Login

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...

Contact (1997)

7.4/10
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Angela Bassett, James Woods, Jodie Foster, John Hurt, Matthew McConaughey, Tom S...

Radio astronomer Jodie Foster receives signals from outer space which, when decoded, offer plans for building a ship that could help her reach the sta... Read more

Contact ( Blu-ray ) (1997)

7.4/10
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Angela Bassett, James Woods, Jodie Foster, John Hurt, Matthew McConaughey, Tom S...

Radio astronomer Jodie Foster receives signals from outer space which, when decoded, offer plans for building a ship that could help her reach the sta... Read more

Conversations With God (2006)

6.6/10
Director: Stephen Simon
Starring: Henry Czerny, Vilma Silva, Bruce Page, Abdul Salaam El-Razzac

Based on the extraordinarily popular books by Neale Donald Walsch, telling the true story of the unfortunate events in his life and the emotional jour... Read more

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Kari Sylwan

One of writer/director Ingmar Bergman's most acclaimed films, 'Cries and Whispers' is a dramatically intense story set in a vast manor house in rural... Read more

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

8/10
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Caroline Aaron, Alan Alda, Woody Allen, Claire Bloom, Mia Farrow, Joanna Gleason...

Writer/Director Woody Allen weaves together two separate stories in this highly acclaimed comedy/drama. A married man (Martin Landau) having troubles... Read more

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

7.9/10
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Chang Chen, Zhang Ziyi

A pair of martial arts masters and would-be lovers, an independent young woman with a dark secret, and the search for a stolen mystical sword all come... Read more

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( Blu-ray ) (2000)

7.9/10
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Chang Chen, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi

A pair of martial arts masters and would-be lovers, an independent young woman with a dark secret, and the search for a stolen mystical sword all come... Read more

Day of Wrath (1943)

8/10
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring: Thorkild Roose, Sigrid Nejiendam, Lisbeth Movin

Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Day of Wrath is a dark and powerful tale of love and betrayal, and of a community obsessed with the fear of witchc... Read more

Dead Man Walking (1995)

7.5/10
Director: Tim Robbins
Starring: Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Robert Prosky

Sister Helen Prejean's 1993 bestseller is the basis for this harrowing account of her life's work'; a spiritual advisor for condemned killers awaiting... Read more

Defending Your Life (1991)

7.3/10
Director: Albert Brooks
Starring: Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant

This winning tale revolves around Albert Brooks who dies in a car crash and finds himself in Judgment City. There he meets thelove of his deat (Meryl... Read more