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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...

Back to the Future (4K Ultra HD) (1985)

8.5/10
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Marc McClure

Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd are a time-travelling duo who journey from the past to the future and back again in this now-classic sci-fi comed... Read more

Being There (1979)

8/10
Director: Hal Ashby
Starring: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart, Ri...

Peter Sellers gives the performance of his career as Chance, a middle-aged gardener who's led a sheltered life and whose thoughts and behaviour are to... Read more

Ben-Hur (1959)

8.1/10
Director: William Wyler
Starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd

Winner of eleven Oscars including Charlton Heston as Best Actor, an epic spectacle concerning a prince of Judea who incurs the wrath of the Roman Empi... Read more

Ben-Hur ( Blu-ray ) (1959)

8.1/10
Director: William Wyler
Starring: Charlton Heston, Hugh Griffith, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet

Winner of eleven Oscars including Charlton Heston as Best Actor, an epic spectacle concerning a prince of Judea who incurs the wrath of the Roman Empi... 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

Bicycle Thieves ( aka The Bicycle Thief ) ( Blu-ray ) (1948)

8.3/10
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Enzo Staiola, Lamberto Maggiorani, Lianella Carell

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

Bliss (1985)

7/10
Director: Ray Lawrence
Starring: Lynette Curran, Barry Otto, Helen Jones

Noticed by its absence for a number of years, this outrageous and daring Australian film stars Barry Otto as Harry Joy, a wistful Sydney advertising m... Read more

Brainstorm (1983)

6.5/10
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Starring: Cliff Robertson, Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher

Special-effects wizard Douglas Trumbull directed this technological thriller about a device that enables one to experience someone else's thoughts and... Read more

Breaking the Waves (1996)

7.9/10
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier

The extraordinary story of a young, simple-minded, God-fearing Scottish woman who willingly takes on lovers in the belief that it will cure her paraly... Read more

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)

7.2/10
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Starring: Alec Guinness, Graham Faulkner, Judi Bowker, Leigh Lawson

Franco Zeffirelli relates the tale of St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian soldier who returns from the Crusades and dismisses his family's material weal... Read more