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- 12 Years a Slave (2013) - Director: Steve McQueen. - Metascore: 96. - Runtime: 134 minutes. This true story adaptation tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York who is enslaved in the United States prior to the Civil War.
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - Director: John Ford. - Metascore: 96. - Runtime: 129 minutes. Based on the iconic novel by John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" follows the story of a poor Midwestern family that is forced off their land during the Great Depression.
- Schindler's List (1993) - Director: Steven Spielberg. - Metascore: 94. - Runtime: 195 minutes. "Schindler's List" stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, an industrialist living in German-occupied Poland, who begins to rescue the Jews from Nazi persecution.
- Apocalypse Now (1979) - Director: Francis Ford Coppola. - Metascore: 94. - Runtime: 147 minutes. A U.S. Army officer is stationed in Vietnam and is given the mission to assassinate a Special Forces Colonel who has gone off the rails, likening himself to God.
1. There Will Be Blood. 2007 2h 38m R. 8.2 (643K) Rate. 93 Metascore. A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business. Director Paul Thomas Anderson Stars Daniel Day-Lewis Paul Dano Ciarán Hinds. 2. Ordet. 1955 2h 6m Not Rated. 8.2 (17K) Rate.
Discover 17 religious movies across many traditions. 1. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023) Available on Amazon Prime Video, Starz | IMDB rating: 7.4. Based on the classic Judy Blume novel, this religious movie follows the adventures of 11-year-old Margaret Simon after she moves to a new town.
- 10 'First Reformed'
- 9 'Ben-Hur'
- 8 'Mother!'
- 7 'The Ten Commandments'
- 6 'Noah'
- 5 'Kingdom of Heaven'
- 4 'Silence'
- 3 'The Tree of Life'
- 2 'The Mission'
- 1 'The Last Temptation of Christ'
Directed by Paul Schrader
Writer/director Paul Schrader is no secret to exploring themes around faith in the films he works on, and First Reformedmight be the movie that best exemplifies that. It's a dark psychological drama about the priest of a small church whose life begins to spiral out of control after several strange encounters with those around him. First Reformed digs deep into the psyche of its main character, played excellently by Ethan Hawke in one of his very best performances. It might prove a little too...
Directed by William Wyler
Ranking among the longest Best Picture winners in the history of the Academy Awards, Ben-Huris a truly epic biblical movie. It follows a man named Judah Ben-Hur, who finds himself and his family sold into slavery. It's a film that builds to a legendary chariot race, which is where the protagonist has a chance to right the ways he's been wronged, and free himself and his family. It's a story that takes place around the same time as the life of Jesus Christ, but focuses more on a different grou...
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
At first glance, Darren Aronofsky's infamous mother! doesn't feel like a particularly religious-themed movie. It takes place inside a single house, and at its most basic level, it depicts a continuing series of tense and nightmarish scenes where people keep showing up at a couple's home, refusing to leave and being joined by more and more people as things go on. Without a doubt, it's one of Aronofsky's most relentless, strange, and intense movies, making it something of an acquired taste. It'...
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
As far as relatively straightforward bible adaptations go, 1956's The Ten Commandments is a successful one. The story of Moses contains a great deal of cinematic potential, which is well realized across the almost four-hour runtime that The Ten Commandmentshas. The sense of scale still holds up well, with the film using plenty of extras and special effects for its big sequences that were groundbreaking for the time. It's easy to get swept up in this story of betrayal, self-discovery, and rede...
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Three years before mother!, Aronofsky made another slightly off-kilter religious movie called Noah. It was more obviously an adaptation of a biblical story than mother!(it's in the title, after all), but nevertheless, it was a strange and unexpected take on the familiar story of the world being destroyed by a flood, with Noah and his family (plus tons of animals) surviving on his ark. It takes an approach to the story that sort of turns it into aLord of the Rings-style epic, as there are plen...
Directed by Ridley Scott
In his nearly 50-year-long career, Ridley Scott has made plenty of great movies that have been overshadowed or underrated, and Kingdom of Heavenis undeniably one of them. It follows a blacksmith who becomes swept up in the Crusades, which were a series of dramatic religious wars waged throughout the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. In that way, it's more of a historical epic/war movie than it is say a drama that explores the nuances of religion, but the religious side of the plot is undeniably...
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Silence ranks among Martin Scorsese's most underrated movies. It's an epic film that runs for almost three hours, and follows two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan in search of their mentor, given that was his last-known location. Silence is a slow and meditative movie, but a consistently engrossing one that manages to be a balanced and introspective look at what drives people who dedicate their lives to a particular faith. It's one of the best religious-focused movies of the 21st century so...
Directed by Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick explores faith in a unique, hypnotic manner in The Tree of Life, which combines an intimate family drama with an epic story about the birth of the universe. To call it all visually spectacular would be an understatement, as it would have to rank among the most beautiful-looking movies of the 2010s. It can be a bumpy ride, becauseThe Tree of Life has an unusual rhythm, some repetition when it comes to scenes, and may prove frustrating to some with frequent sequences left up to...
Directed by Roland Joffé
While Robert De Niro is widely beloved for his roles in numerous crime movies (particularly those directed by Martin Scorsese), he's had plenty of iconic non-crime movie roles, too. The Missionis one of the best examples, as this is a historical drama/adventure movie set in the 1750s about an ex-mercenary (played by De Niro) seeking redemption at an Argentinian mission deep in the jungle. Much of the movie also deals with the Jesuit priests who work at the mission fighting for its continued e...
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Like First Reformed, The Last Temptation of Christ was also written by Paul Schrader, and based on the controversial novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. Unlike First Reformed, however, this film was directed by Martin Scorsese, who's like Schrader in that he's unafraid to explore religion frequently in his movies, especially noticeable here in this 1988 film, which is arguably up there as one of the best releases of the 1980s. Though its story bears some similarity to the last days o...
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- Feature Writer/Senior List Writer
- Managing Editor
- Winter Light. Numerous Ingmar Bergman films could be considered here as the greatest movies with religious themes. Faith was one of the important director's most consistent themes, and he took it seriously, exploring it in masterpieces like Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence, Fanny and Alexander, and The Seventh Seal.
- Au Hasard Balthazar. Most of Robert Bresson's films were about redemption, but for the Jansenist director, redemption and salvation are found through the endurance of great suffering.
- Silence. The aforementioned Martin Scorsese returned to religion four decades after his Last Temptation with this astonishing update of Shusaku Endo's novel (and Masahiro Shinoda's film) Silence.
- A Hidden Life. Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jagerstatter, the martyred Austrian who was a conscientious objector during World War II and refused to sign the required oath of allegiance to Hitler.
Apr 19, 2024 · 16 Movies About Christianity That Critics Loved, Ranked According to Rotten Tomatoes. By Samuel R. Murrian , Jessie Nguyen , and Tory Crowley. Updated Apr 19, 2024. These films about faith...
Jun 8, 2021 · Stacker compiled data on the top 1000 films of all time, according to Metacritic, and narrowed the scope to films that deal explicitly with religion, regardless of which religion or which angle...
