Posts Tagged ‘religion’

Bless the Child (2000)

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Genres: Horror | Thriller
Countries: Germany | USA
Actors: Kim Basinger | Jimmy Smits | Holliston Coleman | Rufus Sewell | Angela Bettis | Christina Ricci | Michael Gaston | Lumi Cavazos | Dimitra Arliss | Eugene Lipinski | Anne Betancourt | Ian Holm | Helen Stenborg | Matthew Lemche | Dan Warry-Smith
Directors: Chuck Russell
Download: DVD iPod 

Omens and concepts of good vs. evil have no place in Maggie O’Connor’s well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital, until one rainy night, her sister Jenna abandons her newborn, autistic daughter at her home. Maggie takes the baby in, and she becomes the daughter she never had. Six years later Jenna suddenly re-appears with a mysterious new husband, Eric, and abducts Cody. Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis (Jimmy Smits), an expert in ritual homicide and occult-related crime, takes up her cause when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children. The little girl, it soon becomes clear, is more than simply “special.” She manifests extraordinary powers that the forces of evil have waited centuries to control, and her abduction sparks a clash between the soldiers of good and evil that can only be resolved, in the end, by the strength of one small child and the love she inspires in those she touches.

Dagon (2001)

Saturday, July 11th, 2009
Genres: Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Countries: Spain
Actors:
Directors:
Download: DivX iPod 

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, the undisputed master of the macabre, Dagon tells the story of Paul Marsh, a young man who discovers that the truth will not set him free instead it condemns him to a waking nightmare of unrelenting horror. A boating accident off the coast of Spain sends Paul and his girlfriend Barbara to the decrepit fishing village of Imboca looking for help. As night falls, people start to disappear and things not quite human start to appear. Paul finds himself pursued by the entire town. Running for his life, he uncovers Imboca’s dark secret: that they pray to Dagon, a monstrous god of the sea. And Dagon’s unholy offspring are freakish half-human creatures on the loose in Imboca…

The Crucible (1996)

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Genres: Drama | History
Countries: USA
Actors: Daniel Day-Lewis | Winona Ryder | Paul Scofield | Joan Allen | Bruce Davison | Rob Campbell | Jeffrey Jones | Peter Vaughan | Karron Graves | Charlayne Woodard | Frances Conroy | Elizabeth Lawrence | George Gaynes | Mary Pat Gleason | Robert Breuler
Directors: Nicholas Hytner
Download: DivX iPod 

A small group of teen girls in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts caught in an innocent conjuring of love potions to catch young men are forced to tell lies that Satan had invaded them and forced them to participate in the rites and are then forced to name those involved. Thrown into the mix are greedy preachers and other major landowners trying to steal others’ land and one young woman (Ryder) infatuated with a married man (Day-Lewis) and determined to get rid of his innocent wife (Allen). Arthur Miller wrote the events and the subsequent trials where those who demanded thier innocence were executed, those who would not name names were incarcerated and tortured, and those who admitted their guilt were immediately freed as a parable of the Congressional Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1950’s America.

Horror (2002)

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Genres: Horror
Countries: USA
Actors: Kreskin | Lizzy Mahon | Danny Lopes | Vincent Lamberti | Christie Sanford | Jessica Pagan | Raine Brown | Kevin Kenny | Chris Farabaugh | Felissa Rose | Rick Norberg | Erin Andre
Directors: Dante Tomaselli
Download: DivX iPod 

Writer/Director Dante Tomaselli merges two disturbing storylines into this visually arresting chiller. The first involves a band of five teens that escape from a drug rehabilitation center to cash in on a questionable promise of salvation from the psychopathic Reverend Salo Jr. (Vincent Lamberti). Leader of the pack Luck (Danny Lopes), fueled on major hallucinogens, transports the gang to the reverend’s isolated house where the basis of the second plot has been set simultaneously. Here lives Grace (Lizzy Mahon), Salo Jr.’s daughter, whom he and his equally bizarre wife (Christie Sanford) have enslaved through enforced drug addiction and psychic brainwashing. Grace’s only salvation appears to be by the guidance of her paternal grandfather Reverend Salo Sr. (The Amazing Kreskin). But this hope is quickly jeopardized when it becomes revealed that his comforting visitations may be being made from beyond the grave. Regardless, it is through Grace’s visions involving him that she learns of her parent’s demonic pastimes, which include abduction, murder, and possibly worse. Shortly after the arrival of the rehab escapees, Luck shoots and kills Salo Jr. and his wife. This eruption of bloody violence becomes the catalyst for the unleashing of dark forces with terrifying results.

