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© Jonty Cornford 2019    Hush By Jonty Cornford The man could still remember the last thing he said to his daughter. When she was sleeping, head rested on his shoulder like it was now, he could still hear it. Sometimes he could hear it as if it were being spoken again.     His thumb brushed across the scar above her ear, visible beneath her short cut hair, as he watched the ash fall outside. It never really stopped, but right now it was falling heavier than usual. Sometimes it was lighter, and sometimes it reminded him of the first and only time he saw snow as a child. In that moment he was struck by the thought that it really wasn't that long ago. He was probably about his daughter's age. He thought about the fact that she had only ever seen ash, never snow.     The world had been mute for almost seven years now. Just as the man had started to be able to communicate meaningfully with his daughter, just as she had begun to realis...

It's not often that you get to do a retrospective of a decade of cinema, and so there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity at making a list of my favourites of the decade. There are so many great movies to choose from, and remember that this is my list of personal favourites, not an objective look at the most important or successful films of the decade. A lot of these come down to personal taste, and so a lot of great movies that just weren't for me ( Boyhood, Leviathan and The Wolf of Wall Street immediately come to mind) don't appear here.  Before I dive into my list and explain why these are my personal favourite movies of the decade, here are a few that just didn't make it, and could well have done on any other day. This is a list that changes constantly, so not only could these movies have easily made it onto my list, there are plenty of others that don't appear hear at all that also could have found their place on this list. So before you complai...

Midsommar (R18+) Director: Ari Aster Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter Duration: 147 minutes I really cannot understand how Midsommar got a wide release in theatres - it is the antithesis of what lucrative films are about in today's cinema landscape, and goes out of its way to make the audience feel as uncomfortable and disorientated as possible. It is was honestly a joy to see something as wild, bold and horrific as this on a multiplex screen. In a time when superhero films are causing people like Martin Scorsese expound their elitist views on cinema, contributing to a generally untrue feeling that cinema is dying or changing form at the very least, one can only point to Ari Aster as one of the directors working today that prove those people very wrong.  Coming off of last year's wonderful but flawed Hereditary , Midsommar is a completely different beast, but one that is a much more cohesive whole with a better sense of internal logic and structu...

High Life (MA15+) Director: Claire Denis Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin Duration: 113 minutes High Life comes from French filmmaker Clair Denis as her first English language film, and stars Robert Pattinson in yet another role that cements him as one of the most important actors of our generation. The film is almost impossible to describe effectively beyond the bare bones of its mechanics - the IMDb plot description simply reads "a father and his daughter struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation", and to be fair that is probably the most that you'd want to give away about High Life . It is not your typically Hollywood space adventure. It is slow, ethereal, surreal and at times frustrating. It is aggressively experimental and will no doubt leave casual viewers baffled, likely bored. By the time the plot begins to unravel in its meandering way with no regard for linear structure (perhaps something to do with black ...

Is there such thing as music that Christians shouldn’t listen to? Should we be dismissive of music with either explicit language or sexual, violent or substance oriented themes? Should anyone even be telling anyone else what they can and can’t listen to? These are questions that are thrown around a lot in Christian circles, and given what I do here on this blog and how that overlaps with my job working for the church, I thought I would share my thoughts on this topic. I’ll say this at the outset so that we’re on the same page – I think any attempt to dictate what people should and shouldn’t listen to is stupid and disrespectful on a fundamental level. I’ll go into detail about why I think that later on, but for now here are some thoughts I have on some of the “Christian” opinions I come across pretty regularly. The first and most ludicrous thing that seems to follow me around is the idea that because I listen to underground genres, particularly on the heavy metal ...