Film Articles

More Resources for a Deeply Formed Spiritual Life

Taxi Driver at 40: We Are All “God’s Lonely Man”

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Taxi Driver suggests that all those other things are products of Travis/America’s deep-seated loneliness. In the same way, church can be about other things too, but those things should be cast in light of our neediness. There’s a hole in me. I believe there’s hole in you. That’s what we have in common. Let’s gather around that.

The Reel Spirituality Top 10 Films of 2015

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We’re excited to announce the Reel Spirituality Community Top 10 Films of 2015.

A Sacred Look: A Call to Become Pop-Cultural Mystics

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Exactly how do we bring our faith into dialogue with the culture without losing who we are? How can we become holy in a culture that often points out the opposite? What type of anthropology and spirituality is needed for today?

Healed by Another World – An Interview with Alejandro González Iñárritu on “The Revenant”

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My question was: How would a man be shaped by that experience? What’s going on in the mind of somebody who has the will, the endurance, and the resilience to survive? What makes people survive and fight? What is that? And how would a man be transformed and shaped by nature?

The Bazin Option: Cinema and Theology for Cities in Exile

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Bazin had struggled his entire life to find a way to integrate his many different academic interests, even to the point of abandoning his studies at the Sorbonne. The cinema provided this spiritual and intellectual center – and a base from which to think deeply about the relationships between art, culture, and history.

114 RS Podcast – Podcast Impossible – Rogue Nation

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We’re watching and talking about the Mission: Impossible films one by one.

Editor’s Note – Looking Ahead to 2016

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This year, we’ll be changing what we feature in a few key areas and continuing production unabated in the others.

113 RS Podcast – Podcast Impossible – Ghost Protocol

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We’re watching the Mission: Impossible films one by one.

112 RS Podcast – Podcast Impossible III

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We’re watching the Mission: Impossible films one at a time.

Babette's Feast

Coming Attractions – Week 4: Filled With Good Things

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Babette’s Feast is a movie about the grace that none of us deserve but which all of us receive anyway, grace given that the giver might be graceful, not necessarily so that we might feel graced…

Christmas, Violence, and the Economy

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I am not sure what holy extravagance is at Christmas in America, but the biblical scenes of Jesus’ birth and the life of the monks of Tibhirine tell us that hope lies not in easy aloofness but abiding, if disconcerting, solidarity. We certainly cannot pretend not to be part of the problem crystallized in the American Christmas.

111 RS Podcast – Podcast Impossible II

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We’re watching through the Mission: Impossible series one by one.

City Lights

Coming Attractions – Week 3: In Need of Joy

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There will be joy, because all that is disheartening will be undone. We are offered joy now and told to rejoice now because that “undoing of death” has already begun and will be completed soon

110 RS Podcast – Podcast Impossible I

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We’re watching and talking through the Mission: Impossible films one at a time.

How To Win The Hunger Games

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One of the most moving moments in the entire series occurs in Catching Fire, as Woody Harrelson’s character Haymitch somberly points out, “Nobody ever wins the Games…”

Children of Men

Coming Attractions – Week 2: Paths to Peace

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All the world wants peace, but God’s paths to peace are often different than ours.

109 RS Podcast – Irreverent Jesus

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If the film is about another first century, Judean revolutionary named Brian, is it still a Jesus movie?

Bambi and Magnolia

Coming Attractions – Week 1: Wake Up

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Both Bambi and Magnolia invite us to wake up during this Advent season.

108 RS Podcast – Tortured Jesus

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The Passion of the Christ is one of the most financially successful Jesus movies ever made. Why?

107 RS Podcast – Epic, Communist Jesus

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What makes a good Jesus movie? We’re watching King of Kings and The Gospel According to St. Matthew to find out.

106 RS Podcast – Is It Possible to Make a Good Jesus Movie?

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Is it possible to make a good Jesus movie? We’re tackling that question in our latest podcast series.