Films Worth Watching

This is just for starters. A list of (mostly recent) films excellent for theological discussion or personal pleasure/reflection.

Category #1: Just Plain Fun

  • Amelie (anonymously helping others as creative transformation) - France, 2001
  • Being Julia (Noel Cowardesque romantic comedy) - 2004
  • City Lights (Charlie Chaplin romantic comedy) - 1931
  • Lars and the Real Girl (delusion, community and church support) - 2007
  • Sideways (journey film, tragi-comic, brilliant dialogue) - 2004

Category #2: Social Conscience

  • Crash (infinitely shifting boundaries, difficulties in breaking through multiple racist stereotypes) - 2004
  • Hotel Rwanda (genocide) - 2004
  • Vera Drake (abortion, class differences) - 2004

Category #3: Absorbing Drama

  • About Schmidt (aging, family relations, meaning) - 2002
  • Chocolat (forms of community; what constitutes a sacred community/church) - 2000
  • Departures (rituals surrounding death, calling, reconciliation) - Japan, 2008
  • In America (community, breaking stereotypes, family) - 2002
  • Jesus of Montreal (French-Canadian allegory on life of Jesus) - Canada, 1989
  • Kings and Queen (layered depths and mystery of human personality; reversals of expectations) - France, 2004
  • Nowhere in Africa (war and peace, dislocation, marriage/family/friend loyalties, forgiveness) - Germany, 2001
  • Pieces of April (community, death and reconciliation) - 2003
  • Ray (music as metaphor for creative transformation; blindness) - 2004
  • A Serious Man (dark comedy; suffering and questioning faith) - 2009
  • Spitfire Grill (suffering for another, redemption, forgiveness, transformation) - 1996
  • Tree of Life (non-linear story; impressionistic; Job-like; origins and meaning of life) - 2011
  • Troubled Water (coming to terms with one's past) - Norway, 2008

Category #4: Animation