My ten movies of 2017, which goes to eleven^H^H ^H ^H^H twelve ^H^H^H ^H ^H thirteen

I was thinking, last week, when I saw somebody saying something somewhere about their top 10 movies of 2017, that it would be pretty funny for me to try to make a top 10 list of movies of 2017 (or any year--although actually I guess I probably saw more movies in theatres in 2017 than I did in any year since maybe sometime in the mid-'90s), because I'm not sure I even remember seeing ten movies in 2017 (by which I mean movies I saw in theatres in 2017, as opposed to movies I saw in 2017, or movies I saw that came out in 2017), so maybe I should try making a list of my ten movies of 2017. So here goes!

1. mother! I'm putting this one at #1 because if I was going to make a top 10 list it would be #1 and it would be the only part of the list that really meant anything, because it would be a list of one movie I thought was great and nine movies I sort of remember seeing.

2. Manchester by the Sea. Well, actually, this might get an honourable mention. I was impatient with it through a lot of it for being very, very familiar. But I do like the thing it turns on--a calamity that you are inescapably responsible for, but which did not have to happen at all. It's a pretty good case of moral luck, of all three of the resultant, constitutive, and circumstantial varieties, because the guy is unluckily re-made as a person by this unlucky event that had the opportunity to happen because of where and when and what he happened to be.

3. Moonlight. Barely remember anything about it.

4. Fences. I vaguely recall it being a decent version of Death of a Salesman, though all I particularly remember is the slobbering.

5. Paterson. Barely remember anything about it.

6. Personal Shopper. Barely remember anything about it.

7. Sense of an Ending. Barely remember anything about it.

8. Split. I was very, very surprised by how little the multiple personality discourse has apparently changed since it was a thing I was reading about (and seeing on Homicide, and so forth) in the '90s. I thought back then that the re-framing as "dissociative identity disorder" was going to just kill off the whole thing, at least as something that could be both popularly exciting and presentable as scientific psychology, and I had presumed since then that that was what had actually happened. But Split just brings on all the old "multiple personality" ideas under the "dissociative identity" label.

9. Uh. Uh.... Oh, wait, Killing of a Sacred Deer! I feel like this is a movie that somehow should have been better than it was, but I'm not sure how. It may just be that I don't like Colin Farrell, though I don't think you could've done better than him in Lanthimos's The Lobster (which we watched on Netflix or something before seeing Killing of a Sacred Deer, and which was a useful bracing for the style of KoaSD--as with mother!, I imagine a lot of people went into KoaSD really not knowing what they were in for. Anyway, if we had seen The Lobster in a theatre in 2017, then I could've made a genuine top 2 list.)

10. Lady Bird. That, you have heard about.

ETA: oh yeah, also, Arrival! Well, that one failed my Doctor Who test: it would've been better if the Doctor showed up. However, it was a pretty good episode of Doctor Who. I mean, it was a way better Doctor Who 3-parter than the Monks turned out to be.

ETA2: oh, right, and Blade Runner 2049, which passed my Doctor Who test, and I thought did a pretty fine job of being a Blade Runner movie, except that we probably didn't really need another Blade Runner movie.

ETA3: and also Nocturnal Animals, which ... was a movie. Like Three Billboards, it solicits sympathy for a cop by making him dying.

Currently at Havelock: 0.9. Broke freezing around 11:30 this morning, for the first time since December 20.

On Abraham and Isaac, and biblical hermeneutics: an exchange with Howard Adelman

Last November, Howard Adelman posted a blog series on "the binding of Isaac" by Abraham, beginning here, and continuing here, here, here, here, here, and here. I wrote a response, which I e-mailed to him. I'm posting it, as well as Howard's response, here, primarily because it gets into some things that I've been talking about here over the last year and anticipates some things I plan to talk about.


Hi Howard,

I've been greatly enjoying your recent blog postings, especially the series on Abraham and Isaac. ( I have a few comments and questions about the latter … )