End of Days (1999)

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
Genres: Action | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Countries: USA
Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger | Gabriel Byrne | Robin Tunney | Kevin Pollak | CCH Pounder | Derrick O'Connor | David Weisenberg | Rainer Judd | Miriam Margolyes | Udo Kier | Victor Varnado | Michael O'Hagan | Mark Margolis
Directors: Peter Hyams
Download: DivX iPod 

In 1979, an innocent newborn girl is secretly patronized by Satanists. Twenty years later, she has developed into a young woman, who is haunted by dreams about one strange man. Meanwhile, private security guard Jericho takes down an old and homeless priest, who tried to shoot Jericho’s customer, a successful Wall Street Banker. What Jericho does not know is that Satan himself roams the Streets of New York in order to mate with the chosen girl. If he fails to do so in the last hour before the next millennium, his only chance to get out of his eternal prison is gone and he has to wait another thousand years. Now it is up to atheist Jericho to find the girl before Satan does and protect her from harm. But Jericho does not have a clue who he’s up against…

Black Robe (1991)

Friday, June 5th, 2009
Genres: Adventure | Drama | History
Countries: Australia | Canada
Actors: Lothaire Bluteau | Aden Young | Sandrine Holt | August Schellenberg | Tantoo Cardinal | Billy Two Rivers | Lawrence Bayne | Harrison Liu | Wesley Cote | Frank Wilson | François Tassé | Jean Brousseau | Yvan Labelle | Raoul Trujillo | James Bobbish
Directors: Bruce Beresford
Download: DivX iPod 

In the 17th century a Jesuit priest and a young companion are escorted through the wilderness of Quebec by Algonquin Indians to find a distant mission in the dead of winter. The Jesuit experiences a spiritual journey while his young companion falls in love with the Algonquin chief’s beautiful daughter underneath the imposing and magnificent mountains. Dread and death follows them upriver.

The Hearse (1980)

Friday, June 5th, 2009
Genres: Horror | Mystery | Romance | Thriller
Countries: USA
Actors: Trish Van Devere | Joseph Cotten | David Gautreaux | Donald Hotton | Med Flory | Donald Petrie | Christopher McDonald | Perry Lang | Fred Franklyn | Olive Dunbar | Al Hansen | Dominic Barto | Nicholas Shields | Chuck Mitchell | Allison Balson
Directors: George Bowers
Download: DivX iPod 

Jane Hardy decides to stay the summer in the house her aunt left her when she died, to try and recoup from a bad divorce. Little does she know, her aunt practiced witchcraft and is still thought of very badly by the town’s citizens. As soon as she moves in, she is haunted by a old black hearse and it’s creepy driver. Is she going insane or is she truly being menaced? She meets a friendly young man and becomes involved with him, but is he and the creepy driver one and the same?

The Meaning of Life (1983)

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Genres: Comedy | Fantasy | Musical
Countries: UK
Actors: Graham Chapman
Directors: Terry Gilliam
Download: DivX iPod 

The Monty Python group examines the meaning and purpose of life in a series of sketches from conception to death and beyond. In typical Monty Python fashion they satirizes and humourizes almost everyone.

Where the Heart Is (2000)

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Genres: Comedy | Drama | Romance
Countries: USA
Actors: Natalie Portman | Ashley Judd | Stockard Channing | Joan Cusack | James Frain | Dylan Bruno | Keith David | Ray Prewitt | Laura House | Karey Green | Mary Ashleigh Green | Kinna McInroe | Laura Auldridge | Alicia Godwin | Dennis Letts
Directors: Matt Williams
Download: DivX 

Novalee Nation, 17 and very pregnant, has never been part of a real home. The closest thing to family for the hard-luck teen is her selfish, would-be musician boyfriend, Willy Jack, with whom she’s traveling from Tennessee to California in a rust bucket that used to be a Plymouth. A bathroom stop en route, at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart, changes Novalee’s life forever. For when she leaves the store, she discovers that Willy Jack and the Plymouth are gone. Only her Polaroid camera remains in the parking space. Alone and broke, Novalee surreptitiously moves into the vast store, borrowing food and supplies from its shelves. When she gives birth on the floor - and her hideaway is revealed - Novalee and her “Wal-Mart Baby” become instant celebrities. More importantly, over the next few years, Novalee finally becomes part of an unconventional, makeshift family comprised of her wonderfully eccentric new friends. Now, with the family she always wanted, Novalee is transformed from a homeless teen to a successful and strong woman. She has finally found a home in this small town where fate has dropped her.

Baraka (1992)

Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Genres: Documentary | War
Countries: USA
Actors:
Directors: Ron Fricke
Download:  DivX iPod 

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on “where,” but on “what’s there.” It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.