárritu’s  movie looks like one shot, but that’s not the point.  Michael Keaton, Edward Norton,  Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Andrea Risborough play together rather wonderfully – and Keaton is brilliant.  

 

 The Big Lebowski  the cult Coen Brothers/Jeff Bridges ‘Dude’ movie.  Love it or loath it.    I love it.  

 

Your Name, a Japanese anime, poignant, funny, beautifully drawn, and rather mysterious.  

 

The Theory of Everything,  biopic of Stephen Hawkins’s life, work and marriage, largely drawn from his first wife’s account, played by Felicity Jones.  Eddie Redmayne deserved his Oscar.  

 

O Brother Where Art Thou.   Great Coen Brother’s script and Direction, George Clooney,  John Turturro and Tim Blake work so well together, and the  music is gorgeous. 

 

True Grit, the Coen’s adaptation of the book, not a remake of the film, with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon  and the amazing young Hailee Steinfeld. 

 

Captain Fantastic is not a Marvel superhero movie, but Viggo Mortenson leading his family in a very ‘off-grid’ life.    Funny, moving and thought provoking. .  

 

Atonement.   Saoirse Ronan’s breakthrough movie and a  wonderful adaptation of a great novel, directed by Joe Wright, (The Darkest Hour, Hanna.)

 

Bridge of Spies.  Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance star in Spielberg’s pretty true telling of the fate of a top 1950’s  Russian Spy who was exchanged for the U2 pilot Gary Powers.   If you go down to my full review you will see what Spielberg did not/could not  say about the spy’s real identity, maybe because the CIA/FBI were too embarrassed to admit it.   

 

The Handmaiden; Chan-wook Park  adapted Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith, set in Victorian London,  to the 1930’s Korea.  This is a corkscrew narrative, and (properly) erotic.  

 

All Is True.  The later years of Will Shakespeare, when he retired from London to be with his wife and daughters.  Ken Branagh (who also Directed of course), Judi Dench and a scene stealing Ian McKellen.     

 

 The Little Prince, a delightful French animated retelling of the classic. 

 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.   I think this is the best Martin McDonagh movie so far (and I love In Bruges) with outstanding performances from, among others, Woody Harrelson, Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell. 

 

Paddington/Paddington 2.   So funny, so heart warming, so persuasive, so richly appealing to children and adults,  both have great performances from  star studded casts.  If you haven’t seen Paddington do yourself a favour, and do. 

 

The King’s Speech. A fine movie about a severely  dysfunctional family, and how an unlikely therapist helped one member recover.  With Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter.     

 

The Soloist  a true and redemptive story about a genius musician on the streets, with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downie Jnr.     

 

Rush  is about the rivalry between  the F1 racing drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauder, well impersonated by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl.   This and Le Mon 66 are a matching pair, and if you like racing you should not miss either.  In fact if you like well made movies about competitive men you also shouldn’t miss them.

 

Changeling  and another fact based story, this one about a single parent  woman whose young son disappears, and is then found by the FBI.   Except that she says it is not her son.   Clint Eastwood directed and Angelique Jolie acted the mother’s role with great conviction. 

 

The Life of Brian.   Some of the jokes are so well known they are now clichés, but only because they are so funny.   In fact the Monty Python crew knew their subject well, which is why they could satirise it so well.   ‘It’ is not, of course,  Jesus, but blind religiosity.  

 

Out of Africa.    Karen Blixen’s autobiographic tale of running a farm in Africa,  with another amazing personification of a real woman by Meryl Streep, ably assisted by Robert Redford and Klaus Maris Brandauer. 

 

Midnight Cowboy.    When this first came out we had just seen Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin in The Graduate, and seeing him here as  Rizzo showed us what a great actor he is.  Jon Voigt is pretty good too.  

 

The Social Network.  I will watch anything written by Aaron Sorkin, from The West Wing, through The News Room.  Jesse Eisenberg is brilliant – but his performance maybe persuaded some folk that he is actually like Zuckerberg, the way Brando’s in On the Waterfront led some to think that mumbled in real life too.     

 

Galaxy Quest maybe the best sf comedy ever, with Sigourney Weaver and  Alan Rickman Allan spoofing themselves and Star Trek.  

 

Winter’s Bone.    Jennifer Lawrence’s first leading role, as a 17 year old trying to find her bail-jumping father in order to save the family home; set amidst modern American poverty-stricken rural desolation.  One of the movies I most admire. 

 

The Prestige. Christopher Nolan’s adaption with Hugh Jackman and Christopher Bale (not to mention Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, David Bowie and Andy Serkis) in a typically complex thriller set in the world of magicians. 

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.   Such a classic. Jack Nicolson at his absolute best in this adaptation of  Ken Kesey’s novel.  I am certain that Ken Kesey did not write his book, nor Milos Forman make the film, thinking of Frank McMurphy as Christ, the Nurses as Pharisees, Billy as Judas or Chief Broom as Peter, but for me (using my post-modernist license) they provide a powerful and challenging way to see the passion of Christ.

 

A Star is Born  (2018) I was a late convert to Lady Gaga (it took hearing her duetting with Tony Bennet to do that),  but her singing and acting her are better (IMHO) than Judy Garland’s and Bradley Cooper’s Directing, music and acting match her equally. 

 

 Shadow,  Zhang Yimou made some of my favourite Chinese movies, including  Hero and House of Flying Daggers with their brilliant use of colour.  In Shadow, another historical wuxia movie, he used black and a million shades of grey instead,.  Visually stunning – if a bit confusing plot wise at times. 

