ISLAM- The belief that an All-Knowing, All-Powerful God decided to reveal his doctrine for mankind, to a 7th century illiterate Arab slave trader(slave and sex slave owner who had regular sex with his 9 year old wife) ,in a cave where no one else was there to verify, through Angel Gabriel over 23 years rather than just beaming it into his brain.

Islam is an extremely Arab-centric religion, it seems as if it was completely made up by an Arabic person/people. The more a religion is tied to the culture of whatever society created it, the less likely it is to be legitimate. An omnipresent All-Knowing God wouldn’t care where on earth the primates he gave sentience to come from. This is what I will be discussing.

THE KAABAThe holy site for pilgrimage is very conveniently located in their backyard (Saudi Arabia.) This would be like a religion of Japanese origin claiming the holy site for pilgrimage is in Tokyo. Muslims have to pray towards the Kaaba which is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Pre-Islamic Arabia was extremely underdeveloped and primitive. Literature wasn’t important and credible texts were rare so sometimes historians have to go with the biased Islamic perspective. According to the Abrahamic religions(Islam included), Abraham lived at around 2100-2200BC which is thousands of years before Islam was born in the 7th century. Islamic sources claim Abraham built the Kaaba for Islamic practises and it was his most important accomplishment. However the Bible never mentions the Kaaba and some Muslims claim Allah is the same God of the bible. Strangely the Kaaba was never mentioned in Judaism and Christianity. Only Islamic sources claim Christians and Jews also respected the Kaaba religiously. It was difficult to unify the many sects of Judaism and Christians on many things but not one sect of either religion mentioned the Kaaba. This suggests this idea was entirely fabricated. Islamic sources claim that the Kaaba in Mecca was a well known, important trade centre. Most Historians agree this is false as there was no mention of the Kaaba by the powerful Roman Empire, and the neighbouring Persian Empire and neighbouring Northern African Rulers until the birth of Islam . All historical evidence indicates the Quran was built by Arab Pagans a few centuries before Muhammad, not Abraham, yet again another false Islamic claim made by early Muslim Arabs or Muhammad.The Zamzam Well is a well located in Mecca, Saudi East of the Kaaba the holiest place in Islam. According to Islam, it is a miraculously generated source of water from God, which sprang spontaneously thousands of years ago when Ibrahim (Abraham's) son Ismael (Ishmael) was left with his mother Hajar (Hagar) in the desert, thirsty and crying. Ibrahim made a request to Allah- 14:37: "{O our Lord! I have made some of my offspring to dwell in an uncultivable valley by Your Sacred House (the Ka'bah at Makkah) in order, O our Lord, that they may perform Salah (prayer). So fill some hearts among men with love towards them, and (O Allah) provide them with fruits so that they may give thanks.}" Muslims believe Zamzam was the first among many fruits provided to Ibrahim by Allah. provided to Ismail and Hajar were in the desert. Very conveniently the Holy Water in Islam is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The water is so holy it is taught to heal diseases and sickness; there is no scientific evidence to support this. This appears to be a knock-off version of a biblical story (one of the many in Islam) where Abraham’s concubine and his son Ishmael were left in the desert of Paran in Palestine. The Hadith Sahih Muslim 31:6046 says that ZamZam water is special, can quench hunger,feed you and make you gain weight;there is of course no scientific evidence to support these claims. Islam makes it appear as if it is a miracle that there is water well in the desert which is expected coming from primitive Arab desert dwellers with little scientific knowledge. Water is underground in most deserts because as rainwater falls, it is absorbed underground and flows through the underground including under a desert.

IMPORTANCE OF ARABIC
Allah stated His holy book must be written, memorised and taught in Arabic(conveniently Muhammad's language) to Prophet Muhammad even though there are thousands of other languages in the world. Vulgar Latin or Middle Chinese were the most spoken language in the world in the 7th century when the Quran was revealed,English and Mandarin are the most spoken languages in the 21st century. Only 5% of the world's population today speak Arabic (Arabic is the 5th most spoken language in the world) so it is illogical, confusing and absurd why God wanted "the most important words for mankind" to be specifically delivered in Arabic. If Allah had revealed his doctrine to all cultures and corners of the world, there would be an independently verifiable method to confirm that every language in the world received the same message from the same God. This would be very powerful evidence in favour of Islam. It is a shame he decided against this:
Quranic Verses on Importance of Arabic:
41:3- "A Scripture whereof the verses are in detail, a Lecture in Arabic for people who have knowledge"
7:1: "Alif, Lam, Mim, Sad (These are the names of letters of the Arabic alphabet and in this sequence only Allah knows their meaning here;this is one of Allah's many miracles)."
12:2: "We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran so you people may understand/use reason"
14:44: "We have not sent any Messenger except with the language of his people (Arabic) so he can make things clear to them. Allah misguides anyone He wills and guides anyone He wills. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise."
42:7: "So We have revealed an Arabic Quran to you, in order that you may warn the mother of cities(Mecca) and all who live nearby..."
44:58: "We have made the Quran easy in your language (Arabic) so that they might be reminded."
26:198 - "And if We had revealed it (this Qur'an) unto any of the non-Arabs" - 26:199. "And had Muhammad recited the Quran unto them, they would not have believed in it "
41:44: "If We had made it a foreign Quran, they would have said, ‘If only its verses were clear! What? Foreign speech to an Arab?’ Say, ‘It is guidance and healing for those who have faith, but the ears of the disbelievers are heavy, they are blind to it, it is as if they are being called from a distant place." - Could Allah's book not also be unclear to Non-Arabic speakers which was the vast majority of the world in the 7th century and the 21st century?
Why the Almighty God would have a preference for one language over the thousands of others is unclear. Muslims believe Arabic has a special status in Islam. It is compulsory to learn Arabic to be a Muslim and perform activities like the 5 daily prayers, recite the Shahadah and read the Quran. Millions of Muslims around the world memorise the Quran and verses for prayer which are entirely in Arabic whilst not knowing the meaning of what they are saying when they pray everyday and read the Quran. It is estimated up to 10 million Muslims around the world (the majority not Arabic speaking in countries like Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan) have memorised the whole Quran. Most of them barely understand a word of what they have memorised It seems likely an All-Wise, All-Powerful God would be able to come up with a better way for people to show devotion to Him than reciting words in a foreign language they don’t know. God’s chosen messenger was an Arabic Person. Islam is filled with Key Arabic terms like Hajj, Shahadah, Taqwa, Taraweeh, Ramadan, Zakat and encourages Arabic customs like keeping a beard, eating dates and women covering their hair.
SPLITTING OF THE MOON
54:1 The Quran states: "The Hour draws near; the moon is split in two". And if they see a miracle they turn away and say 54:2 "Passing Magic," Sahih Bukhari 4:56:81 Narrated Anas states : \"*That the Meccan people requested Allah's Apostle to show them a miracle, and so he showed them the splitting of the moon."*The Quran and Hadith claim that the people of Mecca,Saudi Arabia asked Muhammad to prove that he had divine powers so he miraculously split the moon into two pieces and then, presumably, put it back together again. There is absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever that the moon has ever been split into two. Since the moon is visible to half the planet at any given time, we should expect to see numerous accounts from different parts of the world attesting to this event if it actually happened. The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Indians had avid astronomers who should have seen this event and recorded it in their histories. The absence of historical record from other civilisations, contemporary to Muhammad, is a strong indication that this event never happened. Yet again another Islamic lie. The Quran states in 4:82 "Do they not then consider the Qur'an carefully? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found some contradictions." The Quran appears to tell us it certainly didn't come from God as we have clearly found a contradiction in the book between what it says and what actually happens/happened in reality as the moon never split. The Quran also says in 2:256 "Whoever believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold(The Quran) that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower." Clearly the Quran is broken and is not trustworthy as it has lied to us and tried to deceive us about Science. The lie of the splitting of the moon disproves many of Allah's 99 names such as AL-HAQQ(The Absolute-Truth,) AR-RASHEED(The Infallible Teacher,) AL-ALEEM (The All-Knowing,) AR-RAQEEB(The Watchful One,) AL-HAKEEM(The All-Wise,) ASH-SHAHEED(The All Observing Witnessing, AL-MAJEED(The Glorious-Most Honourable,) AL-HAMEED(The Praiseworthy,)DHUL-JALAALI WAL-IKRAAM(Possessor of Glory and Honour, Lord of Majesty and Generosity.)
​
DESCRIPTIONS OF HEAVEN/PARADISE
The invention of an afterlife by religions such as Islam is to serve our primitive desires to stay alive and is a result of the fear of One's mortality. The invention of an afterlife is also means to satisfy our primal desires to feel pleasure and Islam provides this as it sates in 41:31- "You will have therein(Paradise) whatever yourselves desire, whatever you want." The sole purpose of a Muslim's life is to enter Paradise and according to 29:64- " This life is nothing but diversion and play (to distract you from the ultimate goal of paradise)" The way heaven is described in a religion is usually reflective of the culture the religion originated from; this is expected as religions are fabricated by humans not sourced from divine beings.

The Islamic Paradise (Jannah) is described in the Quran and in Hadith as a place with lots of magnificent gardens, nice greenery and weirdly obsesses on how there are many rivers and sources of water in Paradise. Here are some verses on the Islamic Paradise:
36:34 - “And We have made (In Paradise) therein gardens of date-palms and grapes and We have caused springs of water to gush forth therein.”3:193 - “But as to those who are careful of (their duty to) their Lord, they shall have gardens beneath which rivers flow....”16:31 - “The gardens of perpetuity, they shall enter them, rivers flowing beneath them; they shall have in them what they please...”47:15 - "The description of Paradise which the righteous have been promised is that in it are rivers of water the taste and smell of which are not changed..."5:119- "...There are gardens, with rivers flowing beneath – their eternal Home. Allah is well-pleased with them, and they with Allah. That is the great salvation."9:72- "Allah hath promised to Believers, men and women, gardens under which rivers flow, to dwell therein, and beautiful mansions in gardens of everlasting bliss."61:12 - “These it is (Paradise) for whom are gardens of perpetuity beneath which rivers flow,”54:54 - "Verily, The Righteous, will be in the midst of Gardens and Rivers in Paradise."18: 33. "Each of those two gardens brought forth its produce, and failed not in the least therein, and We caused a river to gush forth in the midst of them."
The fascination with gardens and water appears to be a reasonable depiction of heaven coming from primitive desert dwellers who didn’t have much access to greenery and vast areas of water. Most people don't think of water when they think of a heaven except of course primitive Arabs who lived in the sweltering heat of the desert.
Islam is famous for having an extensive list of things which are forbidden under the religion (Haram) . There are customs like drinking alcohol, gambling, wearing gold and women being able to dress freely, and beautifying one's appearance which was and is part of most cultures including Pre-Islamic Arabia that were subsequently banned under Islam. I believe the reason religions like Islam ban trivial, inconsequential thing like beautifying one’s appearance is because if you can force people to give up something so intrinsic to their society and to being human, it is much easier exercise control. Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: The world is a prison-house for a believer and Paradise for a non-believer. Sahih Muslim 2956. The purpose of tedious rules is to make its adherents cement themselves more concretely to the religion. Muslims are being controlled massively by the the commands of a fictional being(Allah) and unfortunately do not seem to understand that. There is no other reason. The rules do not benefit you but the business. Every time you follow these rules with no evidence they came from a divine being, you are paying another subscription fee until you decide you are being used and drained to the religions benefit, not yours. Muslims are obligated to follow the Quran and it's rules as it is supposedly the word of God- 4:59- "O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger (Muhammad ), and those of you (Muslims) who are in authority and if there is deviation amongst yourselves, refer back to Allah, His Messenger (and Quran ), if you believe in Allah and in the Last Day. That is better and more suitable for final determination."
FASCINATION WITH WINE IN PARADISE
The fascination with wine in the Islamic heaven indicates that the Arabic authoauthors were into alcohol all along. Allah is clearly a confused man who doesn't even understand and abide by his own words as he says in 5:90 that alcohol consumption is the work of Satan but then promises alcohol in heaven for righteous Muslims. 5:90- "O you who believe! Intoxicants (all kinds of alcoholic drinks), gambling, Al-Ansab, and Al-Azlam (arrows for seeking luck or decision) are an abomination of Shaitan's (Satan) handiwork. So avoid (strictly all) that (abomination) in order that you may be successful." It seems weird to condone something in Heaven that you said is bad to do on Earth.Here are Quranic verses on Alcohol in Paradise:76:5 - "Indeed, the righteous will drink from a cup [of wine] whose mixture is of Kafur."76:17 - “And they will be given to drink a cup [of wine] whose mixture is of ginger. “47:15 - “The description of Paradise is that in it are rivers of water the taste and smell of which are not changed; rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine delicious to those who drink; and rivers of clarified honey (clear and pure)....”
FASCINATION WITH WOMEN AND SEX IN PARADISE
The Quran forbids men and women especially women from beautifying themselves, tells men to lower their gaze, tells men and women to be modest in dress and behaviour, and discourages the provocative sexual display of their bodies and and discourages hyper-sexuality however extensively discusses sex and the beauty of the women in heaven. Yet again, it seems weird to condone something in Heaven that you said is bad to do on Earth.
24:31 - “And tell the believing women to lower their gaze (from looking at forbidden things), and protect their private parts (from illegal sexual acts, etc.) and not to show off their adornment except only that which is apparent (like palms of hands or one eye or both eyes for necessity to see the way, or outer dress like veil, gloves, head-cover, apron, etc.), and to draw their veils all over Juyubihinna (i.e. their bodies, faces, necks and bosoms, etc.) and not to reveal their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husband's sons, their brothers or their brother's sons, or their sister's sons, or their (Muslim) women (i.e. their sisters in Islam), or the (female) slaves whom their right hands possess, or old male servants who lack vigour, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And all of you beg Allah to forgive you all, O believers, that you may be successful.”
Here are Quranic Verses regarding the beauty of the women in Paradise:
2:25- “...they shall have therein Azwajun Mutahharatun (purified mates or wives), (having no menses, stools, urine, etc.) and they will abide therein forever.” This means God will provide pure women for men to have sex with in Paradise.55: 70-“Therein (In Paradise) will be fair (wives) good and beautiful.”37:48- -“And with them (believing men) will be chaste females, restraining their glances (desiring none except their husbands), with wide and beautiful eyes.” 37:49. “(Delicate and pure) as if they were (hidden) eggs (well) preserved.”2:25- "Virgins await those who enter paradise."
78:31-34 - “Verily for the Righteous(men) there will be the fulfilment of (the heart´s) desires; Gardens and vineyards, And a cup(of wine) overflowing; And women of equal age with big and firm breasts”
Quran 55:54-56 - “They(righteous men) will recline on Carpets...In them will be houris(virgins) restraining their glances, and no man or Jinn has ever opened their hymen with sexual intercourse, which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?
The obsession and fascination with women's beauty and sex in the Islamic Paradise and lack of regard for female sexuality with no Quranic verses appealing to a Woman’s desire for sexual gratification clearly illustrates this was made up by sexually aroused Arabian Men who were implementing their sexual fantasies into their ideal paradise. It is oddly suspicious that there are no Islamic verses describing the handsome men in Paradise for women. The misogynistic objectification of women by portraying them as commodities and treating them like prizes to be won if One is faithful to Allah is typical of the ideals of the time, where women in most civilisations were treated as second class class citizens and had limited rights compared to men.
Bonus Quranic verses on women in Islam:
4:34- "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion from, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great." This verse means men are in charge of women, because Allah made men to be better than women. Women must obey men, and if they refuse they must be punished. Refuse to have sex with them and beat them into submission.
2:223- "Men,your women are soil for you (to cultivate/farm) so go to your soil as you please, and send (good deeds) before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will (one day) meet Him. Give glad tidings to believers, (O Muhammad)." In the mind of Allah, women are like a dirty field for men to put their penises through. Plough them whenever you like (as long as they're not menstruating, of course.)
4:24- "Also forbidden for men to marry are women already married, except those whom your right hands possess(captive women aka sex slaves)." This verse means Allah permits men having sex slaves.
OBSESSION WITH DATES
Islam has stressed the holiness of the date and the date palm more than any other religion. In fact, the Prophet Muhammad said that Ajwah dates—grown in the Madinah region of Saudi Arabia—are from paradise. The date palm, mentioned more than any other fruit-bearing plant in the Quran 22 times is a symbol often associated with Muslims. Muhammad argued that seven dates in the morning protected one from poison and witchcraft. The Quran states that Mary was advised to eat dates while in labour with Jesus, to ease childbirth and strengthen the body. The Prophet was once reported to have said, “People in a house without dates are in a state of hunger.”
Some of the many Islamic verses on date-palms:The Hadith - Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 3464 states: “ The prophet says: whoever says: Glory is to Allah the Magnificent, and with His Praise, a date-palm tree is planted for him in Paradise.”36:34 - “And We have made (In Paradise) therein gardens of date-palms and grapes, and We have caused springs of water to gush forth therein.”55:11 - ”Therein are fruits, date-palms producing sheathed fruit-stalks (enclosing dates)."(This verse means thankfully Allah has provided humans with date-palms on Earth)17:91- "Or you have a garden of date-palms and grapes, and cause rivers to gush forth in their midst abundantly."55:68- "In them (both) will be fruits, and date-palms and pomegranates."80:29- "And olives and date palms"54:20- "Plucking out men as if they were uprooted stems of date-palms."(Allah bragging about the punishment and torment he inflicted on innocent disbelievers using a strong wind)
It seems very convenient and oddly suspicious that God has created a special status for date-palms in his religion and talks about dates an awful lot, given the fact dates are a staple food in Saudi Arabia (It’s eaten regularly and mass produced in the Arabic World). It is very easy for a culture that loves and places great value on dates to then say that God also gives dates a special status. Why the creator of the universe would have a liking to the common fruit in the Middle East over all the thousands of fruits that exist is unclear. It would be suspicious if the God of a religion of Japanese origin claimed Sushi is a holy,special food and described how much sushi there would be in heaven e.g "For those that believe, there will be plates of sushi for them in Paradise."

