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...
Frequency (2000)
7.4/10
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel, Andre Braugher, Elizabeth Mitchell
Thirty years after New York firefighter Dennis Quaid is killed in a warehouse blaze, his now grown son, policeman Jim Caviezel, discovers his old ham... Read more
The Big Kahuna (2000)
6.6/10
Director: John Swanbeck
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Peter Facinelli
Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito and Peter Facinelli are three industrial lubricant sales people attending a convention in Wichita. As they schmooze with cl... Read more
Rosetta / La Promesse (1999)
Director: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Starring: Emilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux, Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourme...
'Rosetta' (1999, 90 mins) Winner of the 1999 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and widely hailed as a masterpiece, 'Rosetta' is an extraordinary... Read more
The Sixth Sense ( Blu-ray ) (1999)
8.1/10
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Olivia Williams, Toni Collette, Donnie Wahlberg
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a distinguished child psychologist haunted by the painful memory of a disturbed patient he was unable to help. So... Read more
The Thirteenth Floor ( Blu-ray ) (1999)
7/10
Director: Josef Rusnak
Starring: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Craig Bierko, Dennis Haysbert, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D'Onof...
This thought-provoking dark thriller, in keeping with "The Matrix" and "Dark City", is set in a computer-generated parallel world like 1930s L.A. with... Read more
The Matrix ( Blu-ray ) (1999)
8.7/10
Director: The Wachowski Brothers
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Joe Pantoliano
Cutting-edge visuals and production design feature in this mind altering tale about a computer hacker (Keanu Reeves) who discovers he is living an ill... Read more
Yi Yi ( A One and a Two ) (Blu-ray) (1999)
8.2/10
Director: Edward Yang
Starring: Nianzhen Wu, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Issey Ogata
Set in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, writer/director Edward Yang's acclaimed drama juxtaposes old and new, love and heartbreak as it follows the em... Read more
Yi Yi ( A One and a Two ) (1999)
8.1/10
Director: Edward Yang
Starring: Nianzhen Wu, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Issey Ogata
Set in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, writer/director Edward Yang's acclaimed drama juxtaposes old and new, love and heartbreak as it follows the em... Read more
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
7.6/10
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
A few people arrive from Tehran for a short stay at Siah Dareh, a village in Iranian Kurdistan. The locals do not know why they are there. The strange... Read more
The Sixth Sense (1999)
8.1/10
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Toni Collette, Haley Joel Osment, Bruce Willis, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a distinguished child psychologist haunted by the painful memory of a disturbed patient he was unable to help. So... Read more