Monday, January 17, 2011

Monday Movie Meme - Roles of Reverence


In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., we celebrate his birthday today in the US. It is on this day we remember his role in the civil rights movement, his humanity, and his powerful public speaking with which he could influence thousands. He was the ultimate Reverend and the world was his congregation. Inspired by the holiday, the Bumbles have prompted us to talk about religious figures in the movies...priests, nuns, minsters, or even the Pope.

I'm not certain what it means when most of the movies that come to my mind fall on the twisted or even evil end of the spectrum! It seems that Hollywood may be slightly enamoured with the contrast of good and evil? Nevertheless, I was able to come up with a couple of positive roles, as well as the negative ones:

The Good Doobies

Sister Maria (Julie Andrews) - The Sound of Music
Karol Wojtila (John Voight) - Pope John Paul II


The Bad Eggs

Padre Manolo (Daniel Giminez Cacho) - Bad Education
Father Oliver O' Grady (as himself) - Deliver Us From Evil
Euliss "Sonny" Dewey (Robert Duvall) - The Apostle
Sister Bridget et al (Geraldine McEwan) - The Magdalene Sisters


Then there are the priests in The Exorcist. I initially put them under the Good Doobies, and I suppose they are if they cured Regan of her pea soup issues, but they still always scared me. The whole movie rattles me, so I'm just going to put it here all by itself, where they can't hurt anybody.

Make sure you visit the Bumbles for their choices...they picked some amazing ones this week!

Sorry for the quick and dirty post today...I'd love to chat about bad priests some more, but I'm in search of a good one that will pray for no rain today while my husband and I head out for a game of golf. Happy Monday!



18 comments:

Susan said...

Ooh, I have one to add to the bad eggs...Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "Doubt". Slimy and seductive...ICK!!

rhapsodyinbooks said...

OMG, I couldn't even watch all of The Magdalene Sisters - it made me too upset!

bermudaonion said...

I haven't seen any of those movies! The first to pop in my mind were Sister Mary Clarence (Whoopi Goldberg) in Sister Act and God (George Burns) in Oh, God! That should tell you just how intellectual I am.

caite said...

on the good side I would add Jeremy Irons in "The Mission"...and Lothaire Bluteau in "Black Robe".

Trisha said...

Much of what pops into my mind is the creepy, scary kind of religious figures....

Unknown said...

I like the nuns in Lillies of the Field with Sidney Portier. I love the scene where he teaches them to sing "Amen."

Zibilee said...

I love your choices, and see a lot of movies on this list that I haven't seen yet, so it's time to update Netflix! Thanks for the ideas, and I hope you have a great time out there. It's really raining here at the moment, and I hope you don't get caught up in all that!

Unknown said...

We share a common liking of the bad 'eggs' with The Magdalene Sisters; of my all-time favorite films!

Heidenkind said...

The Camerlengo from Angels & Demons leaps to mind. :)

The Gal Herself said...

Oh, those Magdalene Sisters were bad eggs indeed!

Heather G. said...

Great choices! Susan, can you put Phillip in that category since we don't know for sure if he did what he was accused of! Thus the name of the movie Doubt!!! Powerful movie. Wished I'd thought of that one for my list.

Unknown said...

Oh wow, The Madalene Sisters, that's a really powerful movie.
The Sound of Music was a favorite when I was growing up.

Great movie choices!

Unknown said...

I haven't seen most of these, so I've added a few to my TBW list. Great!

Alyce said...

One of my old favorites is The Trouble With Angels with Haley Mills at a Catholic school. It's such a fun movie!

Nicole (Linus's Blanket) said...

That Sister Maria gave us some great tunes!

Literary Feline said...

My mind flies to the evil ones too. Those are several good choices!

Bybee said...

Which side would Meryl Streep's character in Doubt fall on?

Bad Eggs: That woman from Jesus Camp. Shudder.

Kathleen said...

Hope you enjoyed your day of golf!