Christian Movie Madness

13 Responses

1. Out of these, I’m going with “Paul, Apostle of Christ.” Excellent movie and I tend to be very unforgiving with my expectations for the genre. “Amazing Grace” was also excellent if your children are old enough to hear two n-words and see a very brief scene of a child laborer being injured at a forge. “Risen” is quite good if you cut it off right when Jesus eventually shows up, since the ‘mystery’ angle and the non-Jewish protagonist are the whole point of the movie, but then the film keeps going for another thirty minutes.

   Question, is The Ten Commandments (bracket 4, second from bottom) the 1956 movie or the 1923 silent one, which Cecil B. DeMille also directed?

   1. Hello Erik! Thanks for voting! ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ is a strong contender, and ‘Risen’ is one of my personal favorites. ‘The Ten Commandments’ in our bracket is the 1956 version starring Charlton Heston.

2. Your summaries for at least half the movies are exceedingly lame, telling us almost NOTHING of what the movie storyline is about! Most of us haven’t seen these movies in years or even decades, and we could use a bit more reminder. A summary of the PLOT, and not the theme or “moral” of the story is what we need. It’s as if Plugged In has already stacked the deck against so I of these films. You needs to supply corrected summaries immediately, before the voting get counted for the first run.

   1. Roger, thank you for your feedback. We tried to make our voting page as streamlined as possible for users with limited space, but if you would like a more detailed summary of the movies, we’ve got you covered! Plugged In has reviewed every film on the list, so if there’s a movie you want a refresher on, you can search for the review on PluggedIn.com!

3. I’m rather sad not to see Jesus (the ASL movie) on this list. The Deaf are such an unreached population across the world, and a major, successful film in ASL is a remarkable achievement. The acting, writing, and cinematography were all creative, engaging, and done with clear skill. I’m not sure I would say it’s the best Christian movie of all time, but I wish it had gotten a place in the lineup.

   I would have loved to see Man of All Seasons, too.

   I was very pleased to see two VeggieTales movies, as well as some others that have great theology as well as great filmmaking. Christian films have a bad artistic reputation, often for good reason. We are made in the image of the Creator. He deserves our best work artistically as well as theologically.

   1. Couldn’t agree more! God does deserve our best and it’s always great to see Christian movies of great quality being released. As for the Jesus ASL film, it was a great way to present the Gospel to an underserved population, but we based our movie list on adjusted lifetime box office earnings (to sort and gauge for popularity) and ‘Jesus: A Deaf Missions Film’ was not on that list. But whether a movie appeared in our bracket or not shouldn’t be taken as an indicator of quality! There are plenty of good movies that didn’t make the cut.

      1. I see, going off of box office earnings does make the list make more sense, and that’s a good way to have a more objective list of contenders since it’s verifiable numbers. Box office earnings, of course, doesn’t always equate to artistic merit, but that’s what the actual battle is for!

4. Why is The Shack, a movie with heretical views, listed as a Christian movie? It should not be on this list at all.

   1. Hi there! The movies were selected primarily from a Box Office Mojo list of Christian movies, adjusted for lifetime box office gross. That’s how the movies were seeded and organized as well to give us our movie matchups. We’d encourage you to vote for your favorites AND vote against those movies that you think shouldn’t move on in the competition.

   2. A lot of these also took place in the time of the Tanakh, prior to the coming of Christ, so there would have been no such thing as “Christianity” at the time anyway. Jonah, One Night with the King (Esther), Samson

      That said, I saw “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” when it was new, and I wouldn’t consider that a Christian movie, simply because “being against treating macroevolution as a scientific consensus” and “being pro-Christianity” aren’t the same thing, which is a lesson I think a lot of churches today need to learn. Being against what someone else teaches doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re overtly honoring Christ instead. And Ben Stein grew up in a Jewish household and isn’t strict in his own observance (source: Orange County Jewish Life interview). Though given how many movies about Judaism there are on this list, I was surprised to not see “The Prince of Egypt.”

5. For me when it comes to strict biblical epics nothing beats the ten commandments, the passion of the Christ or Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.

   When it comes to normal Christian films I’d say God’s not dead one to five are the best, though these are also quite good:
   End of the spear, fireproof, the lion the witch and the wardrobe and the dawn treader, soul surfer, to save a life, left behind 2014 and rise of the Antichrist, lifemark, do you believe, the pirates who don’t do anything, miracles from heaven, ordinary angels, and unbroken path to redemption.

   Also a special mention to Silence and Hacksaw Ridge.

   1. Thank you for mentioning Silence. Beautiful movie that would be well worthy of a spot here. Hacksaw Ridge also had a praiseworthy anti-war / “minimal war” message.

6. Ok, that makes a lot of sense! Thank you for clarifying Bret!