I wanted to recommend "The Rapture" to anyone who hasn't seen it...

[flowomo]

This startling movie came out in 1991. I saw it by accident years ago while channel surfing one night, and it is one of the most memorable movies I have ever seen, though it never made it big in the theaters. It stars Mimi Rogers (Tom Cruise's first wife and a Scientologist)and features David Duchovny. It has a 70% positive rating at rottentomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rapture/), although that's only with 20 reviews posted. Here is a snippet from Janet Maslin's positive review in the New York Times:

"The very brazenness of his having made a mainstream film about religious faith is nothing beside the lengths to which Mr. Tolkin takes this story, once Sharon is forced to put her beliefs to what is truly the ultimate test. The last part of "The Rapture," in which Sharon's new-found complacency is undone by matters of life and death, is cinematically shocking in ways that, say, Freddy Krueger never dreamed of. Very likely many members of Mr. Tolkin's audience have not dreamed of them either.

The essence of this film's effectiveness lies there: in the fact that its deeply troubling ideas about theology are tailored to a contemporary audience, one that may be as impervious to the subject as Sharon is in the film's early scenes. "If everybody's getting this dream," she asks with representative modern cynicism, "how come it isn't on the news?"

read more at: http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?oref=login&title1=&title2=RAPTURE%2C%20THE%20%28MOVIE%29&reviewer=Janet%20Maslin&v_id=40330

You can rent this at most video stores, or get it through amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002XNT1C/104-0871074-8958351?v=glance

Give it a look if you haven't seen it.

[knowbody0]

1. thank you

may i recommend "the battle of algiers"

[flowomo]

4. wow, just saw some great reviews of that but....

I posted on "The Rapture" in the Religion&Theology forum because it would be of particular interest there. You might want to mention Algiers in a more political forum.

[knowbody0]

5. ooops. sorry. but thank you still stands

on edit, the islamic heart is examined

[Syrinx]

2. very scary movie

And I'm not even talking of Duchovny's scrotum.

[flowomo]

3. lol.... but the big horses were much scarier!

[Syrinx]

6. yep

I don't really believe in that stuff. But if it really did happen, I think I would drop dead right there.

[flowomo]

7. What I loved the most....

as a non-believer, was Sharon's decision at the end. I would have to make that decision, too.

[w13rd0]

8. yup

i found the tale of Job for instance, particularly troublesome. God takes everything from this guy, kills his wife and kids, makes him sick. But because he endures it, and only cusses God a little, God gives him twice as many wives and kids and goats. that really ticked me off. and in charismatic "health & wellness" churches, they always spouted on about Job and Revelations and the 10% mandatory tithe.

the decision she makes in the end...THAT is the "knowledge of good and evil"...

[soothsayer]

10. yup, nobody ever feels bad for his dead wife and kids..!

[Syrinx]

9. But at the point, you would have to be a believer, wouldn't you?

Unless it was some weird government thing using halographs or something.

[flowomo]

11. yes, that's a good point....

a believer, but not an "accepter"

[w13rd0]

12. Even the devil and the demons of hell "believe"...

...but "lack faith". Lack "faith" in God to do good or act in a fashion befitting "god"...