PORK
The Quran offers no explanation as to why pork is impure is it states in 6:145 when God says, in reference to the flesh of swine (pig), “for that surely it is impure.” Arabs generally didn’t eat pork and thought it was an unclean animal before Islam came so it was very convenient that Allah said Muslims shouldn’t eat pork as it was unclean and impure. This highlights how the Arabs were scientifically illiterate and didn't know proper cooking kills pathogens. Why would the creator of the universe view some foods the mere humans he created eat as disgusting but others perfectly fine for them to eat. This seems like a human trait that is usually dependent on One's culture. For example, a person from the USA may view eating snails and horse meat as disgusting whilst a person from France may view this as perfectly normal.
​
SPREAD OF ISLAMIslam was spread by Arab Conquest & War and Arab traders. The most Islamic regions of the world are in the Middle East/Arabic countries. Doesn't Allah know his "beautiful words of wisdom" for mankind would be spread through violent ways and evil dictators who forced it upon lands they conquered. Allah is All-Knowing, Benevolent and All-Powerful therefore he could have stopped these from happening or created a better way for his doctrine to spread through Mankind. Quran 2:256 states: "There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path." and 15:9 states: "Verily We: It is We Who have sent down the Dhikr (i.e. the Qur'an) and surely, We will guard it (from corruption.)" This verse clearly means the All-Powerful Allah and his Angels dramatically failed on their promise to protect the Quran from corruption and misuse as we know how much evil that has been committed in the name of the Quran throughout history especially given the infamous rise of Radical Islamic Terrorism over the last few decades. 99% of all terrorist attacks that occurred throughout the world from 2010-2020 were Islam related. This disproves many of Allah's 99 names such as AL-MUHAYMIN(The Preserver of Safety,) AR-RASHEED(The Guide, Infallible Teacher,) AL-HAQQ(The Absolute Truth,) AL-AZIZ(All Powerful,) AL-MUHAYMIN AL-‘ALEEM(The All-Knowing.) Doesn't Allah realise that by revealing his doctrine exclusively to Arabs, he engineered the cultural isolation of the rest of the world from his doctrine, he engineered the circumstances of Unbelievers' disbelief that live in the far corners of the world like South America,New Zealand and the Pacific/Remote Islands of the world therefore he created a punishment (Hell) for a situation he knowingly created. It is very suspicious that Allah is Arabic-speaking, Arab-centric, yet will punish non Arabs millenniums later for not believing the message they received through a game of telephone.
​
RENAMING OF JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES
The Quran also arrogantly claims that key figures: Jesus(Isa), Abraham(Ibrahim), Noah(Nuh), David(Dawud), Ishmael(Ismail), Isaac(Ishaq), Joseph(Yusuf), Ezekiel(Dhulkifl), Moses(Musa), Solomon(Sulayman) ,Jacob(Yaqub) in the centuries old religions of Judaism and Christianity were actually Muslim and Islamic Prophets and gave them Arabic names instead of their Aramaic and Hebrew names. ARABIC NAMES ARE BRACKETED.
​
FASTING“The month of Ramadan [is that] in which was revealed the Quran, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it; and whoever is ill or on a journey – then an equal number of other days. Allah intends for you ease and does not intend for you hardship and [wants] for you to complete the period and to glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you, and perhaps you will be grateful.” (Quran: 21:85)Fasting in Ramadan is one of the 5 pillars of Islam and must be performed if One is fit,healthy, not pregnant,not ill and not menstruating. Islam requires fasting from dawn till dusk in the holy month of Ramadan which is approximately 12 hours in Saudi Arabia. If the authoauthors were in Northern Europe where dawn till dusk can last up to 22-23 hours in the summer months, leaving a 1-2 hour window to eat a day for a whole month, they probably wouldn’t have made this difficult, extremely unhealthy and dangerous task a requirement. The author is also clearly unaware that there are parts of Northern Europe near the North Pole where the sun never sets in the summer months. This phenomenon is colloquially known as the Midnight Sun. For example Svalbard, Norway is known for having a Midnight Sun. In Svalbard, Norway there is no sunset from April to August and no sunlight from November to January. Islam was born 1400 years ago so how would people living in these parts of the world be able before the invention of mechanical clocks 600 years ago is unclear. The Quran makes no provisions for Muslims living in these areas, the Quran states in 6:38- " We did not leave ANYTHING out of this book," this is weird given the fact the Quran is meant to be the perfect,final word from the All-Knowing All-Powerful God who knows about the existence of the midnight sun.
​
THE ONLY ANIMALS,PLANTS, CITIES AND PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE QURAN ARE THE ONES FOUND IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

The only animals and plants mentioned in the Quran are the ones found in the Middle East. Never ones specifically in Australia, Europe, Antarctica North America or South America.
The only cities, nations and continents mentioned in the Quran are the ones found in the Middle East area. Never ones specifically in Australia, Europe, Antarctica North America or South America.
The people mentioned in the Quran all lived in the Middle East area.The Quran doesn’t mention people living in Australia, Europe, Antarctica, North America or South America.
The Quran never mentions smoking even though it was popular and existed in the Americas long before the 7th century when the Quran was written.
All the miracles in the Quran occurred in Saudi Arabia and nowhere else in the world. No miracles from Allah. No miracles in the Quran in Australia, Europe, Antarctica, North America or South America.

ISLAM'S OBSESSION WITH ARABIC AND ARABIAN CULTUREReligions are fabricated by humans, consequently, they are tied and intrinsic to the particular culture it originated from and Islam is no exception. Religious and Non-Religious people agree that 99.99%+ of religions are fabricated by humans as there are thousands of religions that make incompatible claims,each claiming to be sourced from a divine being. Islam is obsessed with Arabic and Arabic culture, every page you turn to you see a reference to Arabic culture, this isn't the case for Christianity. The Majority of people don't think of Israel, Hebrew and Israeli culture when they think of Christianity. Like I said, the more a religion is tied to the culture of whatever society created it, the less likely it is to be legitimate. An omnipresent All-Knowing God wouldn’t care where on earth the primates he gave sentience to come from. A religion that professes its universality and its suitability for all mankind, 81:27 "Verily, this (the Quran) is no less than a Reminder to (all) the 'Alamin (mankind and jinns)," seems rather centred around a specific group of people (Arabs).
All evidence points to the fact Islam and the Quran was a completely made up by Arabic People and/or Muhammad who had no contact with a Deity and other cultures beside Arabic culture adding to the fact it is filled with hundred of contradictions, inconsistencies and scientific inaccuracies. The fictional character ,Allah, was clearly obsessed with Arabs and Arabic culture and couldn't go a few pages without a reference to Arabic culture; this guy is meant to be the creator of the universe. Islam appears to be a local Arab folklore to unite nomads under the banner of one God through the violent political campaign of Muhammad. Islam claims to be global but all knowing Allah forget to send prophets outside of Arab world. The evidence of contradictions, both big and small serves as clear evidence of human tampering. If the Quran came from Muhammad it was nothing more than fabrication from a power hungry megalomaniac, with his claims of divine inspiration being nothing more than an attempt to conquer Arabia and Islam being nothing more than just another false desert cult to emerge from a sea of desert cults.

ISLAM- The belief that an All-Knowing, All-Powerful God decided to reveal his doctrine for mankind, to a 7th century illiterate Arab slave trader(slave and sex slave owner who had regular sex with his 9 year old wife) ,in a cave where no one else was there to verify, through Angel Gabriel over 23 years rather than just beaming it into his brain.
Islam is an extremely Arab-centric religion, it seems as if it was completely made up by an Arabic person/people. The more a religion is tied to the culture of whatever society created it, the less likely it is to be legitimate. An omnipresent All-Knowing God wouldn’t care where on earth the primates he gave sentience to come from. This is what I will be discussing.
​

THE KAABA
The holy site for pilgrimage is very conveniently located in their backyard (Saudi Arabia.) This would be like a religion of Japanese origin claiming the holy site for pilgrimage is in Tokyo. Muslims have to pray towards the Kaaba which is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Pre-Islamic Arabia was extremely underdeveloped and primitive. Literature wasn’t important and credible texts were rare so sometimes historians have to go with the biased Islamic perspective. According to the Abrahamic religions(Islam included), Abraham lived at around 2100-2200BC which is thousands of years before Islam was born in the 7th century. Islamic sources claim Abraham built the Kaaba for Islamic practises and it was his most important accomplishment. However the Bible never mentions the Kaaba and some Muslims claim Allah is the same God of the bible. Strangely the Kaaba was never mentioned in Judaism and Christianity. Only Islamic sources claim Christians and Jews also respected the Kaaba religiously. It was difficult to unify the many sects of Judaism and Christians on many things but not one sect of either religion mentioned the Kaaba. This suggests this idea was entirely fabricated. Islamic sources claim that the Kaaba in Mecca was a well known, important trade centre. Most Historians agree this is false as there was no mention of the Kaaba by the powerful Roman Empire, and the neighbouring Persian Empire and neighbouring Northern African Rulers until the birth of Islam . All historical evidence indicates the Quran was built by Arab Pagans a few centuries before Muhammad, not Abraham, yet again another false Islamic claim made by early Muslim Arabs or Muhammad.
The Zamzam Well is a well located in Mecca, Saudi East of the Kaaba the holiest place in Islam. According to Islam, it is a miraculously generated source of water from God, which sprang spontaneously thousands of years ago when Ibrahim (Abraham's) son Ismael (Ishmael) was left with his mother Hajar (Hagar) in the desert, thirsty and crying. Ibrahim made a request to Allah- 14:37: "{O our Lord! I have made some of my offspring to dwell in an uncultivable valley by Your Sacred House (the Ka'bah at Makkah) in order, O our Lord, that they may perform Salah (prayer). So fill some hearts among men with love towards them, and (O Allah) provide them with fruits so that they may give thanks.}" Muslims believe Zamzam was the first among many fruits provided to Ibrahim by Allah. provided to Ismail and Hajar were in the desert. Very conveniently the Holy Water in Islam is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The water is so holy it is taught to heal diseases and sickness; there is no scientific evidence to support this. This appears to be a knock-off version of a biblical story (one of the many in Islam) where Abraham’s concubine and his son Ishmael were left in the desert of Paran in Palestine. The Hadith Sahih Muslim 31:6046 says that ZamZam water is special, can quench hunger,feed you and make you gain weight;there is of course no scientific evidence to support these claims. Islam makes it appear as if it is a miracle that there is water well in the desert which is expected coming from primitive Arab desert dwellers with little scientific knowledge. Water is underground in most deserts because as rainwater falls, it is absorbed underground and flows through the underground including under a desert.

​
IMPORTANCE OF ARABIC
Allah stated His holy book must be written, memorised and taught in Arabic(conveniently Muhammad's language) to Prophet Muhammad even though there are thousands of other languages in the world. Vulgar Latin or Middle Chinese were the most spoken language in the world in the 7th century when the Quran was revealed,English and Mandarin are the most spoken languages in the 21st century. Only 5% of the world's population today speak Arabic (Arabic is the 5th most spoken language in the world) so it is illogical, confusing and absurd why God wanted "the most important words for mankind" to be specifically delivered in Arabic. If Allah had revealed his doctrine to all cultures and corners of the world, there would be an independently verifiable method to confirm that every language in the world received the same message from the same God. This would be very powerful evidence in favour of Islam. It is a shame he decided against this:
Quranic Verses on Importance of Arabic:
41:3- "A Scripture whereof the verses are in detail, a Lecture in Arabic for people who have knowledge"
7:1: "Alif, Lam, Mim, Sad (These are the names of letters of the Arabic alphabet and in this sequence only Allah knows their meaning here;this is one of Allah's many miracles)."
12:2: "We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran so you people may understand/use reason"
14:44: "We have not sent any Messenger except with the language of his people (Arabic) so he can make things clear to them. Allah misguides anyone He wills and guides anyone He wills. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise."
42:7: "So We have revealed an Arabic Quran to you, in order that you may warn the mother of cities(Mecca) and all who live nearby..."
44:58: "We have made the Quran easy in your language (Arabic) so that they might be reminded."
26:198 - "And if We had revealed it (this Qur'an) unto any of the non-Arabs" - 26:199. "And had Muhammad recited the Quran unto them, they would not have believed in it "
41:44: "If We had made it a foreign Quran, they would have said, ‘If only its verses were clear! What? Foreign speech to an Arab?’ Say, ‘It is guidance and healing for those who have faith, but the ears of the disbelievers are heavy, they are blind to it, it is as if they are being called from a distant place." - Could Allah's book not also be unclear to Non-Arabic speakers which was the vast majority of the world in the 7th century and the 21st century?
Why the Almighty God would have a preference for one language over the thousands of others is unclear. Muslims believe Arabic has a special status in Islam. It is compulsory to learn Arabic to be a Muslim and perform activities like the 5 daily prayers, recite the Shahadah and read the Quran. Millions of Muslims around the world memorise the Quran and verses for prayer which are entirely in Arabic whilst not knowing the meaning of what they are saying when they pray everyday and read the Quran. It is estimated up to 10 million Muslims around the world (the majority not Arabic speaking in countries like Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan) have memorised the whole Quran. Most of them barely understand a word of what they have memorised It seems likely an All-Wise, All-Powerful God would be able to come up with a better way for people to show devotion to Him than reciting words in a foreign language they don’t know. God’s chosen messenger was an Arabic Person. Islam is filled with Key Arabic terms like Hajj, Shahadah, Taqwa, Taraweeh, Ramadan, Zakat and encourages Arabic customs like keeping a beard, eating dates and women covering their hair.
​
SPLITTING OF THE MOON
54:1 The Quran states: "The Hour draws near; the moon is split in two". And if they see a miracle they turn away and say 54:2 "Passing Magic," Sahih Bukhari 4:56:81 Narrated Anas states : \"*That the Meccan people requested Allah's Apostle to show them a miracle, and so he showed them the splitting of the moon."*The Quran and Hadith claim that the people of Mecca,Saudi Arabia asked Muhammad to prove that he had divine powers so he miraculously split the moon into two pieces and then, presumably, put it back together again. There is absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever that the moon has ever been split into two. Since the moon is visible to half the planet at any given time, we should expect to see numerous accounts from different parts of the world attesting to this event if it actually happened. The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Indians had avid astronomers who should have seen this event and recorded it in their histories. The absence of historical record from other civilisations, contemporary to Muhammad, is a strong indication that this event never happened. Yet again another Islamic lie. The Quran states in 4:82 "Do they not then consider the Qur'an carefully? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found some contradictions." The Quran appears to tell us it certainly didn't come from God as we have clearly found a contradiction in the book between what it says and what actually happens/happened in reality as the moon never split. The Quran also says in 2:256 "Whoever believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold(The Quran) that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower." Clearly the Quran is broken and is not trustworthy as it has lied to us and tried to deceive us about Science. The lie of the splitting of the moon disproves many of Allah's 99 names such as AL-HAQQ(The Absolute-Truth,) AR-RASHEED(The Infallible Teacher,) AL-ALEEM (The All-Knowing,) AR-RAQEEB(The Watchful One,) AL-HAKEEM(The All-Wise,) ASH-SHAHEED(The All Observing Witnessing, AL-MAJEED(The Glorious-Most Honourable,) AL-HAMEED(The Praiseworthy,)DHUL-JALAALI WAL-IKRAAM(Possessor of Glory and Honour, Lord of Majesty and Generosity.)
​
​

DESCRIPTIONS OF HEAVEN/PARADISE
The invention of an afterlife by religions such as Islam is to serve our primitive desires to stay alive and is a result of the fear of One's mortality. The invention of an afterlife is also means to satisfy our primal desires to feel pleasure and Islam provides this as it sates in 41:31- "You will have therein(Paradise) whatever yourselves desire, whatever you want." The sole purpose of a Muslim's life is to enter Paradise and according to 29:64- " This life is nothing but diversion and play (to distract you from the ultimate goal of paradise)" The way heaven is described in a religion is usually reflective of the culture the religion originated from; this is expected as religions are fabricated by humans not sourced from divine beings.
The Islamic Paradise (Jannah) is described in the Quran and in Hadiths as a place with lots of magnificent gardens, nice greenery and weirdly obsesses on how there are many rivers and sources of water in Paradise. Here are some verses on the Islamic Paradise:
36:34 - “And We have made (In Paradise) therein gardens of date-palms and grapes and We have caused springs of water to gush forth therein.”
3:193 - “But as to those who are careful of (their duty to) their Lord, they shall have gardens beneath which rivers flow....”
16:31 - “The gardens of perpetuity, they shall enter them, rivers flowing beneath them; they shall have in them what they please...”
47:15 - "The description of Paradise which the righteous have been promised is that in it are rivers of water the taste and smell of which are not changed..."
5:119- "...There are gardens, with rivers flowing beneath – their eternal Home. Allah is well-pleased with them, and they with Allah. That is the great salvation."
9:72- "Allah hath promised to Believers, men and women, gardens under which rivers flow, to dwell therein, and beautiful mansions in gardens of everlasting bliss."
61:12 - “These it is (Paradise) for whom are gardens of perpetuity beneath which rivers flow,”
54:54 - "Verily, The Righteous, will be in the midst of Gardens and Rivers in Paradise."
18: 33. "Each of those two gardens brought forth its produce, and failed not in the least therein, and We caused a river to gush forth in the midst of them."
The fascination with gardens and water appears to be a reasonable depiction of heaven coming from primitive desert dwellers who didn’t have much access to greenery and vast areas of water. Most people don't think of water when they think of a heaven except of course primitive Arabs who lived in the sweltering heat of the desert.
Islam is famous for having an extensive list of things which are forbidden under the religion (Haram) . There are customs like drinking alcohol, gambling, wearing gold and women being able to dress freely, and beautifying one's appearance which was and is part of most cultures including Pre-Islamic Arabia that were subsequently banned under Islam. I believe the reason religions like Islam ban trivial, inconsequential thing like beautifying one’s appearance is because if you can force people to give up something so intrinsic to their society and to being human, it is much easier exercise control. Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: The world is a prison-house for a believer and Paradise for a non-believer. Sahih Muslim 2956. The purpose of tedious rules is to make its adherents cement themselves more concretely to the religion. Muslims are being controlled massively by the the commands of a fictional being(Allah) and unfortunately do not seem to understand that. There is no other reason. The rules do not benefit you but the business. Every time you follow these rules with no evidence they came from a divine being, you are paying another subscription fee until you decide you are being used and drained to the religions benefit, not yours. Muslims are obligated to follow the Quran and it's rules as it is supposedly the word of God- 4:59- "O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger (Muhammad ), and those of you (Muslims) who are in authority and if there is deviation amongst yourselves, refer back to Allah, His Messenger (and Quran ), if you believe in Allah and in the Last Day. That is better and more suitable for final determination."
FASCINATION WITH WINE IN PARADISE
The fascination with wine in the Islamic heaven indicates that the Arabic authoauthors were into alcohol all along. Allah is clearly a confused man who doesn't even understand and abide by his own words as he says in 5:90 that alcohol consumption is the work of Satan but then promises alcohol in heaven for righteous Muslims. 5:90- "O you who believe! Intoxicants (all kinds of alcoholic drinks), gambling, Al-Ansab, and Al-Azlam (arrows for seeking luck or decision) are an abomination of Shaitan's (Satan) handiwork. So avoid (strictly all) that (abomination) in order that you may be successful." It seems weird to condone something in Heaven that you said is bad to do on Earth.Here are Quranic verses on Alcohol in Paradise:
76:5 - "Indeed, the righteous will drink from a cup [of wine] whose mixture is of Kafur."
76:17 - “And they will be given to drink a cup [of wine] whose mixture is of ginger. “
47:15 - “The description of Paradise is that in it are rivers of water the taste and smell of which are not changed; rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine delicious to those who drink; and rivers of clarified honey (clear and pure)....”
FASCINATION WITH WOMEN AND SEX IN PARADISE
The Quran forbids men and women especially women from beautifying themselves, tells men to lower their gaze, tells men and women to be modest in dress and behaviour, and discourages the provocative sexual display of their bodies and and discourages hyper-sexuality however extensively discusses sex and the beauty of the women in heaven. Yet again, it seems weird to condone something in Heaven that you said is bad to do on Earth.
24:31 - “And tell the believing women to lower their gaze (from looking at forbidden things), and protect their private parts (from illegal sexual acts, etc.) and not to show off their adornment except only that which is apparent (like palms of hands or one eye or both eyes for necessity to see the way, or outer dress like veil, gloves, head-cover, apron, etc.), and to draw their veils all over Juyubihinna (i.e. their bodies, faces, necks and bosoms, etc.) and not to reveal their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husband's sons, their brothers or their brother's sons, or their sister's sons, or their (Muslim) women (i.e. their sisters in Islam), or the (female) slaves whom their right hands possess, or old male servants who lack vigour, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And all of you beg Allah to forgive you all, O believers, that you may be successful.”
Here are Quranic Verses regarding the beauty of the women in Paradise:
2:25- “...they shall have therein Azwajun Mutahharatun (purified mates or wives), (having no menses, stools, urine, etc.) and they will abide therein forever.” This means God will provide pure women for men to have sex with in Paradise.
55: 70-“Therein (In Paradise) will be fair (wives) good and beautiful.”
37:48- -“And with them (believing men) will be chaste females, restraining their glances (desiring none except their husbands), with wide and beautiful eyes.” 37:49. “(Delicate and pure) as if they were (hidden) eggs (well) preserved.”
2:25- "Virgins await those who enter paradise."
The obsession and fascination with women's beauty and sex in the Islamic Paradise and lack of regard for female sexuality with no Quranic verses appealing to a Woman’s desire for sexual gratification clearly illustrates this was made up by sexually aroused Arabian Men who were implementing their sexual fantasies into their ideal paradise. It is oddly suspicious that there are no Islamic verses describing the handsome men in Paradise for women. The misogynistic objectification of women by portraying them as commodities and treating them like prizes to be won if One is faithful to Allah is typical of the ideals of the time, where women in most civilisations were treated as second class class citizens and had limited rights compared to men.
Bonus Quranic verses on women in Islam:
4:34- "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion from, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great." This verse means men are in charge of women, because Allah made men to be better than women. Women must obey men, and if they refuse they must be punished. Refuse to have sex with them and beat them into submission.
2:223- "Men,your women are soil for you (to cultivate/farm) so go to your soil as you please, and send (good deeds) before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will (one day) meet Him. Give glad tidings to believers, (O Muhammad)." In the mind of Allah, women are like a dirty field for men to put their penises through. Plough them whenever you like (as long as they're not menstruating, of course.)
4:24- "Also forbidden for men to marry are women already married, except those whom your right hands possess(captive women aka sex slaves)." This verse means Allah permits men having sex slaves.
OBSESSION WITH DATES
Islam has stressed the holiness of the date and the date palm more than any other religion. In fact, the Prophet Muhammad said that Ajwah dates—grown in the Madinah region of Saudi Arabia—are from paradise. The date palm, mentioned more than any other fruit-bearing plant in the Quran 22 times is a symbol often associated with Muslims. Muhammad argued that seven dates in the morning protected one from poison and witchcraft. The Quran states that Mary was advised to eat dates while in labour with Jesus, to ease childbirth and strengthen the body. The Prophet was once reported to have said, “People in a house without dates are in a state of hunger.”
Some of the many Islamic verses on date-palms:
The Hadith - Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 3464 states: “ The prophet says: whoever says: Glory is to Allah the Magnificent, and with His Praise, a date-palm tree is planted for him in Paradise.”
36:34 - “And We have made (In Paradise) therein gardens of date-palms and grapes, and We have caused springs of water to gush forth therein.”
55:11 - ”Therein are fruits, date-palms producing sheathed fruit-stalks (enclosing dates)."(This verse means thankfully Allah has provided humans with date-palms on Earth)
17:91- "Or you have a garden of date-palms and grapes, and cause rivers to gush forth in their midst abundantly."
55:68- "In them (both) will be fruits, and date-palms and pomegranates."
80:29- "And olives and date palms"
54:20- "Plucking out men as if they were uprooted stems of date-palms."(Allah bragging about the punishment and torment he inflicted on innocent disbelievers using a strong wind)
It seems very convenient and oddly suspicious that God has created a special status for date-palms in his religion and talks about dates an awful lot, given the fact dates are a staple food in Saudi Arabia (It’s eaten regularly and mass produced in the Arabic World). It is very easy for a culture that loves and places great value on dates to then say that God also gives dates a special status. Why the creator of the universe would have a liking to the common fruit in the Middle East over all the thousands of fruits that exist is unclear. It would be suspicious if the God of a religion of Japanese origin claimed Sushi is a holy,special food and described how much sushi there would be in heaven e.g "For those that believe, there will be plates of sushi for them in Paradise."

​
PORK
The Quran offers no explanation as to why pork is impure is it states in 6:145 when God says, in reference to the flesh of swine (pig), “for that surely it is impure.” Arabs generally didn’t eat pork and thought it was an unclean animal before Islam came so it was very convenient that Allah said Muslims shouldn’t eat pork as it was unclean and impure. This highlights how the Arabs were scientifically illiterate and didn't know proper cooking kills pathogens. Why would the creator of the universe view some foods the mere humans he created eat as disgusting but others perfectly fine for them to eat. This seems like a human trait that is usually dependent on One's culture. For example, a person from the USA may view eating snails and horse meat as disgusting whilst a person from France may view this as perfectly normal.
​

SPREAD OF ISLAM
Islam was spread by Arab Conquest & War and Arab traders. The most Islamic regions of the world are in the Middle East/Arabic countries. Doesn't Allah know his "beautiful words of wisdom" for mankind would be spread through violent ways and evil dictators who forced it upon lands they conquered. Allah is All-Knowing, Benevolent and All-Powerful therefore he could have stopped these from happening or created a better way for his doctrine to spread through Mankind. Quran 2:256 states: "There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path." and 15:9 states: "Verily We: It is We Who have sent down the Dhikr (i.e. the Qur'an) and surely, We will guard it (from corruption.)" This verse clearly means the All-Powerful Allah and his Angels dramatically failed on their promise to protect the Quran from corruption and misuse as we know how much evil that has been committed in the name of the Quran throughout history especially given the infamous rise of Radical Islamic Terrorism over the last few decades. 99% of all terrorist attacks that occurred throughout the world from 2010-2020 were Islam related. This disproves many of Allah's 99 names such as AL-MUHAYMIN(The Preserver of Safety,) AR-RASHEED(The Guide, Infallible Teacher,) AL-HAQQ(The Absolute Truth,) AL-AZIZ(All Powerful,) AL-MUHAYMIN AL-‘ALEEM(The All-Knowing.) Doesn't Allah realise that by revealing his doctrine exclusively to Arabs, he engineered the cultural isolation of the rest of the world from his doctrine, he engineered the circumstances of Unbelievers' disbelief that live in the far corners of the world like South America,New Zealand and the Pacific/Remote Islands of the world therefore he created a punishment (Hell) for a situation he knowingly created. It is very suspicious that Allah is Arabic-speaking, Arab-centric, yet will punish non Arabs millenniums later for not believing the message they received through a game of telephone.

The Quran also arrogantly claims that key figures: Jesus(Isa), Abraham(Ibrahim), Noah(Nuh), David(Dawud), Ishmael(Ismail), Isaac(Ishaq), Joseph(Yusuf), Ezekiel(Dhulkifl), Moses(Musa), Solomon(Sulayman) ,Jacob(Yaqub) in the centuries old religions of Judaism and Christianity were actually Muslim and Islamic Prophets and gave them Arabic names. ARABIC NAMES ARE BRACKETED.
​

FASTING
“The month of Ramadhan [is that] in which was revealed the Quran, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it; and whoever is ill or on a journey – then an equal number of other days. Allah intends for you ease and does not intend for you hardship and [wants] for you to complete the period and to glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you, and perhaps you will be grateful.” (Quran: 21:85)
Fasting in Ramadan is one of the 5 pillars of Islam and must be performed if One is fit,healthy, not pregnant,not ill and not menstruating. Islam requires fasting from dawn till dusk in the holy month of Ramadan which is approximately 12 hours in Saudi Arabia. If the authoauthors were in Northern Europe where dawn till dusk can last up to 22-23 hours in the summer months, leaving a 1-2 hour window to eat a day for a whole month, they probably wouldn’t have made this difficult, extremely unhealthy and dangerous task a requirement. The author is also clearly unaware that there are parts of Northern Europe near the North Pole where the sun never sets in the summer months. This phenomenon is colloquially known as the Midnight Sun. For example Svalbard, Norway is known for having a Midnight Sun. In Svalbard, Norway there is no sunset from April to August and no sunlight from November to January. Islam was born 1400 years ago so how would people living in these parts of the world be able before the invention of mechanical clocks 600 years ago is unclear. The Quran makes no provisions for Muslims living in these areas, the Quran states in 6:38- " We did not leave ANYTHING out of this book," this is weird given the fact the Quran is meant to be the perfect,final word from the All-Knowing All-Powerful God who knows about the existence of the midnight sun.

