Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Spiritually Significant Films

Filmchat draws attention to the annual(?) The Arts & Faith Top 100 spiritually significant films. Of the 100 films listed I've only seen 17 (a handful of others are on my need to rent/view list). Here is my ranking of the 17 I have seen (with the AF100 ranking in parentheses).

1 The Mission (13) - a great soundtrack as well
2 Schindler's List (49)
3 A Man for All Seasons (19)
4 It's A Wonderful Life (52)
5 Shadowlands (40)
6 In America (99) - I highly recommend this one
7 Life is Beautiful (80)
8 The Hiding Place (51)
9 The Apostle (11)
10 The Passion Of The Christ (35)- Gibson got carried away with the gore, but otherwise the most artful "Jesus" film I've seen.
11 The Lord of the Rings trilogy (74) - Jackson's films diminished the spiritual elements of Tolkein's classic work
12 Babette's Feast (8)
13 Chariots of Fire (21)
14 Jesus of Nazareth (37)
15 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (98)
16 Amadeus (97)
17 Les Miserables (88) - I prefer 1978 version over the 1998 version on this list

Here are a 10 films on the list that I want to see:
27 Magnolia
48 To End All Wars
60 Luther
62 The Gospel of John
65 To Kill a Mockingbird
66 Hotel Rwanda
72 Millions
90 2001: A Space Odyssey
92 The Shawshank Redemption
100 Unforgiven


Here are a few films that should have made the list (in no particular order):
Philadelphia - Compassion overjudgmentt
The Matrix * - What is reality?
The Original Star Wars Trilogy * - Redemption, faith, good over evil...
Forrest Gump - destiny versus chance
Ben Hur
Pulp Fiction - not recommended for everyone
Blade Runner *
Life of Brian *
Signs *
The Truman Show *


* denotes inclusion on the 2004 list

No comments: