In
response to requests for additional resources and information I have opened
the Hollywood Jesus store.
-David Bruce
POP CULTURE FROM A SPIRITUAL
POINT OF VIEW
FAITH
AFFIRMING
HOLLYWOOD
MOVIES
How
it works.
Click the title you want. This will take you to Amazon.com. Click "add
to shopping cart." Return to Hollywood Jesus with your browser "Back"
button. Make your next selection. This will take you back to Amazon.com.
Click "add to shopping cart" etc. When you are ready to purchase
click "Proceed to Checkout" from the Amazon.com shopping cart
page and follow directions. Easy.
VHSDVD Chariots of Fire (1981)
Best Picture Academy Award Winner
VHSDVD The Sound of Music
(1965)
5th most popular film of all time.
VHS
Blood of Jesus (1941)
Spencer Williams religious allegory, "Blood of Jesus",
is an insightful look at African-American religious thought at mid-century
VHS Go Down Death (1937)
Spencer Williams
directed several films in the 1930's and 40's of which this film is included.
He is probably best known as "Andy" from "Amos and Andy."
VHS Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973)
A musical
scored by Donovan about St. Francis of Assisi, the passionate ascetic
who expressed love for God by loving nature.
VHS George
Wallace (1997)
Based on the book by Marshall Frady, this epic bio by John
Frankenheimer stars Gary Sinise. Great conversion scene.
VHS
The Hiding Place (1975) Starring: James F. Collier. Story of Dutch Christians
aiding Jews in WW2. The Corrie Ten Boom story.
VHS
Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) Starring Ingrid Bergman An epic and extraordinary true
story of Gladys Aylward, a British missionary to China.
VHS
Jesus of Montreal (1990)
- English subtitles Writer-director Arcand takes on religious hypocrisy,
commercialism, and other social ills in this wise, profoundly moving and
sometimes savagely funny film. A real gem.
VHS
Lilies of the Field (1963)
Sidney Poitier won an Oscar for this endearing movie about
a handyman who ends up building a chapel for a cluster of nuns.
VHS
Martin Luther (1959)
This film ought to be watched by everyone in the world!
Luther is one of the key figures in world history. An Academy Award Nominee
The Miracle of the Bells (1948)
Starring: Fred MacMurray. Frank Sinatra as the priest of
St.Michael's, a small coal mining town parish,was one the best roles he's
ever played.The story was heartfelt and inspirational.
VHS The Mission (1986)
Starring:
Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons. Jesuit mission in the jungles of Brazil
is threatened by greedy merchants and political factions within the church,
in the late 18th century. Magnificent-looking film.
VHSDVD Dead Man Walking (1995)
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn. Superbly adapted and
directed by Tim Robbins from the nonfiction book of the same name by Sister
Helen Prejean. A spiritually enlightened drama
VHSDVD The
Omen (1976) Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick. About a young boy
suspected of being the the anti-Christ. Directed by Richard Donner, best
known for his Superman and Lethal Weapon films.
VHSDVD The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
English subtitles
Carl Dreyer's film is as truly mythic as any film ever shot, its artistic
achievement unmatched. A true classic.
VHSDVD Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981)
Starring:
Harrison Ford, Karen Allen. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's Saturday-matinee
adventure genre in seasrch of the lost the Ark of the Covenant
VHSDVD
77 Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Starring: Harrison
Ford, Sean Connery.
Indy is back battling the Nazis, who have launched an expedition to uncover
the whereabouts of the Holy Grail of Jesus.
VHS The
Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Starring: Gregory Peck. Christopher Plummer. plays a Vatican
official who clandestinely harbored allied POW escapees throughout German.
Gielgud is Pope Pius XII in this well-made thriller
VHS The Sign of the Cross (1932)
Starring: Fredric March, Claudette Colbert. Director: Cecil
B. DeMille
VHS The Crusades (1935)
Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Love, action, and great big
siege machines in DeMille version of medieval era Holy Crusades spectacle
that's good for fun.
VHS Silver Chalice (1954)
Starring: Virginia Mayo. Director: Victor Saville. Paul Newman's
screen debut as a Greek who designs framework for cup used at Last Supper.
VHS The Singing Nun (1965)
Starring: Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban based on real-life
Belgian nun whose devotion is split between religious work and making
hit records. Combines faith,love,hope and the vows of poverty,obedience
and charity.