​
THE ONLY ANIMALS,PLANTS, CITIES AND PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE QURAN ARE THE ONES FOUND IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

The only animals and plants mentioned in the Quran are the ones found in the Middle East. Never ones specifically in Australia, Europe, Antarctica North America or South America.
The only cities, nations and continents mentioned in the Quran are the ones found in the Middle East area. Never ones specifically in Australia, Europe, Antarctica North America or South America.
The people mentioned in the Quran all lived in the Middle East area.The Quran doesn’t mention people living in Australia, Europe, Antarctica, North America or South America.
The Quran never mentions smoking even though it was popular and existed in the Americas long before the 7th century when the Quran was written.
All the miracles in the Quran occurred in Saudi Arabia and nowhere else in the world. No miracles from Allah. No miracles in the Quran in Australia, Europe, Antarctica, North America or South America.

​

ISLAM'S OBSESSION WITH ARABIC AND ARABIAN CULTURE
Religions are fabricated by humans, consequently, they are tied and intrinsic to the particular culture it originated from and Islam is no exception. Religious and Non-Religious people agree that 99.99%+ of religions are fabricated by humans as there are thousands of religions that make incompatible claims,each claiming to be sourced from a divine being. Islam is obsessed with Arabic and Arabic culture, every page you turn to you see a reference to Arabic culture, this isn't the case for Christianity. The Majority of people don't think of Israel, Hebrew and Israeli culture when they think of Christianity. Like I said, the more a religion is tied to the culture of whatever society created it, the less likely it is to be legitimate. An omnipresent All-Knowing God wouldn’t care where on earth the primates he gave sentience to come from. A religion that professes its universality and its suitability for all mankind, 81:27 "Verily, this (the Quran) is no less than a Reminder to (all) the 'Alamin (mankind and jinns)," seems rather centred around a specific group of people (Arabs).

​
All evidence points to the fact Islam and the Quran was a completely made up by Arabic People and/or Muhammad who had no contact with a Deity and other cultures beside Arabic culture adding to the fact it is filled with hundred of contradictions, inconsistencies and scientific inaccuracies. The fictional character ,Allah, was clearly obsessed with Arabs and Arabic culture and couldn't go a few pages without a reference to Arabic culture; this guy is meant to be the creator of the universe. Islam appears to be a local Arab folklore to unite nomads under the banner of one God through the violent political campaign of Muhammad. Islam claims to be global but all knowing Allah forget to send prophets outside of Arab world. The evidence of contradictions, both big and small serves as clear evidence of human tampering. If the Quran came from Muhammad it was nothing more than fabrication from a power hungry megalomaniac, with his claims of divine inspiration being nothing more than an attempt to conquer Arabia and Islam being nothing more than just another false desert cult to emerge from a sea of desert cults.
PS: I am Ex-Muslim

Spoilers ahead.
Connoisseurs of film are undoubtedly well-aware of La Nouvelle Vague, aka, the ‘New Wave’—an experimental movement in filmmaking with its origins in the French cinema of the 1950s, with an emphasis on exploration of personal themes such as existentialism, iconoclasm and absurdism. Although the ‘New Wave’ is considered to have met its chronological end in the late 1960s, to be followed by successive movements like ‘New Hollywood’, ‘Cinema Novo’ and ‘Dogme 95’, the influence of la nouvelle vague continues to be keenly felt in the artistic masterpieces of Bollywood production house YRF. Under the skillful hand of renowned auteur Aditya Chopra, the studio has produced a lineup of commercially successful arthouse flicks that continue the French filmmaking renaissance of the ‘50s, successfully infusing avant-garde storytelling techniques with high production values and modern Indian themes. Nowhere is this revolutionary vision more evident than in films like DDLJ (a masterpiece in abstract, absurdist storytelling), Mohabbatein (a sensitive examination of the taboo topic of attitudes towards adolescent self-gratification), Kal Ho Naa Ho (an ambitious adaptation of historian David McCullough’s book 1776), Jab Tak Hai Jaan (a religio-philosophical drama that engages in debate upon the tenets of Christianity, Shaivism, and the cultural taboo of Kala Pani) and, of course, the Dhoom franchise.
As YRF’s most popular franchise, the Dhoom series has, with each installment, made great independent strides in cinematic theory and practice. Although—as read above—YRF films explore a wide, varying range of topics as a whole, the Dhoom franchise focuses exclusively on the examination and discussion of economic and socio-economic matters of policy and practice in the Indian context. Over the course of 3 films, the discourse acquires a rich depth, with the analysis of issues including the economic costs and benefits of national highway construction, the clash between entrepreneurial aspirations and the security of bureaucratic employment, the 2008 economic recession in the BRICS context, and the causes and consequences of non-performing bank loans and a profiling of defaulters of on said loans. Indeed, a first course on Indian economics at any prestigious institution may well be framed around careful viewing and discussion of the Dhoom films. In the careful hands of Aditya Chopra and Vijay Krishna Acharya (Dhoom 1/2/3, Tashan, Thugs of Hindostan), each Dhoom film achieves a delicate balance between the overt cops-and-robbers heist story and the covert exploration of complex economic schools of thought.
As the 1st film in the franchise, Dhoom (2004) establishes the storytelling framework for the films to come, and by itself explores the challenges and opportunities presented by Indian economic policymaking in the early ‘00s. The film features an all-round star-studded cast, with support from Honorary Roadie & Stardust Awards nominee Esha Deol, Star’s Sabsey Award winner Rimi Sen, and Indian Telly Award nominee Arav Chowdharry. At the film’s helm are Lions Club Award winner John Abraham, Sansui Award winner Abhishek Bachchan, and Emmy nominee Uday Chopra. Series regulars Bachchan and Chopra play Jai and Ali respectively, Jai being a policeman and Ali a small-time mechanic with a penchant for fast bikes and disinterested women. Abraham essays the villainous role of Kabir, part-time restaurant waiter and part-time leader of a gang of biker thieves.
The film begins with a series of daring heists pulled off by Kabir’s gang, relying on their high-speed bikes to orchestrate sudden thefts and promptly escape the scene soon after. Their exploits catch the eye of Jai, a lifetime appointee to the post of Assistant Commissioner of Police. Jai, however, finds himself out of his depth and through a series of accidents, makes the acquaintance of Ali, a mildly-seedy mechanic and bike racer. Initially reluctant to be associated with law enforcement, Ali is eventually induced to join Jai’s cause and attempt to chase down Kabir and his merry band of men. Dhoom is slow and deliberate in its setup, and the film’s early minutes are heavy on subtext and detail, therefore, it is essential to take in the plot in small increments, so as to be thorough with one’s analysis.
In an allegorical sense, Jai, as a police officer, represents bureaucratic authority and the security, comforts and powers of government employment. Abraham’s Kabir, as a thief, is a laissez-faire capitalist, relying on his material advantage in the form of fast bikes and his manpower advantage in the form of skilled bikers to partake in a series of one-sided transactions with economic entities such as banks and government funds. In this sense, the act of robbery in Dhoom is merely a transaction between two private parties wherein one side gains an unfair amount at the other’s expense, absent external interventionism. In addition to being a free-market advocate, Kabir is also an employee at a pizza parlour, which seems to be the film’s attempt at exploring both the growing role of the service economy as a share of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the amorphous nature of employment within the modern ‘gig’ economy. Caught between the competing ideas of state-control and free capitalism, Chopra’s Ali is a stand-in for the directionless youth, lured by the safety and dignity of a government job, whilst simultaneously seduced by the potential for greater wealth presented by free-market capitalism. The film’s plot is overt in this depiction, with Ali simultaneously fearful of Jai’s authority, yet desirous of wielding said authority as an employed policeman. Furthermore, in an action sequence set in Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar—a flea market specializing in illegally-hawked goods—Jai and Ali get into a fight with goons in the market, and are forced to make a hasty escape after being outnumbered. Ali bringing Jai to the market illustrates his ties to the informal, underground economy—a large, undocumented component of the Indian economy—and Jai’s subsequent fleeing the scene highlights the failed outcome of government attempts to regulate this grey economy by force and bluster.
Initially at a loss for clues, Jai is eventually able to deduce that Kabir’s bikers arrange their heists in close proximity to highways, providing as the highways do quick getaways after. This is no doubt an allusion to the economic importance of the National Highways Authority of India’s flagship ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ national highway construction project. Kabir, the raw capitalist, is empowered in his capitalistic pursuits by the government’s infrastructure investments, and John Abraham’s moody expression throughout the film is in no small part perhaps due to the discontentment within Kabir’s mind about his enterprise’s dependence on resources provided by the state. Having deduced Kabir’s MO, Jai and Ali attempt to catch him in the act. However, Kabir and his gang appear to have substantially faster bikes than Jai and Ali, which is undoubtedly an allusion to the government’s perceived ineptitude and inability to generally compete with private enterprise. Left chafing and chasing the dust, Jai catches a lucky break when an overconfident Kabir offers him a clue about his upcoming crime, with the catch being that if Jai fails to avert it, he must recuse himself from the case and leave Kabir to his entrepreneurial pursuits. Kabir, the staunch capitalist, is here hinting at the idea of termination clauses in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), agreements between enterprises and governments for mutual benefit. Whilst the government naturally retains the right to sever the partnership at any point, Kabir clearly believes that he, as the private party, is also entitled to terminate the contract should the government, aka Jai, default on the agreed-upon terms. Formally known as the ‘Authority Default’ concept, Dhoom represents this idea in the form of a simple, easy to understand challenge between Jai and Kabir.
Even as this layered conflict plays out between Jai and Kabir, Ali is enamoured by the mysterious ‘Dilbara’ (Esha Deol). Little is known about Dilbara, however, like other characters in the film, it may be reasonably assumed than she is also an allegorical depiction of an economic concept. Ali’s infatuation with her suggests that she is perhaps intended to be portrayed as a vague, undefined avenue of aspirational employment. Furthermore, the fact that she (as is later revealed) is in fact a part of Kabir’s gang, yet also harbours feelings for Ali, leads one to conclude that Dilbara represents a form of compromise between dirigisme, aka restrictive state-controlled economy, and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalism. The filmmakers leave the specifics of this compromise vague, however, Dilbara’s skimpy outfits perhaps represent the scantiness of opportunities presented by this nebulous alternative.
Returning to the main plot, Jai, despite being forewarned, fails to foil Kabir’s next robbery, despite being able to take down one of his gang in the process. Left short of a gang member, Kabir attempts to recruit Ali, left sidelined by Jai following their failure to catch Kabir. The jilted Ali readily embraces Kabir’s neoliberal worldview and the duo jet off to Goa, where Kabir has his eyes set on one final score from a casino. Subtextually, the casino and gambling in general represent what is in Kabir’s eyes an essential component of his brand of capitalism—rampant speculation and volatility that may be manipulated to one’s benefit. There may also be an addition reference to British academic Susan Strange’s seminal 1986 work Casino Capitalism, a critique of unregulated banking and financial systems. However, Kabir is more likely than not to be derisive of such thoughts, and therefore, if this reference was intended, it may merely be made to indicate the filmmakers’ complete mastery over both Keynesian and Austrian schools of economic thought.
The importance of dance numbers in YRF films cannot be overstated. Even as Bollywood music gravitates towards being little more than catchy jingles designed to elicit maximum publicity, the music and dance numbers in YRF films complement the plot perfectly, serving to both entertain and narrate. Dhoom is no exception to this tradition of excellence. On the eve of Kabir’s final heist, an inebriated Jai shows up at the casino, claiming to have left police employment and moved on. Kabir, however, is rightly suspicious, given as Jai is still a cop, and is merely attempting to lure Kabir into a false sense of comfort as a prelude to catching him in the act. This Jai accomplishes by putting on a song-and-dance in front of Kabir to convince him of his abandonment of state-sponsored socialism and his embrace of Kabir’s unrestrained capitalism. The song is entitled ‘Salamee’, a clever homophone of ‘salami’, a sausage that consists primary of beef. The consumption of beef was, in a landmark 2005 Supreme Court judgement, forbidden on grounds on anti cow-slaughter laws. Kabir, as an opponent of government intervention, would likely have been opposed to the idea of such a restriction being imposed upon him. Therefore, to show his solidarity to the cause, Jai takes to the stage in front of Kabir and sways to the refrain of “Naye kal ko aao kare, hum karein, karein/Salami, salami, salami/Kar le salami…”.
The subterfuge is apparently successful, and a placated Kabir is lulled into a false sense of security by Jai’s reinforcement of his worldview. However, as mentioned, Jai’s conversion is little more than a ruse, and a hoodwinked Kabir is successfully caught in the act by Jai and Ali, who is revealed to have been Jai’s mole all along. The ever-slippery Kabir, however, weasels his way out of Jai’s clutches, and flees with his loot. Although Dhoom 3 would better address the phenomenon of loan defaulters taking flight from the verge of captivity, Dhoom too takes a cursory look at the occurrence, although Kabir does not quite embody a loan defaulter. He is merely the free-market capitalist, the robber baron caught flouting regulations and fleeing from the consequences of government intervention. A long chase sequence ensues, with Kabir fleeing but ultimately cornered by Jai and Ali at the precipice of a sea-facing cliff. Facing a choice between certain captivity and death, Kabir chooses to fly off the cliff with the last of his loot. In a literal sense, Kabir merely dies by falling off the cliff into the sea. In a figurative sense, faced with the prospect of his enterprise being forced to comply with ungainly regulations, Kabir chooses instead to offshore his business, and make for better waters, thus bringing his character arc to a natural and satisfying conclusion. A frustrated Jai bemoans his end, representing the government’s exasperation at ultimately failing to bring a rogue enterprise to heel. Ali, having seen his capitalistic expectations dive off a cliff with Kabir, chooses in the film’s final shot, to finally pursue the path to safe, steady, state-sponsored employment after all, asking Jai if he finally is a bona-fide police officer, as the film fades to black.
The topical nature of Dhoom is a cause for admiration, even a decade and a half after its release. The film successfully ties together strands of economic and socio-economic thought from its time—the ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ project received a major fillip in the first years of the new millennium, the service sector encountered a boom around the same time, as did the contribution of outsourcing to employment and economic growth. The rise of men like Kabir is perfectly timed in the post-License Raj years, as the country embraced capitalism over state socialism. Yet, the lure of stable, ‘safe’ government employment holds true, and powers men like Jai and seduces men like Ali. Dilbara’s unknown fate at the end of the film—left waiting for Ali by the side of a road—is representative of the uncertain outcomes of economic models with time. On a meta note, the Dhoom franchise’s casting of Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra in every film is a nod to the ‘Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ of 2005, a flagship government initiative that guarantees employment for a certain number of days out of the year, in the form of unskilled labour.
In summation, Dhoom rightly deserves its place as a seminal film in the annals of both YRF and Indian cinema. In its own right, it is a bold, experimental film that marries erudition to entertainment. It is also the progenitor of its celebrated franchise, providing the springboard from which future films would explore similar issues in an equally deft and precise fashion. To YRF, the Dhoom franchise, and Indian cinema, the film Dhoom is nothing short of a bottle of nitrous oxide, that when attached to a bike, propels it into the stratosphere.

PAGE 2 of 2
**** * ****
Hussein nudged his brother Iqbal and aimed his chin toward the bar. “Look, a fat, stupid American has finally managed some success.”
Iqbal smirked, “It is the only way the infidels can succeed. They have no education and no skills to do anything useful. They don’t even worship their own God anymore, only money and fame. They will soon learn better…”
The brothers were out enjoying a night of revelry, with a few more planned when they reached the city. The celebrations were a last reward before they fulfilled their mission and achieved True Paradise through martyrdom. Hussein was superstitious and hoped to find success at gambling before they took the great risk that if successful, would help to sustain their cause. They’d grown up in this land of debauchery and foolishness but had been taught from the first to honor their own Beliefs and culture above anything the Americans professed.
Hussein was on roll number five of what he intended to be a short run. He wished to win five times for the Five Pillars of Islam, the name of his cell in the latest great Jihad. He blew on the dice and tossed. The small cubes bounced against the back side of the pit and tumbled end over end as he watched breathlessly. “Another ten!” the barker called. And pushed the winnings toward Hussein. He placed a minimum bet and rolled once more. He had already left the table before the barker called, “Snakeyes! Next roller please.”
He held up his chips triumphantly, “Iqbal, more money from roll number five! I kept the bet in place for five rolls, I left only the minimum for the last roll, it is a Sign! We are fated to succeed. We will meet the others tomorrow, go over the plan, and then have a few last nights to revel in this world…”
Iqbal patted his brother on the shoulder, “There is something I would like more than winning chips. He nodded toward the bar and the attractive and sinuous young local who worked behind it, steadily polishing glasses.
Hussein watched for a moment, unsure whether his brother meant the alcoholic drinks that had been forbidden until now or the woman. Knowing Iqbal, he assumed both. “As you wish brother. Take your mortal enjoyments while you can. She looks a little sullen though, frown, lowered brows, I like the happy ones.”
Iqbal’s serpent-like smile widened, “She will look better when I have freed her from the miseries of the uncircumcised. She will enjoy a real man. Who knows? Maybe I will convert her so that we can meet again in Paradise.” With that, he surged away from his brother and slithered up to the bar opposite the young First Nations maid. “Good evening, I noticed that you do not have many customers at the bar. It seems odd that so beautiful a creature as yourself would not attract more company.”
The woman ignored him, intently focused on her task. He tried again, “Perhaps I must order a drink to remain at the bar? If so, a gin and tonic if you please.”
She continued to polish the glass. He leaned forward, “Did you hear me?” he inquired in an annoyed tone. “Perhaps you have no business because you are surly and unhelpful.”
She looked at him and delivered a smirk that appeared to be far more evil than anything he could ever hope to muster, despite his thin, reptilian lips and predatory mind, “We don’t want customers to linger at the bar, getting drunk and building from misery to anger over their losses. We want them playing… and losing.” She leaned toward him and glared into his own eyes that he normally considered flinty and daunting. “You know about losing, don’t you?”
Hussein noted that the large man at the end of the bar in the “Security” shirt had begun stumping toward them. “Iqbal, perhaps it is time to go look for other entertainment.”
Iqbal ignored him, he was trapped in the serpent’s gaze, like a mouse dropped into a snake’s tank to be devoured while its owner watched with perverse interest. Hussein reached for his brother to tug at his arm but never got the chance. The big security officer seized his hand, drew it to his too wide chest and turned. The weight of the man drew him away from his brother and caused him to spin around so that he ended up facing the goon with his brother beyond the man and in the clutches of the Serpent Woman. The ham-fisted gargantuan continued to twist the hand he gripped until the pressure caused Hussein sever pain. He grunted and bent into the angle of his wrist to relieve the distress. He found himself bent forward and looking up desperately toward the man’s face.
The security staffer smiled, his square, blunt teeth showing dark behind an almost lipless mouth. His wide back and chest, covered in body armor under his shirt made him appear like a monster-sized… Turtle. Hussein felt himself lifted and placed behind the bar. His brother soon slithered over the top and fell to the floor beside him, smiling beatifically. Hussein opened his mouth to scream for help, but a large, blunt fist crashed into the side of his head and he saw stars… seven of them, like the Holy... The fist descended once more, and he saw only darkness.
**** * ****
Fr. Danilo Bayani was immensely enjoying his latest trip to the continental USA. He had visited Hawaii many years ago, and New York City more recently, but this was his first tour of the grand landbound spaces that this country offered. He’d managed to roam so far from his origins in Manila. Now, in his twilight years, he longed to see what he could of God’s Green Earth. All on the payroll of The Vatican while they cleanse the records of those hateful… allegations. The bitter thoughts raced across his mind. Of course he was a sinner, he was only mortal. He’d been expiated of those sins and had paid an enormous price to continue serving in his capacity as a parish priest. He forced his mind to return to the moment and more enjoyable pursuits.
He noted the hirsute and similar appearing pair of men who had gone to the bar and wondered why the Security officer approached them, but his attention was called once more to the round of Texas Hold’em and his table mates. When he again had a moment to look, no one was at the bar, in front or behind… curious, he thought, but he quickly refocused his attention on the fascinating new game he was in the process of learning. He was familiar with Poker, so it wasn’t difficult to learn. He liked the high level of interaction that this version of the old game allowed. He’d done well, certainly gained enough to fund extracurricular activities during the rest of his current sabbatical.
He’d been disturbed by the overall atmosphere of this place when he’d arrived. He did not care for the numerous paintings and sculptures of Ancient Native Deities and Spirits. They seemed to be mostly images of the Dark Beings of various Tribal cultures. He loved to study diverse cultures, but this place was an amalgamation of cultures, built for mutual support by several Tribes in the region. Much of the artwork was schlocky and clearly intended to cater to the garish and sordid tastes of the vapid gambling set. Some part of him did not feel… welcome, as though he had intruded on some private Place, set aside for Other Gods.
He shook off the depressing musings… There are NO Other Gods, he reassured himself. He soon stepped away from the table to take care of personal needs and to decide what he should do with the rest of his night. Perhaps he would visit the White Dove Restaurant & Ballroom on the other side of the hotel lobby from the casino. It boasted a good reputation according to online reviews, even though it was a simple buffet style with a dance floor to one side. He liked the name, it was… peaceful he decided.
He soon had a selection of food piled onto a plate and was seated near the dance floor. The place was sparsely occupied, so his hopes of being able to watch dancers as he ate were dashed. Still, the food was good enough. A little bland, but that was necessary in a place that acted as a crossroads of cultures. There was a spice table at the end of the primary row of entrees. He’d helped himself, yet nothing seemed to attach to his taste buds. The combination of eating nearly alone, having no one with energy around him, and the tasteless food soon had him growing restless. He finished up his repast and left the table to go out to the final section of the complex he had not visited, the River Overlook.
As he passed the table nearest the entrance, he saw a stout man in a rumpled sport coat, who glared daggers at him, eyes focused on his crucifix, the only outward sign of his profession. The man appeared to be so hostile, that he paused for a moment to determine whether he’d done anything to offend the fellow. “Excuse me sir, have I offended you in some way?”
The man looked startled. He was apparently unused to being confronted about his demeanor or behavior. He scowled, “Don’t like that thing you have around your neck. You Catholics are all Hell-bound. No concept of righteousness. Not that you’d understand, you people don’t even read The Book. You listen to your priests and pope and disregard The Word. All the kneeling and ritual prayers in the world won’t save you in the end. Go back to your idols and beads and leave me alone to seek Heaven.”
Fr. Bayani was startled by the vehemence with which the man spoke. He hadn’t been attacked directly for his Faith in years. “Sir, I’m not sure what Religion you practice, but I am a man of God, a consecrated priest of the Holy Church. I assure you that I understand more than most, if not as much as I would like. I meant no harm and wish you a peaceful night.”
With that, he started to walk past the man, but the man rose from his table and pointed his finger, “Your pope is the Anti-Christ, and your Church is a place of Satan! Look to the Bible for your salvation before it’s too late.”
Fr. Bayani increased his pace and continued on his journey to the River Overlook. He would need the peace and tranquility that nature and the sound of flowing water would provide to settle his roiling mind.
**** * ****
Pastor Bill resumed his seat and shook his head, “Fool, doesn’t know that he’s risking his soul, courting Damnation.” He’d had a bad run at the tables over at the casino. His Denomination frowned on games of chance, but he had needed the money. One of his congregation had come up pregnant and they had to get it resolved before the three-month deadline for abortions. He knew that if his wife found out about Carmen, then she would divorce him. He was here to break every major rule that he professed to hold dear each week. His plan for quick money had failed, so he’d visited the bar. Now he hoped that eating would guide him back to sobriety. He had to think of another plan.
Seeing that… priest had annoyed him. Had he not been inebriated, he would never have said what he did, nor stared so rudely in the first place. Yet he wanted someone on whom to vent the anger he felt, that arose from fear and he’d always disliked the papists. If his wife divorced him, if the scandal involving the woman who cleaned the church all week and then occupied the back pew every Sunday ever broke; he would lose his ministry, his livelihood. His degree in Theology would be worthless. He might be able to get a job teaching, at some secular school, but most would not hire fervent Christians like himself.
He stared dejectedly at his plate of food that had contained more spice and flavors than he liked, a shadow passed in his periphery. It was low-slung and blurred just a bit as it loped along the wall. He thought he heard an odd laugh, somewhere between human and… canine? Maybe a little like a hyena might sound, or so he imagined. There was a manic quality to the laughter. A jest that was on him so that only the other Entity knew what it was. It was the wicked laughter of children at play, who’d decided to target a fat kid with glasses. A kid whose parents had been abusive addicts but who later “got right” through religious-based recovery programs. Their faith had led him to his own, but he’d never really lost those early traumas of being unaccepted by his peers and being beaten by people who later professed faith above all.
A mocking whine, definitely doggish, his now sobering consciousness informed him. Something was making fun of him, teasing him from the shadows. He looked around for staff members or other customers but found himself alone. The dining area and the dance floor were deserted. It was odd, there was almost always someone at the buffet service tables. He looked over to the kitchen doors in hopes that one of the employees would burst through with a fresh serving of chicken wings or whatever tray had been emptied. He saw dark figures move past the clouded round windows on the swinging doors and temporarily occlude the bright kitchen lights within, but they were indistinct blobs, and appeared to be focused on tasks of their own choosing rather than service of his needs.
He stood and realized that he was more intoxicated than he’d realized. He immediately resumed his seat and bent forward to regain his balance and bearings… and to swallow his rising gorge. When he sat up again, a dark, shaggy form perched in the chair across from him. The figure was no more than a silhouette, a raggedly hewn shadow. Yet there were eyes. Sinister golden gleams appeared and blinked at him. He heard a heavy, panting sort of breathing and a gust of foul-smelling carnivore breath assaulted his olfactory senses. “Who? Er, what are you doing at my table?” he asked in a mushy, confused manner. Still fighting off waves of nausea.
He could not see it very well in the poorly illuminated dining room, but his impression was that the... Being… smiled at him: a gaping, lolling smile, with a tongue dangling out to one side and sharp canines gleaming. “I thought I would check on you my righteous friend. You seem to be upset, unhappy. You nipped and barked at that other person who shares your Faith. I thought perhaps there was a deeper concern preying on your conscience?”
Pastor Bill had to force himself to think through what this… person? Had said to him. Likely some hippie-dippy weirdo. “That guy was a Catholic priest, we’re nowhere near the same Religion.”
Once more he heard the chortling laughter that was now very clear, “I’m sure you think it’s different. Those of his specific religion, came to these lands many years ago. They were the first of you Christians to arrive. The rest have been simple variations on a theme. The problems began, when your co-religionists assumed that only your God exists; that all of the local Gods and Spirits were instead Demons and Dark Powers. Instead of trying to show that yours is a better Way, you Christians insisted that yours is the only Way. You’ve forgotten that in Ancient Times, people held True to Deities who were attached to local communities or to the land and features around them; geographically and ethnically relevant. You have gone from subsuming and incorporating Older Gods as Angels and Saints, to Demonizing Them, and now in your hubris, to denying Them altogether.” He shook His head. “Too bad really, it creates an Adversarial relationship.” He chuckled at some joke that Pastor Bill was still too drunk to comprehend.
Pastor Bill had grown increasingly fearful as the Voice intoned Its Philosophies. He wanted to refute that Voice, to deny Its very Existence. Yet he feared Its Wrath more than anything he’d ever feared, even the Fires of Hell. Instead of making a stand and arguing his faith, he staggered to his feet and ran, stumbled, blindly toward the kitchen and the pale, ghostly figures within. Surely someone within would save him! The sardonic laughter chortled after him and chased him into the too bright lights, descending into the yips and howls of Coyote even as the doors swung shut behind him. He looked around at the glowing white figures who halted in their various progresses to stare at him. Their eyes! There were none, just empty sockets, faces slack, with gaping, lamprey maws. He heard a new sound as they swarmed him… his own forlorn screams of ultimate agony.
**** * ****
Fr. Bayani stood out on the River Overlook platform and enjoyed the solitude that had so recently left him restless. There were plenty of noises out across the flowing torrent: the water itself, as it passed over hidden objects, fish as they leapt from its embrace to kiss the night air, frogs and insects, and the warbling, mournful sounds of a loon, and the soft sigh of the wind as it passed through the verdant landscape. This is much more peaceful than the White Dove he thought. He had some trouble shaking off ruminations on the verbal assault from the strange, possibly drunken man in the restaurant. He decided that he would pray for the man, that he would one day soon find The True Faith. Sometimes that was all one could do for the short-sighted.
He heard a deep, coughing hiss out in the dark. He was startled but quickly realized that it was an American Alligator, cousin to creatures he had observed in many places around the planet. He was truly content, at one with Nature in all Her Glory… in all the natural splendor of Creation! he immediately corrected himself. A sound impinged on his senses as it slowly rose and obscured the others… it was a lapping sound at first, more like ocean waves on a beach than the banks of a river. Waves, at cross purposes to the flow of the river, slapped at the base of the platform. Soon they sounds evolved into splashes, as if something very large approached the River Overlook platform. He leaned over the rail to have a closer look. Perhaps it was a large water creature or a boat… maybe a ‘gator as the locals called the big reptiles.
He peered down at the dim rippling surface below. At first, he was unable to discern anything but small reflections on the water as it swirled and lapped; then from below the surface, he spotted an eye, a too large eye! It glowed from within with a sickly luminescence akin to that produced by deep growing fungi. As he stared in horror, he saw a mouth gape below the eye, and enormous frog-like opening with no teeth but serrated lips, like some monstrous catfish. As he stared, too much in shock to act, he suddenly felt his body wrapped in strong, leprous flesh and he quickly lost his ability to breathe. The last sight he saw before he plunged over the safety rail was the thin, grey, first light of dawn.
**** * ****
Chief Harry Whitehorse gazed around at his fellow chiefs and Shamans from various local Tribes, “So, are The Dark Ones satisfied once again? Have They sated their appetites on strangers so that our peoples will be safe for another year?”
Affirmative rumbles muttered around the conference room. Red Wolf, a Shaman, spoke from near the back row, “They are not only satisfied but Coyote assures us that the prey people will not be linked with our premises or business operations.”
Most of the fresh mutters sounded pleased, but old Harry had to ask, “Can we trust Him?”
Chortling laughter sounded throughout the conference room and ascended into thunderous yips and howls of hysterical glee.

