Spiritual Cinema
"Movies containing spiritual, metaphysical, conscious or similar messages or themes".
Simon Keyes explains the idea behind Spiritual Cinema.
It is the extraordinary power of cinema, high or low, serious and exploitative, to move and disturb us that we should celebrate and embrace in all its diversity. Films can fertilise our inner lives and provide a counter-balance to that compartmentalisation of our "religious" selves that Thomas Merton dubbed our "personal holiness project". The feelings and shadows that films (well, perhaps not quite every movie) incarnate in us give us privileged access to the world beyond our immediate experience. The sights and sounds of cinema can resonate in the realms of the unconscious and the archetypal like no other medium, and there is much for us to learn about ourselves in this experience.
Below is a list of "the best of" this genre...
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
8.6/10
Director: George Lucas
Starring: Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Voice O...
The story of a boy, a girl and a universe. Now a classic, this blend of pulp magazine sci-fi, comic book action, old fashioned cliff-hanger story and... Read more
The Seventh Seal (1957)
8.2/10
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson
Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges h... Read more
Wild Strawberries (1957)
8.2/10
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Victor Sjostrom, Gunnar Bjornstrand
The film that catapulted Bergman to the forefront of world cinema is the directors richest, most humane movie. Traveling to receive an honorary degre... Read more
Bicycle Thieves ( aka The Bicycle Thief ) (1948)
8.3/10
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Lianella Carell, Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola
Aka 'The Bicycle Thief.' Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1948 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's post-war depression earned a special Oscar fo... Read more
Magnolia (1999)
8/10
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Jeremy Blackman, Tom Cruise, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William...
Paul Thomas Anderson's third feature film is an exhilarating, almost reckless display of cinematic ambition. Weaving together more than a dozen charac... Read more
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
8.6/10
Director: Frank Capra
Starring: Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Donna Reed
Classic bittersweet comedy/drama that is the quintessential Frank Capra film. James Stewart is a banker living in the typical American small town of B... Read more
The Princess Bride (1987)
8.1/10
Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Cary Elwes, Christopher Guest, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, Wal...
A very special, engaging fairy-tale comedy which mixes romance, magic and swashbuckling action as told to a young boy by his grandfather (Peter Falk).... Read more
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963)
8.4/10
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: George C Scott, James Earl Jones, Keenan Wynn, Peter Bull, Peter Sellers, Slim P...
A commie-hating, paranoid American general launches a flight of B-52 bombers at the Soviet Union with nuclear annihilation in mind. Since he is the on... Read more
Network (1976)
8.1/10
Director: Sidney Lumet
Starring: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty
A savage satire written by Paddy Chayefsky, looking at the powers behind television programming. Even more compelling and relevant today than when it... Read more
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
8.8/10
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett,...
In the first installment of director Peter Jackson's ambitious and successful film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy, Elijah Wood stars a... Read more