VHSDVD Sister Act (1992) Starring: Maggie
Smith. Whoopi Goldberg plays a Reno lounge singer who hides out as a nun
when her villainous boyfriend
VHSDVD Ghost (1990)
Starring: Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore.
Hell and the demons are portrayed in amazing way in terms of justice.
VHSDVD Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Najimy. The "socially conscious"
plot finds Goldberg being asked to relate to a bunch of street kids and
pull them together into a choir
VHSDVD Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000 (2000) Amazing connection
between Judas and Dracula and the meaning of Jesus' death.
VHSDVD The Family Man (2000)
Starring Nicolas Cage is visited by an angel who gives him
a look at life as a family man.
VHSDVD Traffic (2000)
Starring: Michael Douglas. Director: Steven Soderbergh. About the drug traffic
and how to defeat it. Note church scene at end.
VHSDVD 28 Days (2000)
Starring Sandra Bullock as Gwen is an alcoholic in denial
whose latest bender with boozer boyfriend Jasper ruins the wedding of her
sister and lands her in a month-long rehab program. Faith plays important
part.
VHSDVD Alien Resurrection (1997)
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, et al. Director:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The title points to the amazing connects with the Christ
story.
VHSDVD Amistad (1997)
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins. Steven Spielberg's
Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following
their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship.
VHSDVD Anna and the King (1999)
Starring: Jodie Foster, Yun-Fat Chow. Lavish and rewarding
version of the story of Anna Leonowens, a Christian and based on her diaries.
VHSDVD Bless the Child (2000)
The story of Jesus set in modern time using a little girl
to play the Christ figure.
VHSDVD
The Apostle (1998)
Written, directed, and personally financed by Robert Duvall
who stars as the dynamic, God-fearing Texas preacher Euliss "Sonny" Dewey.
A 14-year effort on the part of its creator.
VHS Bonhoeffer - Agent of Grace (1999)
What is a moral person to do in a time of savage immorality?
That question tormented Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German clergyman of great
distinction who actively opposed Hitler and the Nazis.
VHSDVD The Spitfire Grill (1996)
This well-acted drama won the Audience award at the 1996
Sundance Film Festival, about a woman Christ figure.
VHSDVD Shadowlands (1994)
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger. Based upon the real-life
romance between the British writer C.S. Lewis and a divorced American poet
named Joy Gresham.
VHSDVD The Bishop's Wife (1948)
Starring: Cary Grant, Loretta Young. A Christmas perennial
from 1947. An angel who works his heavenly magic on an Episcopalian bishop
who is struggling to raise money for a new church and who has grown distant
from his wife.
VHS
The Preacher's Wife (1996)
An inner-city preacher (Courtney B. Vance) and his estranged
spouse (Whitney Houston) are visited by a celestial angel (Denzel Washington).
VHSDVD The Third Miracle (1999)
Ed Harris and Anne Heche star in Agnieszka Holland's provocative
mystery that explores the spiritual phenomenon behind miracles, and the
doubts and desires of a priest who has lost his faith.
VHSDVD The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection (1957)
Ingmar Bergman's 1956 film remains one of the strangest and
richest classics of world cinema. Max Von Sydow plays a knight returning
from the Crusades to encounter an apocalyptic scenario inspired by the Book
of Revelation.
VHS
Entertaining Angels: the Dorothy Day Story (1996)
The story of Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker
Movement in the 1930s, based on taking the Gospels' social message seriously.
VHSDVD The Green Mile (1999)
Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison
drama (The Shawshank Redemption was the first) About a prisoner on death
row, John Coffey, who is a Christ figure.
VHSDVD Simon
Birch (1998)
Starring: Ian Michael Smith, Joseph Mazzello. Simon is
a boy with a mission from God.
VHSDVD Contact (1997)
Starring: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey. About the importance
of reason and faith joining hands
VHSDVD The Big
Kahuna (2000)
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito. Three salesmen meet
in a hotel and discuss issues of life and God.
VHSDVD The End
of the Affair (1999)
Julianne Moore
and Ralph Fiennes as lovers in the Blitz-time London, are torn apart by
a promise to God. A plot originating from Graham Greene novel.
NEW!
48 FAITH AFFIRMING MOVIES from HOLLYWOOD
-click here.