**** * ****
Hussein nudged his brother Iqbal and aimed his chin toward the bar. “Look, a fat, stupid American has finally managed some success.”
Iqbal smirked, “It is the only way the infidels can succeed. They have no education and no skills to do anything useful. They don’t even worship their own God anymore, only money and fame. They will soon learn better…”
The brothers were out enjoying a night of revelry, with a few more planned when they reached the city. The celebrations were a last reward before they fulfilled their mission and achieved True Paradise through martyrdom. Hussein was superstitious and hoped to find success at gambling before they took the great risk that if successful, would help to sustain their cause. They’d grown up in this land of debauchery and foolishness but had been taught from the first to honor their own Beliefs and culture above anything the Americans professed.
Hussein was on roll number five of what he intended to be a short run. He wished to win five times for the Five Pillars of Islam, the name of his cell in the latest great Jihad. He blew on the dice and tossed. The small cubes bounced against the back side of the pit and tumbled end over end as he watched breathlessly. “Another ten!” the barker called. And pushed the winnings toward Hussein. He placed a minimum bet and rolled once more. He had already left the table before the barker called, “Snakeyes! Next roller please.”
He held up his chips triumphantly, “Iqbal, more money from roll number five! I kept the bet in place for five rolls, I left only the minimum for the last roll, it is a Sign! We are fated to succeed. We will meet the others tomorrow, go over the plan, and then have a few last nights to revel in this world…”
Iqbal patted his brother on the shoulder, “There is something I would like more than winning chips. He nodded toward the bar and the attractive and sinuous young local who worked behind it, steadily polishing glasses.
Hussein watched for a moment, unsure whether his brother meant the alcoholic drinks that had been forbidden until now or the woman. Knowing Iqbal, he assumed both. “As you wish brother. Take your mortal enjoyments while you can. She looks a little sullen though, frown, lowered brows, I like the happy ones.”
Iqbal’s serpent-like smile widened, “She will look better when I have freed her from the miseries of the uncircumcised. She will enjoy a real man. Who knows? Maybe I will convert her so that we can meet again in Paradise.” With that, he surged away from his brother and slithered up to the bar opposite the young First Nations maid. “Good evening, I noticed that you do not have many customers at the bar. It seems odd that so beautiful a creature as yourself would not attract more company.”
The woman ignored him, intently focused on her task. He tried again, “Perhaps I must order a drink to remain at the bar? If so, a gin and tonic if you please.”
She continued to polish the glass. He leaned forward, “Did you hear me?” he inquired in an annoyed tone. “Perhaps you have no business because you are surly and unhelpful.”
She looked at him and delivered a smirk that appeared to be far more evil than anything he could ever hope to muster, despite his thin, reptilian lips and predatory mind, “We don’t want customers to linger at the bar, getting drunk and building from misery to anger over their losses. We want them playing… and losing.” She leaned toward him and glared into his own eyes that he normally considered flinty and daunting. “You know about losing, don’t you?”
Hussein noted that the large man at the end of the bar in the “Security” shirt had begun stumping toward them. “Iqbal, perhaps it is time to go look for other entertainment.”
Iqbal ignored him, he was trapped in the serpent’s gaze, like a mouse dropped into a snake’s tank to be devoured while its owner watched with perverse interest. Hussein reached for his brother to tug at his arm but never got the chance. The big security officer seized his hand, drew it to his too wide chest and turned. The weight of the man drew him away from his brother and caused him to spin around so that he ended up facing the goon with his brother beyond the man and in the clutches of the Serpent Woman. The ham-fisted gargantuan continued to twist the hand he gripped until the pressure caused Hussein sever pain. He grunted and bent into the angle of his wrist to relieve the distress. He found himself bent forward and looking up desperately toward the man’s face.
The security staffer smiled, his square, blunt teeth showing dark behind an almost lipless mouth. His wide back and chest, covered in body armor under his shirt made him appear like a monster-sized… Turtle. Hussein felt himself lifted and placed behind the bar. His brother soon slithered over the top and fell to the floor beside him, smiling beatifically. Hussein opened his mouth to scream for help, but a large, blunt fist crashed into the side of his head and he saw stars… seven of them, like the Holy... The fist descended once more, and he saw only darkness.
**** * ****
Fr. Danilo Bayani was immensely enjoying his latest trip to the continental USA. He had visited Hawaii many years ago, and New York City more recently, but this was his first tour of the grand landbound spaces that this country offered. He’d managed to roam so far from his origins in Manila. Now, in his twilight years, he longed to see what he could of God’s Green Earth. All on the payroll of The Vatican while they cleanse the records of those hateful… allegations. The bitter thoughts raced across his mind. Of course he was a sinner, he was only mortal. He’d been expiated of those sins and had paid an enormous price to continue serving in his capacity as a parish priest. He forced his mind to return to the moment and more enjoyable pursuits.
He noted the hirsute and similar appearing pair of men who had gone to the bar and wondered why the Security officer approached them, but his attention was called once more to the round of Texas Hold’em and his table mates. When he again had a moment to look, no one was at the bar, in front or behind… curious, he thought, but he quickly refocused his attention on the fascinating new game he was in the process of learning. He was familiar with Poker, so it wasn’t difficult to learn. He liked the high level of interaction that this version of the old game allowed. He’d done well, certainly gained enough to fund extracurricular activities during the rest of his current sabbatical.
He’d been disturbed by the overall atmosphere of this place when he’d arrived. He did not care for the numerous paintings and sculptures of Ancient Native Deities and Spirits. They seemed to be mostly images of the Dark Beings of various Tribal cultures. He loved to study diverse cultures, but this place was an amalgamation of cultures, built for mutual support by several Tribes in the region. Much of the artwork was schlocky and clearly intended to cater to the garish and sordid tastes of the vapid gambling set. Some part of him did not feel… welcome, as though he had intruded on some private Place, set aside for Other Gods.
He shook off the depressing musings… There are NO Other Gods, he reassured himself. He soon stepped away from the table to take care of personal needs and to decide what he should do with the rest of his night. Perhaps he would visit the White Dove Restaurant & Ballroom on the other side of the hotel lobby from the casino. It boasted a good reputation according to online reviews, even though it was a simple buffet style with a dance floor to one side. He liked the name, it was… peaceful he decided.
He soon had a selection of food piled onto a plate and was seated near the dance floor. The place was sparsely occupied, so his hopes of being able to watch dancers as he ate were dashed. Still, the food was good enough. A little bland, but that was necessary in a place that acted as a crossroads of cultures. There was a spice table at the end of the primary row of entrees. He’d helped himself, yet nothing seemed to attach to his taste buds. The combination of eating nearly alone, having no one with energy around him, and the tasteless food soon had him growing restless. He finished up his repast and left the table to go out to the final section of the complex he had not visited, the River Overlook.
As he passed the table nearest the entrance, he saw a stout man in a rumpled sport coat, who glared daggers at him, eyes focused on his crucifix, the only outward sign of his profession. The man appeared to be so hostile, that he paused for a moment to determine whether he’d done anything to offend the fellow. “Excuse me sir, have I offended you in some way?”
The man looked startled. He was apparently unused to being confronted about his demeanor or behavior. He scowled, “Don’t like that thing you have around your neck. You Catholics are all Hell-bound. No concept of righteousness. Not that you’d understand, you people don’t even read The Book. You listen to your priests and pope and disregard The Word. All the kneeling and ritual prayers in the world won’t save you in the end. Go back to your idols and beads and leave me alone to seek Heaven.”
Fr. Bayani was startled by the vehemence with which the man spoke. He hadn’t been attacked directly for his Faith in years. “Sir, I’m not sure what Religion you practice, but I am a man of God, a consecrated priest of the Holy Church. I assure you that I understand more than most, if not as much as I would like. I meant no harm and wish you a peaceful night.”
With that, he started to walk past the man, but the man rose from his table and pointed his finger, “Your pope is the Anti-Christ, and your Church is a place of Satan! Look to the Bible for your salvation before it’s too late.”
Fr. Bayani increased his pace and continued on his journey to the River Overlook. He would need the peace and tranquility that nature and the sound of flowing water would provide to settle his roiling mind.
**** * ****
Pastor Bill resumed his seat and shook his head, “Fool, doesn’t know that he’s risking his soul, courting Damnation.” He’d had a bad run at the tables over at the casino. His Denomination frowned on games of chance, but he had needed the money. One of his congregation had come up pregnant and they had to get it resolved before the three-month deadline for abortions. He knew that if his wife found out about Carmen, then she would divorce him. He was here to break every major rule that he professed to hold dear each week. His plan for quick money had failed, so he’d visited the bar. Now he hoped that eating would guide him back to sobriety. He had to think of another plan.
Seeing that… priest had annoyed him. Had he not been inebriated, he would never have said what he did, nor stared so rudely in the first place. Yet he wanted someone on whom to vent the anger he felt, that arose from fear and he’d always disliked the papists. If his wife divorced him, if the scandal involving the woman who cleaned the church all week and then occupied the back pew every Sunday ever broke; he would lose his ministry, his livelihood. His degree in Theology would be worthless. He might be able to get a job teaching, at some secular school, but most would not hire fervent Christians like himself.
He stared dejectedly at his plate of food that had contained more spice and flavors than he liked, a shadow passed in his periphery. It was low-slung and blurred just a bit as it loped along the wall. He thought he heard an odd laugh, somewhere between human and… canine? Maybe a little like a hyena might sound, or so he imagined. There was a manic quality to the laughter. A jest that was on him so that only the other Entity knew what it was. It was the wicked laughter of children at play, who’d decided to target a fat kid with glasses. A kid whose parents had been abusive addicts but who later “got right” through religious-based recovery programs. Their faith had led him to his own, but he’d never really lost those early traumas of being unaccepted by his peers and being beaten by people who later professed faith above all.
A mocking whine, definitely doggish, his now sobering consciousness informed him. Something was making fun of him, teasing him from the shadows. He looked around for staff members or other customers but found himself alone. The dining area and the dance floor were deserted. It was odd, there was almost always someone at the buffet service tables. He looked over to the kitchen doors in hopes that one of the employees would burst through with a fresh serving of chicken wings or whatever tray had been emptied. He saw dark figures move past the clouded round windows on the swinging doors and temporarily occlude the bright kitchen lights within, but they were indistinct blobs, and appeared to be focused on tasks of their own choosing rather than service of his needs.
He stood and realized that he was more intoxicated than he’d realized. He immediately resumed his seat and bent forward to regain his balance and bearings… and to swallow his rising gorge. When he sat up again, a dark, shaggy form perched in the chair across from him. The figure was no more than a silhouette, a raggedly hewn shadow. Yet there were eyes. Sinister golden gleams appeared and blinked at him. He heard a heavy, panting sort of breathing and a gust of foul-smelling carnivore breath assaulted his olfactory senses. “Who? Er, what are you doing at my table?” he asked in a mushy, confused manner. Still fighting off waves of nausea.
He could not see it very well in the poorly illuminated dining room, but his impression was that the... Being… smiled at him: a gaping, lolling smile, with a tongue dangling out to one side and sharp canines gleaming. “I thought I would check on you my righteous friend. You seem to be upset, unhappy. You nipped and barked at that other person who shares your Faith. I thought perhaps there was a deeper concern preying on your conscience?”
Pastor Bill had to force himself to think through what this… person? Had said to him. Likely some hippie-dippy weirdo. “That guy was a Catholic priest, we’re nowhere near the same Religion.”
Once more he heard the chortling laughter that was now very clear, “I’m sure you think it’s different. Those of his specific religion, came to these lands many years ago. They were the first of you Christians to arrive. The rest have been simple variations on a theme. The problems began, when your co-religionists assumed that only your God exists; that all of the local Gods and Spirits were instead Demons and Dark Powers. Instead of trying to show that yours is a better Way, you Christians insisted that yours is the only Way. You’ve forgotten that in Ancient Times, people held True to Deities who were attached to local communities or to the land and features around them; geographically and ethnically relevant. You have gone from subsuming and incorporating Older Gods as Angels and Saints, to Demonizing Them, and now in your hubris, to denying Them altogether.” He shook His head. “Too bad really, it creates an Adversarial relationship.” He chuckled at some joke that Pastor Bill was still too drunk to comprehend.
Pastor Bill had grown increasingly fearful as the Voice intoned Its Philosophies. He wanted to refute that Voice, to deny Its very Existence. Yet he feared Its Wrath more than anything he’d ever feared, even the Fires of Hell. Instead of making a stand and arguing his faith, he staggered to his feet and ran, stumbled, blindly toward the kitchen and the pale, ghostly figures within. Surely someone within would save him! The sardonic laughter chortled after him and chased him into the too bright lights, descending into the yips and howls of Coyote even as the doors swung shut behind him. He looked around at the glowing white figures who halted in their various progresses to stare at him. Their eyes! There were none, just empty sockets, faces slack, with gaping, lamprey maws. He heard a new sound as they swarmed him… his own forlorn screams of ultimate agony.
**** * ****
Fr. Bayani stood out on the River Overlook platform and enjoyed the solitude that had so recently left him restless. There were plenty of noises out across the flowing torrent: the water itself, as it passed over hidden objects, fish as they leapt from its embrace to kiss the night air, frogs and insects, and the warbling, mournful sounds of a loon, and the soft sigh of the wind as it passed through the verdant landscape. This is much more peaceful than the White Dove he thought. He had some trouble shaking off ruminations on the verbal assault from the strange, possibly drunken man in the restaurant. He decided that he would pray for the man, that he would one day soon find The True Faith. Sometimes that was all one could do for the short-sighted.
He heard a deep, coughing hiss out in the dark. He was startled but quickly realized that it was an American Alligator, cousin to creatures he had observed in many places around the planet. He was truly content, at one with Nature in all Her Glory… in all the natural splendor of Creation! he immediately corrected himself. A sound impinged on his senses as it slowly rose and obscured the others… it was a lapping sound at first, more like ocean waves on a beach than the banks of a river. Waves, at cross purposes to the flow of the river, slapped at the base of the platform. Soon they sounds evolved into splashes, as if something very large approached the River Overlook platform. He leaned over the rail to have a closer look. Perhaps it was a large water creature or a boat… maybe a ‘gator as the locals called the big reptiles.
He peered down at the dim rippling surface below. At first, he was unable to discern anything but small reflections on the water as it swirled and lapped; then from below the surface, he spotted an eye, a too large eye! It glowed from within with a sickly luminescence akin to that produced by deep growing fungi. As he stared in horror, he saw a mouth gape below the eye, and enormous frog-like opening with no teeth but serrated lips, like some monstrous catfish. As he stared, too much in shock to act, he suddenly felt his body wrapped in strong, leprous flesh and he quickly lost his ability to breathe. The last sight he saw before he plunged over the safety rail was the thin, grey, first light of dawn.
**** * ****
Chief Harry Whitehorse gazed around at his fellow chiefs and Shamans from various local Tribes, “So, are The Dark Ones satisfied once again? Have They sated their appetites on strangers so that our peoples will be safe for another year?”
Affirmative rumbles muttered around the conference room. Red Wolf, a Shaman, spoke from near the back row, “They are not only satisfied but Coyote assures us that the prey people will not be linked with our premises or business operations.”
Most of the fresh mutters sounded pleased, but old Harry had to ask, “Can we trust Him?”
Chortling laughter sounded throughout the conference room and ascended into thunderous yips and howls of hysterical glee.

The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far)
Chameleons or beauties, star turns or character roles these are the performers who have outshone all others on the big screen in the last 20 years.
By Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott Nov. 25, 2020
We are in a golden age of acting — make that platinum — as we realized when we decided to select our favorite film performers of the past 20 years. There’s no formula for choosing the best (just squabbling), and this list is both necessarily subjective and possibly scandalous in its omissions. Some of these performers are new to the scene; others have been around for decades. In making our choices, we have focused on this century and looked beyond Hollywood. And while there are certainly stars in the mix and even a smattering of Oscar winners, there are also character actors and chameleons, action heroes and art-house darlings. They’re 25 reasons we still love movies, maybe more than ever.
25. Gael García Bernal
MANOHLA DARGIS When Alejandro González Iñárritu’s thriller “Amores Perros” and Alfonso Cuarón’s road movie “Y Tu Mamá También” were released in American art houses a year apart, the shocks were seismic. Their directors were soon racing toward international renown and so was Gael García Bernal, their shared star. He was gifted, held the screen and had a face you kept looking at, partly because — with his doe eyes and lantern jaw — it seamlessly fused ideals of feminine and masculine beauty.
This contrast wasn’t especially obvious in “Amores Perros” (2001), but it helps enrich the warmer “Y Tu Mamá También” (2002), a soulful coming-of-age story that opens with a whoop and ends on a sigh. García Bernal plays Julio, a working-class teenager on a journey of discovery (of the self, of others). Along with his best friend (played by Diego Luna), Julio tumbles through life heedlessly until he doesn’t. As the story’s raucousness quiets, Julio’s adolescent machismo fades, replaced by pensiveness that the actor makes so physical, you see the character retreating inside himself.
By 2004, García Bernal had appeared in Walter Salles’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” as the young Che Guevara and played a duplicitous chameleon in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bad Education.” Almodóvar put the actor in heels to play a noirish femme fatale, a role that García Bernal apparently didn’t much like doing so but that deepened his persona with a smear of lipstick and a psychological coldness that created new shocks.
A. O. SCOTT In Pablo Larraín’s “No” (2013), García Bernal plays Rene Saavedra, a hotshot young advertising creative in 1980s Chile, with his usual charm. He’s cool but not intimidatingly so; good-looking in the same measure; funny but not to the point of obnoxiousness; self-confident but not a jerk. At first, it’s easy to underestimate both Rene and García Bernal, to mistake their casual, unassuming naturalness for a lack of gravitas or craft. Rene is enlisted by a group of opposition political parties to produce television spots supporting a “no” vote on a referendum extending the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Rene’s job is to sell rejection as an upbeat choice, to acknowledge the brutality of Pinochet’s regime while focusing on the happy future without him. Though Rene believes in the cause, he also views it as a marketing challenge, and there is a bit of a “Mad Men” vibe to his wrangling with clients, colleagues and rivals.
It’s up to García Bernal to provide the dramatic link between the banalities of the media business and the terror of political repression, and he does it almost entirely with his eyes. One night, the apartment he shares with his young son is vandalized while they sleep, and in that moment Rene’s chipper resolve liquefies into pure fear. The next day he is back at work, and both he and the audience have a new and profound understanding of what the work means.
24. Sônia Braga
MANOHLA DARGIS I just recently rewatched “Aquarius” (2016) for our ode to Sônia Braga. For those who haven’t seen it: Braga stars as Clara, a writer whose apartment faces the Atlantic. Most of the story follows Clara just living her life while swatting away her landlord. Braga fits seamlessly into the director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s wonderful, unfussy realism. This time while viewing the movie, though — partly prompted by, ahem, a chapter title called “Clara’s Hair” — I noticed how Braga kept rearranging her opulent curtain of hair. And, as she swept it up and let it down, I realized that Mendonça wasn’t just presenting a character but also the legend playing her.
A. O. SCOTT It’s a reminder — subliminal and brazen at the same time — that Braga was a big deal in Brazil and beyond in the 1970s and ’80s, her nation’s answer to Sophia Loren. Her films with Mendonça (“Bacurau” this year as well “Aquarius”) draw on that history and exploit her old-school charisma. But they aren’t just late-career star turns. Clara isn’t Sonia Braga: She’s a highly specific woman with her own history of achievements, love affairs and regrets. But only a performer with Braga’s utter self-assurance, her heroic indifference to what anyone else thinks of her, could bring Clara to life.
DARGIS Yet what I found fascinating about “Aquarius” this time is that Clara is alsoBraga, in the sense that the character’s meaning is partly shaped by everything that Braga brings whenever she’s onscreen, including her history in Brazilian cinema as a woman of mixed ancestry as well as her adventures in Hollywood. There’s something fantastically liberating watching Braga play this majestic woman, who has visible wrinkles and never had breast reconstruction after her mastectomy. That’s especially true given how Braga was once slavered over as a sex star. “There is nothing else to call her,” a male critic once wrote — well, you could call her an actress.
SCOTT Her skill manifests itself in a totally different way in “Bacurau” this year, a crazily fantastical (and violent) science-fictionish allegory of Brazil in crisis that departs from the realism of Mendonça’s other films without abandoning their political passion or their humanism. Braga, part of a sprawling ensemble that includes nonprofessional actors, is essential to this. She plays Domingas, a small-town doctor with a drinking problem and a sometimes abrasive personality — a deglamorized, comical role that no one else could have managed with such depth and grace. Or as Mendonça put it, “In a symphony, she’d be the piano.”
23. Mahershala Ali
A. O. SCOTT Mahershala Ali has one of the great faces in modern movies — those sculpted cheekbones, that high, contemplative brow, those eyes tinged with melancholy. His presence on camera is magnetic, but also watchful and sly. His characters tend toward reticence, guardedness, but their reserve is its own form of eloquence, their whispers more resonant than any shout.
Ali has won two Oscars for best supporting actor. The first was for “Moonlight” (2016), in which he quietly demolished a durable Hollywood stereotype. Juan is a drug dealer, a figure of community destruction and implicit violence. What defines him, though, is his gentleness, the unconditional kindness he bestows on Chiron, the young protagonist. Juan listens to the boy; he answers his questions; in one of the film’s most moving scenes, he teaches him to swim.
And then, between the first and second acts, he vanishes. But Ali haunts the film even after his departure. He’s both its tragic, nurturing image of manhood and the first man worthy of Chiron’s love.
MANOHLA DARGIS Ali first got my attention in the Netflix series “House of Cards.” He played Remy Danton, a Washington lawyer whose knowing little smile could flicker like a warning, signaling the danger in his world. Remy entered in the second episode in a scene at a restaurant, where the lead character, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), is eating with two other power brokers. Remy doesn’t stand over the seated men, he looms. You know Underwood is bad news, but when the director David Fincher cuts to Remy’s face, Ali abruptly changes the temperature by dropping his affable facade for skin-prickling wariness, making it clear that he isn’t talking to a man but to a predator.
I was so accustomed to seeing Ali in a bespoke suit (and sometimes out) that I didn’t recognize him at first in “Moonlight.” It wasn’t simply the different wardrobes, but the precise bearing that Ali gave each man, variations in bodies, yes, but also in how those bodies move and signify. In “House of Cards,” Remy flows and there were moments when I thought I was looking at the next James Bond. In “Moonlight,” Ali creates a titanic character whose force, even after he disappears from the movie, continues to resonate. The actor creates a very dissimilar character in “Green Book” (2018, his second Oscar winner), this time with a performance — as the musician Don Shirley, whom Ali plays as a man and a defended fortress — that surpasses the movie.
SCOTT I would almost say that the performance is the opposite of the movie. Ali is graceful, witty and self-aware while “Green Book” is clumsy, jokey and blind to its own insensitivities. I’m not sure any other actor could have handled the notorious fried chicken scene with such sly dignity. That “Green Book” and “Moonlight” were both best picture winners speaks to the contradictions of our cultural moment, but it’s proof of Ali’s talent that his subtle craft and unshakable charisma can anchor two such divergent films.
22. Melissa McCarthy
MANOHLA DARGIS When critics anatomize comic performers like Melissa McCarthy, we often touch on familiar qualities like timing, grace and elastic physiognomy. But we’re also talking about acting. Since making the transition from TV to movies, McCarthy has repeatedly demonstrated her range and exhilaratingly helped demolish regressive ideas about who gets to be a film star. No movie has served her better than “Spy”(2015) in which she plays Susan, a timid C.I.A. analyst who’s sent on an outlandish mission that allows McCarthy to mince and then delightfully swagger.
Essential to the subversive fun of “Spy” is how it deploys genre conventions to showcase McCarthy’s talents while also blowing up stereotypes. Susan contains multitudes, first as self-protection (she dampens her fire) and later as an expression of her humanity. In the field, she unhappily assumes several frumpy, tragically bewigged disguises — variations on how others see her — before transforming into a sexy, trash-talking fantasy of her own design. As Susan lets down her hair and inhibitions, McCarthy cuts loose. Her voice booms, her fluttery hands ball into fists, her Kewpie-doll face goes full-on Medusa. McCarthy isn’t playing one woman — she’s all of us, with a vengeance.
A. O. SCOTT Lee Israel is funny. She shares a fast and furiously aggressive verbal wit with some of McCarthy’s other creations, like Tammy in “Tammy” (2014) and Mullins in “The Heat” (2013). But Lee was a real person, and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”(2018) isn’t exactly a comedy. It’s not quite a biopic either, but rather a highly specific slice of late-20th-century New York queer and literary life threaded through a misfit buddy picture and twisted into a caper film.
Lee is not easy to like or root for. She’s abrasive, self-absorbed and self-sabotaging. She alienates friends and maintains as tenuous a grip on ethics as on sobriety. McCarthy resists turning her story — which involves trading a faltering career as a writer for a lucrative stint as a forger of famous writers’ letters — into a parable of recovery or redemption.
It’s about how Lee and her sidekick (the wonderful Richard E. Grant) gamble on survival, rebelling against the fate that an indifferent world has prepared for them. The movie’s title poses an honest question. Maybe you can’t forgive Lee for her lapses and lies, her lack of consideration for other people’s words and feelings. But there’s no way you can forget her.
21. Catherine Deneuve
By MARJANE SATRAPI
In a lengthy career working with a who’s who of auteurs, Deneuve has stood for a certain kind of elegant Frenchwoman whether she’s playing an ordinary wife, a down-on-her-luck bistro owner or even an Iranian mother. For that last role, in the animated “Persepolis”(2007). Deneuve voiced a character based on Marjane Satrapi’s mom. We asked Satrapi, who directed the film with Vincent Paronnaud, to explain why she sought out Deneuve.
If you live in France, Catherine Deneuve is the symbol. When I was growing up, she was the dream. She always made choices that were too advanced for her time, more anarchist than bourgeois. She has always looked like a very bourgeois Parisian woman, which is absolutely not true. She is a rebel who looks like a grande dame.
The first time I met Catherine Deneuve was like meeting God in person. I was so impressed. And yet, I had to direct her, and I didn’t dare tell her a thing. The first two hours, I was completely paralyzed, and she calmed me down. She told me, because she’s a very generous woman: “You’re the director and I’m your actress. Tell me what to do and I will do it.” She didn’t do it in front of other people. She said, “Let’s go have a cigarette,” and she said it to me privately.
For the character of the mother, I needed to have someone who is not this eternal mother who is very lovely, because this is not my mom. My mom is a very lovely person but she is like: “You do this. You do that.” I needed somebody who had the power of a woman that wants her daughter to [make her life] better and be more emancipated. Catherine Deneuve has this way of talking that is not playful, because she doesn’t try to be likable. She’s very frank. When she talks to you, she looks straight into your eyes.
She doesn’t try to be likable. She’s very frank.
There is this scene when I come home and my mom starts yelling at me: “You know what they do with young girls in Iran? You have to get out of this country.” I remember when she played it, she was a little bit off. She tried to contain herself as she normally does. I was like, “No, Catherine, you’re really out of your mind.” She did it and she actually cried. That was extremely moving.
And still, after all these years, each time I see her, I have the heartbeat. She is like a lion. She is not loud, she does not make gestures. But even if she is behind you and you don’t see her, you feel that a feline is in the room. It feels at the same time very exciting and very dangerous. She is ferocious and she is fearless, and I love that about her. — Interview by Kathryn Shattuck
20. Rob Morgan
A. O. SCOTT The great character actors are masters of paradox, at once indelible and invisible. You don’t necessarily recognize them from one role to the next, but they leave their stamp on every film, enhancing the whole even in small parts.
If you saw “Mudbound,” “Monsters and Men,” “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”and “Just Mercy” — four movies released between 2017 and 2019 — you are aware of Rob Morgan, whether or not you know his name.
As a death row prisoner in “Just Mercy,” he is a notably undramatic presence, a quiet man haunted by remorse, helplessness and fear whose plight encapsulates the film’s humanist argument.
In each of the other movies, he plays a father, in the Jim Crow South and the modern urban North — a man who knows more than he chooses to say. The sons in those movies do most of the talking, but Morgan gives eloquent expression to experiences that lie outside the main story even as they ground it in a larger history. In “Last Black Man” he appears in a handful of scenes and utters just a few lines, but everything that movie is about — the pleasures and disappointments of life at the margins of an idiosyncratic, rapidly changing city — is written in his face. He listens, he chews sunflower seeds, he plays a few chords on an old pipe organ, and after a few minutes in his presence you understand exactly what you need to know.
MANOHLA DARGIS Every so often, a small movie gives an actor a chance to go bigger and hold the center, which is what Morgan does in Annie Silverstein’s “Bull” (2020). He plays Abe, a former rodeo bull rider with stiff joints, blood in his urine and a fragilely held together life. His bull riding days over, he now works on the ground as a bullfighter, helping protect fallen riders. The role of Abe, mercifully, isn’t overwritten, which allows Morgan to define the character with a persuasively embodied performance, one whose head tilts, sideways looks and withdrawn presence expresses a bruising past and the self-protecting instincts of a man in emotional retreat.
“Bull” should be only about Abe, but it instead focuses on his relationship with a white, rootless 14-year-old neighbor, Kris (Amber Havard). Their fates sourly cross after she’s caught trashing his house, and is shaped by the unearned optimism that’s foundational to American cinema. In other words, Abe and Kris save each other. What saves the movie, though, is the window Morgan opens onto the Black cowboy and how the performance complicates America’s favorite myths, including the figure of the hard, stoic loner. Abe doesn’t ride in from John Wayne territory; Abe rides in from an entirely different land that Morgan makes visceral, haunted and wholly alive.
19. Wes Studi
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Wes Studi has one of the screen’s most arresting faces — jutting and creased and anchored with the kind of penetrating eyes that insist you match their gaze. Lesser directors like to use his face as a blunt symbol of the Native American experience, as a mask of nobility, of suffering, of pain that’s unknowable only because no one has asked the man wearing it. In the right movie, though, Studi doesn’t just play with a character’s facade; he peels its layers. A master of expressive opacity, he shows you the mask and what lies beneath, both the thinking and the feeling.
He shows you the mask and what lies beneath.
Studi vaulted into cinematic consciousness as the vengeful Huron warrior in Michael Mann’s epic “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992), a character the actor conveys with powerful physicality and intensities of contempt, impatience, resentment, fury. Doing a lot with a little has been a constant in Studi’s movie career, which includes signifying roles in “The New World” (2005) and “Avatar” (2009). Like many actors, he has done his share of forgettable work, made exploitation flicks and TV fodder. Often specifically cast as a Native American, he has played Geronimo and Cochise; he might right more film wrongs if westerns were still popular. And if the industry were adventurous, he might also play more types like the supervisor of a homeless shelter in “Being Flynn” (2012), a man who doesn’t wear what Studi calls “leathers and feathers.”
Instructively, he wears neither in Scott Cooper’s “Hostiles” (2017), about life and death in late-19th-century America. Studi plays Chief Yellow Hawk, a dying Cheyenne prisoner whom the federal government has agreed to return to his ancestral lands. The movie is largely interested in his escort, a war-ruined Indian hater played by Christian Bale, the star. Once again, Studi delivers a supporting turn that complements the leading performance — his character’s indifference to the escort’s rage is a wall that can’t be breached — and helps equalize the story’s balance. Yellow Hawk has survived long enough to die on his terms, survival that Studi makes a final act of self-possession.
18. Willem Dafoe
By JULIAN SCHNABEL
The actor has been a vital presence in movies as different as “Shadow of the Vampire”(2000) and “The Florida Project” (2017), for which he received Oscar nominations. He was also nominated for playing van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s biopic, “At Eternity’s Gate” (2018). We asked Schnabel why he turned to Dafoe.
Willem and I met more than 30 years ago. He has always lived in the neighborhood, and we had a lot of friends in common. Oliver Stone was shooting “The Doors” in New York, and we were standing around the set one night and that was the first time we really started to talk.
One thing that’s super-important is he’s a very generous actor. He cares about other people’s performances and about helping them by being available in whatever he is doing. He’s very, very loyal and very, very smart. If you’ve got somebody who’s smart, they can make it better.
He’s a very generous actor. He cares about other people’s performances.
[For “At Eternity’s Gate”] I needed somebody that would have the depth of character to play van Gogh. And it wasn’t about just looking like him. It was somebody that could have enough life experience to be that guy. People thought, well, Willem is 60 years old, van Gogh was 37 when he died. That was irrelevant to me. You just have to have a hunch about trusting somebody and thinking that they can do something. I trust Willem implicitly. And that level of trust goes both ways.
There’s stuff we shot in Arles after he arrived that we couldn’t use. He was wearing the same clothes, had the same hairdo, but he wasn’t the guy yet. Then there was a certain moment when all of a sudden he was. He was transformed, transfigured. He was somebody else.
One of my favorite scenes is where he’s talking to the young Dr. Rey, who is seeing him after he’s cut his ear off and he is guaranteeing him that he’s going to get to paint when he’s in the institution. That interaction is extraordinary, what Willem does there. He’s basically sitting at a table and there’s not a whole hell of a lot of room for movement. But what goes on in his face in his response to what the young doctor is saying to him — and also in response to whatever other thoughts seem to be traveling through his mind at that time — is a landscape of events and an interior life like foam coming to the top of a vanilla egg cream. — Interview by Kathryn Shattuck
17. Alfre Woodard
By A. O. SCOTT
In a just world, there would be a bursting roster of great performances to fill this entry, a collection of matriarchs, romantic heroines, divas and villains to reflect the full range of Alfre Woodard’s gifts. Such roles are always in short supply for Black women, but even in small parts in minor movies or television series, Woodard is an unforgettable presence, at once regal and utterly real.
The two films that have given her the most room — Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave”(2013) and Chinonye Chukwu’s “Clemency”(2019) — both place the question of justice front and center. In each, Woodard must assert her character’s dignity and ethical integrity in the face of impossibly cruel circumstances. Bernadine Williams, the prison warden in “Clemency” whose job includes supervising executions, finds her professionalism increasingly at odds with her humanity. In “12 Years,” Mistress Shaw, an enslaved woman whose relationship with a plantation owner has brought her a measure of privilege, has bargained with a system built on her dehumanization.
Woodard’s art, her commitment to truth, is what you see.
The contradictions that Bernadine and Mistress Shaw contend with are larger than any individual. What Woodard does is make them personal. Self-control is a matter of survival, and Woodard sets her face into a picture of proper decorum, impersonating the genteel Southern lady or the efficient bureaucrat that the situation requires. She doesn’t so much let the masks slip — except perhaps in the devastating final scenes of “Clemency” — as show the cost and care that go into wearing them. The characters are also performing, playing their roles for mortal stakes, and Woodard’s art, her commitment to truth, is what you see in the space between how they seem and who they are.
16. Kim Min-hee
By MANOHLA DARGIS
In Hong Sang-soo’s “Right Now, Wrong Then” (2016), a woman and man meet. They drink and drink some more and testily part ways only to meet in the movie’s second half as if for the very first time, a setup that evokes “Groundhog Day.” Once again, they go to a cafe, a studio, a restaurant. Yet while their actions generally remain the same, as does the overall arc of the evening, enough has changed — how they look at each other, the inflections in their voices — to turn this second encounter into something different.
Kim Min-hee’s exquisitely nuanced performance is at the center of the movie, and the actress herself has been at the heart of Hong’s work ever since, appearing in most of his ensuing movies. An established art-house auteur, Hong tells modestly scaled stories that are formally playful, sensitive to human imperfection and drenched in soju. Familiar things happen, sometimes unfamiliarly. Repetition is often a narrative focus, one that is grounded in life and beautifully served by Kim’s lucid expressivity.
In Hong’s minimalist canon, life is condensed in everyday moments, in conversations and the way bodies lean toward one another. The differences in the two halves of “Right Now, Wrong Then” reveal new facets of the characters and create new tensions between them. They also give free rein to Kim’s range, allowing her to play with intonation, gestures, flickering looks. Yet while the movie’s two sections feel like variations of the same story, her performance feels more like it’s coalescing as — smile by smile, with deflected and fixed gazes — Kim gathers the character into a whole.
She goes big and small, veers from monstrous to mousy.
She went for baroque in Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden” (2016), her best-known movie. In this outlandish, often perversely funny drama set in Korea in the 1930s, she plays a Japanese noble who’s saved from her deviant uncle by her wiles and by another woman. The story’s flamboyant excesses and narrative twists allow Kim to use every tool in her workbox. She goes big and small, veers from monstrous to mousy, and alternately hides her character’s feelings and lets them run amok. Her body rocks and her face distorts as fear and pain give way to ecstasy and release. The character is a mystery that the movie teases but that Kim deliriously unlocks.
15. Michael B. Jordan
By RYAN COOGLER
Michael B. Jordan has played lawyers, athletes and superheroes, but even before his range became clear, the director Ryan Coogler wanted to work with him. Coogler has made three features (“Fruitvale Station,” “Creed” and “Black Panther”) and Jordan stars or co-stars in all of them. We asked the director to explain just what it is about the actor that draws us in.
I met Mike in 2012 when I was doing research and working on the script for “Fruitvale.” He was who I decided would be best for the role before I met him, based on the other work that I’d seen him do — a couple of movies that year, “Red Tails” and “Chronicle,” and a bunch of stuff in the TV space. But I thought that he could play Oscar. He looked like him, but also what I saw was this ability to make you empathize with him. Not all actors have this thing, when you immediately care about somebody right offhand and that triggers an empathetic reaction. He had that. He also has a very advanced tool kit as an actor.
What I saw was this ability to make you empathize with him.
He’s been in all the feature films I’ve done. And I keep casting him because he’s the best person for the job. “Creed” [2015] had another character I thought he could play well. Before Mike was an actor, he was an athlete, back in elementary school and high school. He had played athletes on TV, the most famous being on “Friday Night Lights,” so some of the things we knew his character would have to do in “Creed,” Mike felt right for it. It was a part of him that wasn’t a big reach.
And [in] “Black Panther” [2018], with him and Chadwick facing off and going toe to toe, it felt like an event. Their stars were rising. They were both leading men by the time we shot that movie.
Now, what’s exciting about us getting older in the industry is getting to work together in different capacities. He’s doing a lot of stuff behind the camera now. And we have some opportunities to work together beyond actor and director.
He’s very ambitious in a way that’s endearing. He always wants to push and challenge himself further. And that comes across in his performances, but also in the business sense. That ambition keeps him open-minded. He watches everything and doesn’t want to cut himself off from certain genres or opportunities. So I think the sky’s the limit for him and his career. — Interview by Mekado Murphy
14. Oscar Isaac
A. O. SCOTT While I can take or leave the recent “Star Wars” movies, I do have a fondness for some of the characters, in particular Poe Dameron, the resistance flyboy who is the third trilogy’s designated charmer. As Poe, Oscar Isaac is an appealing, easygoing presence in those movies, a guy who seems to know what he’s doing.
His characters aren’t always as lucky, or as sure of themselves, but the man himself operates with the precision of someone who is confident enough in his skills to push himself into risky new territory. The summer before “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) was released, Joel and Ethan Coen told us that they had originally wanted to cast a well-known musician in the title role. Instead, they found Isaac, who told them (according to Joel) that “most actors, if you ask them if they play guitar, they’ll say they played guitar for 20 years, but what they really mean is they’ve owned a guitar for 20 years.” Isaac could actually play. When I think about what makes him so credible as an actor, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Not because it’s such a big deal to play guitar, but because whatever Isaac is pretending to do onscreen — selling heating oil (in the underrated “A Most Violent Year,” (2014); inventing sexy robots (in “Ex Machina”); flying X-wing fighters — I always believe that he really knows how to do it, and that I’m watching some kind of authentic mastery in action.
MANOHLA DARGIS When actors make a profound first impression, they sometimes get bound up with your ideas about what they can do. After “Llewyn Davis,” I associated Isaac with soulful defeat, with an undercurrent of grudging resentment. A few other roles shored up this idea of his innate mournfulness, including his performance as a besieged mayor in the HBO series “Show Me a Hero” (2015). This partly has to do with his broody, romantic looks and how his brows frame his luxuriously lashed eyes. And then there’s his voice, its pretty sound but also how its resonance creates intimacy. Even when he puts nasal in it, his voice retains a quality of closeness, one reason it often feels, sounds, like Llewyn is singing more for himself than the audience. Isaac’s voice also softens his beauty, drawing you in. Sometimes, though, as in “Ex Machina,” he uses that intimacy for something insinuating, sinister.
Isaac has a supporting role in “Ex Machina” (2015), but he’s vital to its vibe and power. He plays Nathan, a Dr. Frankenstein-like tech billionaire involved in artificial intelligence who’s building (and destroying) beautiful female androids. A savagely critical stand-in for today’s masters of the digital universe, Nathan could easily have dominated the movie. Isaac instead keeps his own charm in check, letting the character’s creepiness poison the air. Nathan’s mercurial moods and surprising looks — his shaved head and full beard, eyeglasses and cut muscles — make it difficult to get a bead on him. But when he suddenly boogies down, executing an amazing dance, Isaac lays bare all you need to know about Nathan in the geometric precision of his choreographed moves and the madness in his eyes. It’s 30 seconds of pure genius.
13. Tilda Swinton
MANOHLA DARGIS The woman of a thousand otherworldly faces, Tilda Swinton has created enough personas — with untold wigs, costumes and accents — to have become a roster of one. She’s a star, a character actor, a performance artist, an extraterrestrial, a trickster. Her pale, sharply planed face is an ideal canvas for paint and prosthetics, and capable of unnerving stillness. You want to read her but can’t. That helps make her a terrific villain, whether she’s playing a demon, a queen or a corporate lawyer. In “Julia” (2009), she drops that wall to play an out-of-control alcoholic and child-snatcher, giving a full-throttled performance that is so visceral and transparent that you can see the character’s thoughts furiously at work, like little parasites moving under the skin.
A. O. SCOTT We like to praise actors for “range,” but that’s an almost laughably inadequate word for the radical shape-shifting that Swinton accomplishes. Just look at one strand of her career: her work with Luca Guadagnino, a filmmaker who shares her delight in self-reinvention. In “I Am Love” (2010) she played the Russian wife of an Italian aristocratic, giving a performance in two languages and in the key of pure melodramatic heartbreak. In “A Bigger Splash” (2016) she had barely any language at all: She decided that it would be interesting if her glam-rock diva character had been struck mute by throat surgery. In “Suspiria” (2018) she executed one of her many self-doublings, appearing as a member of a balletomaniac coven of witches and also as an elderly male Holocaust survivor.
DARGIS That doubling shapes her most androgynous performances, where she effortlessly blurs gender, confirming (yet again) the inadequacy of categories like “man” and “woman.” She’s both; she’s neither. A different doubling happens when she plays twins, in the 2016 “Hail, Caesar!”(as rival gossip columnists) and in “Okja”the next year (as visually distinct very cruel captains of industry). In each, Swinton shows us two sides of the same person, much as she does in “Michael Clayton” (2007) when her lawyer rehearses a duplicitous spiel in front of a mirror. As the lawyer talks, pauses and drops her smile, you see her desperately trying to control a reflection that is already cracking.
SCOTT Those roles can be theatrical, but they almost never feel gimmicky. Swinton has roots in an avant-garde tradition — earlier in her career, she worked with Derek Jarman and Sally Potter — that emphasizes the mutability of identity and the blurred boundaries between artifice and authenticity. Over the past 20 years she has brought some of the intellectual rigor and conceptual daring of that work to Hollywood and beyond. She’s not only a uniquely exciting performer, but also one of the great living theorists of performance.
12. Joaquin Phoenix
By JAMES GRAY
Joaquin Phoenix has appeared in four of the director James Gray’s movies, starting with “The Yards” in 2000 and including “We Own the Night” (2007), “Two Lovers” (2009) and “The Immigrant” (2014). We asked Gray to explain how the actor has expanded — and improved — on his own vision.
When I saw “To Die For,” I said, “That actor” — I didn’t even know his name yet — “is unbelievably good at conveying his internal life without dialogue.” That’s a really important thing in cinema, because the camera reveals everything. Here was an actor who had so much going on and you could tell. I thought, “That’s a very interesting actor. I’d love to meet him.” And I did.
We were on the same wavelength, instantly. We liked the same things. We thought about things the same way. And I just immediately liked him. He had that dimensionality to him. The first film we did together [“The Yards”], I’m sure that I pissed him off a lot. I have a very direct way. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes it’s not so good. I’m better at it now. Let’s just say that I wasn’t always willing to say, “Yeah, that’s interesting, but let’s try this.” I was more into, “Joaq, what are you doing? That sucks, try another one.” And I know I would frustrate him because his talent was so vast.
He has a limitless ability to surprise you in the best ways and inspire you to move in a direction that you haven’t thought of originally, better than what you have in mind, and expands the idea. He’s extremely inventive. He’s always thinking and actually has gotten more so over the years. I’ve never said, “I want my vision on the screen.” I want something better than that. You want to lay down the parameters of what it is you have in mind, and then surround yourself with people who will make it all more beautiful. Not different, necessarily, but more intense, more vivid.
He has a limitless ability to surprise you in the best ways.
You want the actor to surprise you, and to do so in a way that seems consistent with the character but also very interesting. Joaquin was absolutely fantastic at that. That’s inspiring. You don’t know what to expect in the best sense. Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. If I have any regret at all, it would be that he’s not in every single movie I made. — Interview by Candice Frederick
11. Julianne Moore
A. O. SCOTT The unhappy American housewife — smiling to keep up appearances in the face of domestic tragedy and inner turmoil — is a durable movie archetype. It’s one that Julianne Moore has both explored and exploded, in “The Hours” (2002) and especially in her collaborations with Todd Haynes like “Far From Heaven” (2002).
That film is set in Connecticut in the 1950s, but it’s a pointedly stylized landscape, evocative of the Hollywood melodramas of that period. Cathy and Frank Whitaker (Moore and Dennis Quaid) are each pulled away from their stifling marriage by forbidden desires: Frank for other men, Cathy for Raymond Deagan, a Black landscaper (Dennis Haysbert). These transgressions aren’t symmetrical or intersectional. In their heartbreak, humiliation and longing, Frank and Cathy have no consolation to offer each other.
Moore could have placed Cathy’s anguish in quotation marks, evoking the suffering divas of ’50s cinema while winking at a modern audience contemplating the bad old days from a safe aesthetic distance. Instead, she goes all the way in, staring out from the soul of a woman who is rooted in her time and absolutely modern, trapped by rules and appearances and also — terrifyingly and thrillingly — free.
MANOHLA DARGIS Unhappy or not, wives can be dead ends for actresses and for too many there comes that time when they’ve been forever banished to the kitchen. Moore has played plenty of wives and mothers, but hers are sometimes more complex and surprising than her movies, an index of her sensitivities and talent. One reason she lifts her characters out of stereotype is that she plays with codes of realism, whether she’s delivering a naturalistic performance (“Still Alice,” the 2014 melodrama about a professor with Alzheimer’s) or a hyperbolic one (David Cronenberg’s 2015 satire “Maps to the Stars,” where she’s a Hollywood hyena). Moore can externalize a character’s interior state beautifully, so you see feelings surface on her skin. But she’s an artist of extremes, and she and Cronenberg have fun playing with her gargoyle faces.
For the most part, her work in “Gloria Bell”(2019) is in a realist key. She plays the title character, a generous-hearted divorced insurance worker with two adult children, an ex she doesn’t hate and an achingly lonely apartment. The movie itself is modest, intimate, thoughtful and rich in human detail. Gloria starts an affair with a man. It goes badly, they break up. Not much happens in ordinary movie terms, yet everything happens because Gloria loves and is loved in turn. It’s a story that could have led to buckets of snot and empty showboating. But Moore and the director Sebastián Lelio transcend obviousness. They don’t merely create a story about a woman’s feelings — and being — as she falls in love; they create a landscape of emotions, the texture and shape of a sensibility. Moore’s Gloria doesn’t cry and laugh; she shows you what love looks like from the inside. It’s a miracle of a performance.