 

Captain Fantastic,   Not a Marvel superhero movie, but Viggo Mortenson leading his family in a very ‘off-grid’ life.    Funny, moving and thought inspiring. 

 

 Groundhog Day, one of my all-time favourite movies, and (ironically) watching it again and again is fine.   Bill Murray’s top act? 

 

Lost in Translation is as different as could be, but Bill Murray is almost as good in this one. 

 

Enola Holmes is Sherlock’s younger sister, with Helena Bonham Carter, Henry Cavil and Fiona Shaw.  Millie Bobby Brown leapt to fame five years before - at the age of 11 - in the series  Stranger Things(also on Netflix).  Here she masters the art of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ with ease and wit. Unending fun.    

 

Jojo Rabbit Written and Directed by Taika Waititi, Jojo is in the Hitler Youth, and Hitler is his imaginary friend, but no friend of his mother (Scarlett Johansson) who is hiding a Jewish girl.   Do you expect this to be funny?  It is, it really is.  

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  Another Taika Waititi movie, set in his native New Zealand, where Sam Neil, a curmudgeonly Foster parent has to take his young ward into the bush to save him from a vengeful Social Worker. 

 

Edward Scissorhands.  When did you last watch it? 

 

The Graduate, or this?

 

Catch Me if You Can.   Di Caprio and Hanks, and an amazingly true story- with a genuinely left field ending. 

 

American Beauty.   I still have some unease about this movie.   We had a very fierce discussion about it and a Film and Faith Weekend when it first came out,  but there are just so many great moments and performances I have to recommend it.

 

Citizen Kane.  Is this the ‘Paradise Lost’ movie?  The one everyone knows about, but very few seem to have actually watched?  I  mean, have you read it?  I studied it art A level, but would not say I had actually read it!

One problem is that nearly all the things that were innovations in Kane have become commonplace, so we can forget how great it was – and still is. 

 

Memento.   Easily over looked, but Christopher Nolan let us know with this film that a new star had risen.   

 

Toy Story 4.  I said on my blog that after winning 3 Gold Medals with the trilogy this was not necessary, but it was a worthwhile ‘Victory Lap’.   Pixar’s technical expertise had taken steps forward by the time they came to TS4, and it showed.    

 

The Usual Suspects.   Another classic, and still commands our attention. 

 

Hidden Figures.  The true story of the team of black women who were the human ‘computers’ behind NASA’s great achievement putting John Glen ingo space.   

 

Portrait of a Lady On Fire.  A rather beautiful French movie, set the 18^th century Brittany, using the dynamic of a portrait artist and her sitter to explore feminism among other contemporary issues.  I cannot remember if there are any speaking parts for men, and I certainly did not miss them. 

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Almost every shot is a cinematic masterpiece with great jokes and a reminder how comic actor Ralph Fiennes is.  

 

Get Out.   I saw Daniel Kaluuya 9 years ago in a BBC series, and knew he must go far.  He starred in this just before making Black Panther.   A Jordan Peele thriller/horror about racism, but much more sophisticated than that sounds. 

 

The Princess Bride.  William Goldman wrote Butch Cassidy, All the President’s Men, The Stepford Wives – and this, Directed by Rob Reiner, honouring and subverting the fairy tale tradition,  as a farm boy turns Pirate, and climbs the Cliffs of Moher to be re-united with his love.  Made in 1987, but still quoted.   Cary Elwes, Robin Wright and Mandy Patinkin.    

 

About Time.   A Richard Curtis charmer, with Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy doing what they do well, in a gentle romance with a science fiction twist. 

. 

Joker.   Controversial, disturbing, and I think truly tragic, with an Oscar winning performance by Joaquin Phoenix.  I had to see this movie 3 times before I could come to terms with it.  

 

Inside Out.  Pixar strike again, showing us some of the emotions ( Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger) that battle for control in the mind of a young teenage girl when she and her family move across America. 

 

Le Mans 66   The story of Carroll Shelby, the American sports car designer (The Shelby Cobra) and his English driver Ken Miles, hired by  Henry Ford II to build a car and beat Ferrari at Le Mans.   Matt Damon and Christopher Bale, star, with Caitriona Balfe as Mile’s wife.  This is not only a brilliant racing movie, but a strong human drama, made with wit and heart.   

 

And the TV series

 

Black Earth Rising;  Hugo Blick wrote this about the Rwanda tragedy and it fall out, with Michaela Cole, John Goodman and Fiona Shaw.  (I have Blick’s An Honourable Woman on disc, with Maggie Gyllenhaal, which is as good.  

 

Staged.  15 min episodes with David Tarrant and Michael Sheen being ‘themselves’ in lockdown, talking over skype about the play they are not rehearsing.  If you like them you will love this.    

 

Lupin.  A French thriller, inspired by an early 20^th French series of novels about a ‘Gentleman Thief’, similar to du Maurier’s English toff, Raffles.  But this Lupin is a modern Afro-Frenchman, with an immigrant father, raised out of poverty, and looking for very specific justice.   Oman Sy, a stand-up comedian who starred in Untouchable a few years ago- also on Netflix now, seems like Luther/Sherlock Holmes/Batman. 

 

Criminal.  Written by the man who wrote Lupin, and some of Killing Eve, each episode is set in the same Police Interview  room.  Some great ‘guest performances.   

 

And of course, The Queen’s Gambit.  I love the performances, the chess (Gary Kasparov made sure the games were ‘proper’) and the exact evocation of the times and fashions.