Togas, Tattoos and Tonsures

I missed a carol service for a more profoundly religious experience - at the cinema.

It recalled what I had been calling my favourite film of the year - Agora. Both Of Gods and Men and Agora are about North Africa and religious tolerance vs extremism which ends in real life peace loving protagonists being assassinated.

It was profound, moving, a rare portrayal of faith which sympathised and understood its subject.

These films are what cinema is about.

I am sad and annoyed that when I come to write about the most worthy film I have seen in months, that I am stumped after a paragraph. A thick book with a dragon on the front is once again riding its way over other stories. Of Gods and Men feels more worthy, more intelligent and certainly more moral. The protagonists are God and peace loving. They are loved by those around them. Lisbeth Salander is violent, subversive (-are monks subversive?), retributive, into casual sex; whereas Of Gods and Men is a story without romance or physical desire, and who help those who persecute them, not rape and torture them back.

I look at that tabloid brick across the room and know I want to be reading it. And could put this down now to finish it before it has to go back to the one week loan at the library.

I've seen a record breaking 50 films at the cinema this year and many others at home.

It would be untrue to say that nothing has enveloped me like the Dragon Tattoo books. But what is strange is that I don't like them or admire Stieg of the Dump Larsson's trilogy. I think of other things that I have cared about, and while I enjoy them, I rate them. I like at least some of the characters.

On reflection, there have been a few addictions - all manifested this year - where I have been compelled by something I hate. It is hard to work out why and probably the answer is too personal to write here when I do find it. Another case is John Lennon. Nowhere Boy held sway for a few weeks at the beginning of the year, but I take back my first review as research shows it to clash immorally with the reality of John Lennon's early life. There's a conundrum: what do Lennon and Lisbeth have in common? Sadly, not peace protesting. But Larsson and Lennon both spoke out about violence against women.

I want to resist another spiralling into the worlds of either Beatles or Blomkvist and reflect how this was a film year that for me opened with Avatar and ended with Winter's Bone and featured a Thai dreamlike film featuring a fish and a princess (say no more on that!), Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Gainsbourg's Soixante Neuf; animations of Scottish misery and Belgian ebullience; two of Rachel Wiesz's best performances, epics from Italy, slow burners from Romania and Julia Roberts in a sari. But when I sum up, I see Rachel in a toga and Noomi Rapaace with black lipstick.