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...
The Nun (2018)
5.7/10
Director: Corin Hardy
Starring: Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons
When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows... Read more
The Nun (Blu-Ray) (2018)
5.7/10
Director: Corin Hardy
Starring: Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons
When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows... Read more
Hereditary (Blu-Ray) (2018)
7.5/10
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Toni Collette, Ann Dowd, Alex Wolff, Millie Shapiro
When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter and grandchildren begin to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about... Read more
Hereditary (2018)
7.5/10
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Toni Collette, Ann Dowd, Alex Wolff, Millie Shapiro
When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter and grandchildren begin to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about... Read more
Mary Magdalene (2018)
5.9/10
Director: Garth Davis
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lubna Azabal, Rooney Mara, Tahar Rahim, Denis...
A young girl from the village of Magdala resists the traditional roles of women in society, and takes the opportunity to rebel by following the newly... Read more
Novitiate (2017)
6.6/10
Director: Maggie Betts
Starring: Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor, Maddie Hasson, Mar...
A 17-year-old trains to become a nun as the Roman Catholic Church undergoes radical changes in the early 1960s Read more
Disobedience (2017)
6.6/10
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Starring: Alessandro Nivola, Rachel Weisz, Allan Corduner, Anton Lesser, Rachel McAdams, A...
New York photographer Ronit Krushka flies to London after learning about the death of her estranged father. Ronit is returning to the same Orthodox Je... Read more
Lucky (2017)
7.4/10
Director: John Carroll Lynch
Starring: David Lynch, Ed Begley Jr, Harry Dean Stanton, James Darren, Ron Livingston, Tom...
A 90-year-old atheist has outlived and out-smoked his contemporaries, and as he comes to terms with his own mortality, he searches for ever-elusive en... Read more
I Am Not a Witch (2017)
6.8/10
Director: Rungano Nyoni
Starring: Benfors 'Wee Do
Following a banal incident in her local village, 8-year old girl Shula is accused of witchcraft. After a short trial she is found guilty, taken into s... Read more
Mother! (2017)
6.7/10
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Ed Harris, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Lawrence, Domhnall Gleeson...
A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. From filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Bl... Read more