more religious movies

After writing yesterday's post on religious movies I decided to share my thoughts about other religious movies I saw as a child.

1.THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Cecil B. DeMille's movie is a hugely entertaining slice of Old Hollywood. Charlton Heston is great as Moses and the film features the famous parting of the Red Sea sequence. As with Ben Hur, this is more about storytelling than faith. This movie used to play every year in San Juan theaters. I remember seeing it at the Regency and at the Radio City.

2.THE ROBE
The first Cinemascope movie is rather corny and is probably the most dated of all religious movies. It drags in places and Richard Burton is on obvious auto-pilot. Still, it is an interesting throwback to a time when Hollywood thought it could lure people into theaters by simply providing stunning visuals. Come think of it, they are still doing that.

3.JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
Not a Holy Week regular, but it used to pop up now and then. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway play is pretty entertaining. It is also a product of its era, a time when Jesus was part of the hippie counterculture and had not being co-opted by conservative religious and political conservatives.

4.BARRABAS
This movie used to appear every year around Holy Week, usually at second run theater. Anthony Quinn plays the title role and the movie is basically o.k., nothing more.