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Favorite Nun Films

Movie list created by kathy

Sort by: Showing 17 items

Decade: Rating: List Type:

6.9

6.6

Agnes of God (1985)

Director: Norman Jewison
Starring: Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly and Anne Pitoniak

When Agnes, a naive novice nun with mystical tendencies, is discovered with a dead newborn in her convent quarters, a court appointed psychiatrist investigates her case - Agnes believes that she's had a virgin birth.

kathy's rating:

6.9

7.2

The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

Director: Leo McCarey
Starring: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers and William Gargan

At a big city Catholic school, Father Chuck O'Malley and Sister Mary Benedict indulge in friendly rivalry and succeed in extending the school through the gift of a building.

kathy's rating:

427

7.9

7.8

Black Narcissus (1947)

Directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson and Jenny Laird

After opening a convent in the Himalayas, five nuns encounter conflict and tension - both with the natives and also within their own group - as they attempt to adapt to their remote, exotic surroundings.

kathy's rating:

6.4

6.1

Change of Habit (1970)

Director: William A. Graham
Starring: Elvis Presley, Mary Tyler Moore, Barbara McNair and Jane Elliot

Three Catholic nuns, preparing for their final vows, are sent to a rough inner city neighborhood dressed as lay missionaries to work at a clinic run by a young doctor. Their lives become complicated by the realities they face in the inner city and by the doctor who falls in love with one of the nuns.

kathy's rating:

7.2

Conspiracy of Hearts (1960)

Director: Ralph Thomas
Starring: Lilli Palmer, Sylvia Syms, Yvonne Mitchell, Ronald Lewis, Peter Arne, Megs Jenkins, David Kossoff and George Coulouris

In wartime Italy nuns in a convent regularly smuggle Jewish children out of a nearby internment camp. The Italian army officer in charge suspects what may be going on but deliberately turns a blind eye. When the Germans take over the camp security the nuns' activities become far more dangerous.

kathy's rating:

8.5

7.2

Cradle Song (1933)

Director: Mitchell Leisen
Starring: Dorothea Wieck, Evelyn Venable, Guy Standing and Louise Dresser

Joanna, an adopted orphan now grown, has been playing mother/governess to the five brothers and sisters she has ostensibly raised, but she has decided to leave them and enter a cloistered order of nuns.

Joanna is soon able to indulge her continuing maternal instincts when a foundling is left on the convent’s doorstep. It is agreed that the nuns (but mostly Joanna) will raise Teresa, the little girl. As Teresa grows up, it’s Joanna’s hope that she will join the order and remain with her. But, of course, when the Teresa is able to go out into the world, she falls in love.

kathy's rating:

1257

7.1

7.5

Doubt (2008)

Director: John Patrick Shanley
Starring: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis

A Catholic school principal questions a priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled young student.

kathy's rating:

7.5

7.1

God Is the Bigger Elvis (2012)

Director: Rebecca Cammisa
Starring: Dolores Hart

A documentary about actress Dolores Hart, who abandoned her successful Hollywood acting career at the age of 24 to become a Benedictine nun.

In 1957, Dolores Hart made her screen debut, co-starring with Elvis Presley in the Paramount motion picture 'Loving You'. It was in this film that she kissed Elvis. This was Elvis' very first on-screen kiss in a movie. Both Dolores and Elvis would reunite the following year in Michael Curtiz's 'King Creole'.

She made ten films in five years, playing opposite Stephen Boyd, Montgomery Clift, George Hamilton and Robert Wagner, before in 1963 becoming a Roman Catholic nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, ultimately becoming its Prioress.

This film was nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

kathy's rating:

372

7.4

7.7

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

Director: Peter Mullan
Starring: Eileen Walsh, Dorothy Duffy, Nora-Jane Noone and Anne-Marie Duff

Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.

kathy's rating:

184

7.4

7.6

The Nun's Story (1959)

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger and Colleen Dewhurst

A young Belgian woman decides to enter a convent and make the many sacrifices required by her choice. However, at the outset of World War II, she finds that she cannot remain neutral in the face of the abject evil of Hitler's Germany.

kathy's rating:

6.9

5.8

Sea Wife (1957)...

Director: Bob McNaught
Starring: Joan Collins, Richard Burton, Basil Sydney and Cy Grant

In 1942, a cargo ship jammed with British evacuees from Singapore is sunk by a Japanese sub. A small lifeboat carries a beautiful woman, an army officer, a bigoted administrator and a black seaman. Only the seaman knows that the woman is a nun. The men reveal their true selves under the hardships of survival.

kathy's rating:

6.7

The Singing Nun

Director: Henry Koster
Starring: Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Greer Garson and Agnes Moorehead

Young and inexperienced Sister Ann has just arrived at her next posting at Samaritan House, a Dominican order located in a disreputable neighborhood of Ghent, Belgium. Sister Ann is enthusiastic, progressive but naive, all which irks one of the senior sisters, Sister Cluny, especially the fact that Sister Ann has a prized material possession, a guitar she's named Adele. Sister Ann considers Adele and her music to be her friends. Contrary to Sister Cluny, the Mother Prioress believes Sister Ann will be a welcome addition to their order.

This posting is to be the training ground for Sister Ann and others to become missionaries in Africa. Sister Ann's path takes a detour when the order's Father Clementi hears Sister Ann sing. He believes Sister Ann should record her music and as a favor asks Robert Gerarde of Primavera Records for recording time. Unknown at the time the request is made, Robert and Sister Ann are old friends who attended the Paris Conservatory of Music together five years...

kathy's rating:

2583

6.1

6.4

Sister Act (1992)

Director: Emile Ardolino
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy, Wendy Makkena, Mary Wickes and Harvey Keitel

When a worldly singer witnesses a mob crime, the police hide her as a nun in a traditional convent where she has trouble fitting in.

kathy's rating:

1417

5.5

5.7

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)

Director: Bill Duke
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Najimy, Wendy Makkena, Mary Wickes, Maggie Smith, Barnard Hughes, James Coburn and Lauren Hill

Singer Deloris Van Cartier is again asked to don the nun's habit to help a run-down Catholic school, presided over by Mother Superior. And if trying to reach out to a class full of uninterested students wasn't bad enough, the sisters discover that the school is due to be closed by the unscrupulous local authority chief Mr. Crisp.

kathy's rating:

104

7.6

The Song of Bernadette (1944)

Director: Henry King
Starring: Jennifer Jones, Charles Bickford, William Eythe and Vincent Price

In 1858 France, Bernadette, an adolescent peasant girl, has a vision of "a beautiful lady" in the city dump. She never claims it to be anything other than this, but the townspeople all assume it to be the virgin Mary. The pompous government officials think she is nuts and do their best to suppress the girl and her followers, and the church wants nothing to do with the whole matter. But as Bernadette attracts wider and wider attention, the phenomenon overtakes everyone in the the town, and transforms their lives.

kathy's rating:

2287

7.6

The Sound of Music (1965)

Director: Robert Wise
Starring: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Angela Cartwright and Marni Nixon

Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain Captain Von Trapp to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children.

The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Maria teaches the children to sing and, through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family.

kathy's rating:

256

Two Mules for Sister Sara

Director: Don Siegel
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, Manuel Fábregas and Alberto Morin

Set in Mexico, a nun called Sara is rescued from three cowboys by Hogan, who is on his way to do some reconnaissance for a future mission to capture a French fort. The French are chasing Sara but not for the reasons she tells Hogan, so he decides to help her in return for information about the fort defences. Inevitably the two become good friends but Sara has a secret...

kathy's rating: