'Timbuktu'

The most beautiful moment in this film is the wonderful singing scene featuring Fatoumata Diawara.

My God I almost fell out of my seat.

You can hear her at the trailer, "Timbuktu Official Trailer 1 (2014)."

Once she's found out by the jihadists, however, you'll cry as she screams while being whipped. Forty-lashes was her punishment from the sharia court. No music allowed, praise be Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

I visited Laemmle's Royal Theatre last Tuesday to catch the show, the same day that Moaz al-Kasasbeh was burned alive.

Unfortunately, I can't wax ecstatic about the movie, as do so many of the MSM reviewers. The peace and happiness of the residents of Timbuktu is overtaken by the horror of Islamic jihad. The filmmakers try to use satire to make the terrorists look like bumblers, but sheer stupidity doesn't prevent them from wreaking death on the people in the community. It's pretty depressing. The problem is ISLAM. Until Muslims of the world abandon their religion, convert to Christianity or Judaism --- or Buddhism, for goodness sake --- then no amount of lush storytelling will transcend the existential horror.

See Joe Morgenstern, "‘Timbuktu’ Review: Artful Cry Against Thug Theocracy: Jihadists impose Shariah law in a West African village, suppressing joy in the process." And also Betsy Sharkey, at the Los Angeles Times, "'Timbuktu' a compelling exploration of extremism's absurdities," a mistake ridden review, pathetically. (Fatoumata Diawara does not play "La chanteuse ... roaming the streets, singing, laughing, taunting passersby, remnants of a black chador dragging in the dust behind her.")

Thankfully, A.O. Scott takes off the gloss, at the New York Times, "A Fury Arrives. Hypocrisy, Too: ‘Timbuktu,’ an Abderrahmane Sissako Film About Radical Islam."