Ambient Lament: CT Entertainment

[Also: Recommendations from Christianity Today's critics] Also: Recommendations from Christianity Today's critics | [View online]( [ChristianityToday.org]( [Christianity Today Entertainment Newsletter]( Friday, October 06, 2017 Ambient Lament Each week CT's critics offer suggestions for art and entertainment they found encouraging, valuable, or reflective of the good, the true, and the beautiful in God's world. Not every suggestion is suitable for everyone, and each reader is encouraged to investigate ratings and content warnings for each suggestion. Have suggestions of your own? [Let us know](mailto:tolsen@christianitytoday.com?subject=CT%20Entertainment%20suggestion). —Ted Olsen, Editorial Director Hammock: Mysterium | Music Hammock's latest offering is a long way from the dream pop sensibilities of 2016's Everything and Nothing. The Nashville duo (consisting of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson) has been making ambient music since 2003. With its surging choral arrangements and mournful strings, Mysterium is closer in spirit to a contemporary requiem—the kind of thing you'd hear in a Terrence Malick film. The album's rueful tone is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. This is music for the bereaved. A friend recently informed me of the tragic circumstances surrounding the project: Marc Byrd's sister lost her son in 2016, and Mysterium is his answer to the tremendous grief. These details didn't surprise me. The album's sorrowful tone is apparent from its opening notes to its disconsolate final song, "This Is Not Enough (Epilogue)." Having just lost a close friend myself, the album has been a balm to me. Reflecting on the loss of his son in a mountain-climbing accident, the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff writes, "To comfort me you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench." Mysterium is an invitation to sit on the mourning bench. Sadly, it's a place all of us must visit at some point, but, as Wolterstorff and Byrd remind us, we need not do it alone. — [Cameron McAllister]( Battle of the Sexes | Film About 25 years ago, I met Bobby Riggs at a fundraising tennis event in Florida. I interviewed him over lunch, and his every fifth sentence was a challenge to a bet: "I bet I can eat my potatoes faster than you can—left -handed." "I bet I can suck down this glass of tea through a straw in less than 10 seconds." Everything was gambling fodder for this master of hustle. When I later played against him in a charity doubles match, he wore a mic, talked nonstop, had the crowd in stitches, and tried to rattle me. (It somewhat worked, but I did ace the former Wimbledon champ a couple times. Hey, he was 75!) Riggs died a couple years later, but he's back now, larger than life, on the big screen, as played by Steve Carell. And Emma Stone plays tennis star Billie Jean King in her prime. Both are remarkable—convincing, inhabiting the look, the walk, the quirks and personalities of these tennis legends. Riggs was 55 and King 29 when they faced off in 1973's Battle of the Sexes, a $100K winner-take-all exhibition that for Riggs was a showcase for his chauvinistic buffoonery. But for King, it was an opportunity to take a giant leap forward in women's tennis, which till then had never gotten the respect—or the money—it deserved. King was not only a champ on the court (39 Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles), but a champion for women's rights and, later, LGBTQ rights. The movie is entertaining and educational, telling the story of one of the most important eras in women's sports as King almost single-handedly brought the game its overdue respect (and, in time, its nearly equivalent paydays, compared to the men). No surprise that the film includes the subplot of King's lesbian affair (which ultimately cost her marriage to husband Larry), but I was surprised at the (unnecessarily) extended steamy scenes between King and her gay lover. There's no nudity, but it's fairly erotic, so consider the PG-13 almost a soft "R." Still, a worthwhile, enjoyable, and historically important movie … whether you're a sports fan or not. — Mark Moring [now in theaters] The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman | TV Series The Story of Us is a limited series (six episodes) from "the Emmy-nominated team behind The Story of God." While the title is unfortunate—the show is really about whether certain cultural ideals such as freedom, peace, and love are universal—the episodes are enthralling. Listening to actual humans tell their stories is so often more powerful than seeing those stories processed through commercial dramatization. Morgan Freeman brings a necessary gravitas to the project, perhaps because he is a sympathetic listener who doesn't need to steal attention from those he is interviewing. The selection of interviewees may strike some more dogmatic ideologues viewers as politically biased—the pilot episode tacitly compares an escapee from a North Korean slave camp to one of the Angola Three—but in such a polarized and politically divided time, have we lost the ability to just listen? Ultimately, the show's thesis is that humanity shares certain hopes and aspirations and that these are stronger and more numerous than the cultural differences that continue to divide us. The Story of Us premieres on Wednesday, October 11. — [Kenneth R. Morefield]( [National Geographic Channel] Glory and Moka | Films Now in its 15th year, Film Movement is more than just a DVD-of-the-month club. While still offering a monthly subscription service leaning heavily on contemporary world-cinema, the label also offers streaming video of its extensive and impressive catalog of films. Two of its recent offerings illustrate what makes such a subscription worthwhile. Glory, Bulgaria's submission for Oscar's Best Foreign Film, tells the story of a stuttering railroad worker who finds a trove of cash abandoned on the railway tracks and—to the astonishment of nearly everyone—turns it in to government officials. Kristina Grozeva's follow-up to The Lesson shares with her earlier film a theme of a normal citizen, trying to live honestly, surrounded by corruption, cynicism, and moral indifference. Moka offers a more generic thriller plot: A grieving French woman investigates a hit-and-run accident and befriends the woman she suspects was the driver who killed her son. One of Moka's very real pleasures is that it provides meaty roles for two of France's great actresses. You might not remember Emmanuelle Devos or Nathalie Baye unless you were a big fan of Coco Before Chanel? or Xavier Beauvois's Le petit lieutenant, but they give the kinds of performances here that send you rushing to IMDB to answer the questions "Where have I seen them before?" and, more importantly, "Where can I see them again?" — [Kenneth R. Morefield]( [Film Movement] ['First Reformed' Imagines a Stunning Dark Night of the Soul]( At long last, Paul Schrader's cinematic masterpiece. Kenneth R. Morefield ['Home Again' Fails to Challenge Shallow Notions of 'Home']( Hallie Meyers-Shyer's directorial debut reveals just how dissatisfying good fortune can be. Alicia Cohn [Art of Darkness: Angelina Jolie's Latest Film Succeeds at Personalizing Genocide]( What "First They Killed My Father" tells me about suffering and the imago Dei. D.L. Mayfield ['Twin Peaks: The Return' Gets Cosmic Conflict Disturbingly Right]( David Lynch's cult-classic revival is exactly as imaginative—and as uncomfortable—as it always needed to be. Jeffrey Overstreet Follow Us [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Google+]( [RSS]( [Subscribe to this newsletter]( IN THE MAGAZINE [Current Issue]( [No Child Left Behind Comes to Awana]( [An Innocent Black Man Forgave the Crooked White Cop Who Framed Him]( [Benny Hinn Is My Uncle, but Prosperity Preaching Isn't for Me]( [View Full Issue]( [Subscribe Now]( More from Christianity Today [Use Globalization for the Gospel]( The four corners of the world are now in your neighborhood. [The Godness of God]( Karl Barth thought we needed to be reminded continually of the obvious, which to Barth was not so obvious. [Don't Try To Be Successful, Try To Do Good Work]( A minister with a well-nourished soul may or may not have a big church, but they'll always have a healthy ministry. 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