SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Let's be realistic.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

From the nebulous Al Qaeda to the rampaging mobs who call themselves Daesh, Islamist fighters are portrayed in our media as an almost metaphysical threat: barbaric, 'medieval', an enemy that defies comprehension, they are the personification of the Terror that 'we', the civilized, are told we must fight. The beautiful and troubling film 'Timbuktu', set during the Islamist take-over of Northern Mali, reframes this story.From the opening scenes, when the local Imam orders the Jihadists out of the mosque, it is clear these men have neither spiritual nor moral authority. The rules they impose on the local Muslim population are both absurd and vicious. Music, football, sitting in the street and smoking are forbidden. The women are forced to wear gloves much as the Jews of Spain were required to wear yellow stars by the Inquisition – or as Muslim women in France are forbidden from wearing the veil today. The film demonstrates how these arbitrary edicts have nothing to do with faith and are designed solely to assert social control.One of the most beautiful sequences shows the boys of the town playing soccer with an imaginary ball in an act of joyous, collective defiance. Yet, even as they ban the sport, the most animated conversation the Jihadists have is about football, and the local youths who have joined them have presumably done so for money or prestige rather than out of conviction. In a key scene where the protagonist recognises one of the local Jihadists, the man, clearly ashamed, claims to have come from Libya. These Islamic fighters, then, have more in common with gangland bullies, Nazi thugs or the youths of the Red Guard who terrorised China during the Cultural Revolution than they do with the ancient, scimitar-wielding foe of Christian imagination – a spectre from the 'crusades' that has been diligently resuscitated in both religious camps for strictly political ends.In 'Timbuktu', as in real life, it is the local Muslims – the women in particular – who suffer at the Jihadists' hands. Yet it is clear, too, that this tyranny – like all others – will be temporary. The abiding impression of these self-styled religious warriors is of a group of deeply inadequate men – men whose own impotence and longing drives them to assert illusory dominion over a natural, female and human world of irrepressible variety and beauty

Timbuktu, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, depicts the suppression of people in Timbuktu when Sharia Law is instituted and enforced. The city of Timbuktu, known for its unique culture, is taken over by Muslims who shout out the laws that the citizens must obey. These laws restrict a lot of the culture in Timbuktu including music and clothing and ban soccer. The movie includes a lot of powerful scenes including when a woman is given an absurd amount of lashings for singing and pushes back by singing during her session of lashings. Another scene that I really enjoyed was when the boys of the city played soccer with an imaginary ball. It showed that the boys could still do what they wanted to do and how committed they were to what they love. When the ones who were instituting Sharia Law came to the soccer field, the boys pretended to be stretching and not playing soccer. Because of scenes like these two, I believe that this movie deserves a 9/10 because it kept me interested and depicted the degrading nature of Sharia Law.

Timbuktu was a very interesting movie. Overall I thought the movie was a little bit boring. Throughout the movie, there were very few excited events, and when those exciting events occurred, they seemed to drag those events out for a really long time. I thought it was an interesting motive to kill someone, because that guy killed one of your cows. I understand there was a lot of built up tension, but that was something kind of ridiculous to put someone over to actually kill a guy. When he finally did kill the guy, he tried to get up over and over again after clearly being killed. The ending was very confusing as well. It seemed as if the entire movie went too slow, but the ending went too fast. It was hard to understand exactly what was going on at the end of the movie. There were many unanswered questions that remained unanswered. The movie could have been much better if they actually answered at least some of those questions.

Timbuktu is an intricate movie. It shows the conflicting problems occurring in Mali, and that being the control of the extremists. This movie presents a very accurate amount of detail on the treatment of women in Mali, but that's also happening in other countries as well.In this film, many women and men were not able to do activities that are common in the daily lives of others living in America and Europe, like singing, or playing soccer. I liked the way that this film showed how the character's lives were being affected daily in their lives. Many were forbidden to do things that are said not to be written on any written document, and were set up by the extremists to control the people. My favorite scene like many others who have seen this film would be when the young boys were pretending to play soccer without an actual ball, because it was forbidden by the extremist laws. This shows that many who live in Mali, and other countries that are controlled by extremists wish to do activities that they know if they are caught doing, will put their lives in danger. Overall I thought this movie was very good, but the only thing I would change would be the ending. The ending of the film was very weird to me it showed Toya one of the main characters in this film, and her brother both running in a direction which seemed like never ending, and then the film ends. I would give this film a 4/5 stars.