Chris Smith (RockPortReview) Usually I don't do reviews of bad movies but when I originally saw "Stigmata" on DVD in the late 90s I actually thought it was pretty good. Now as I re-watch it over 10 years later I can definitely say, What the hell was I thinking? It feels dated, overly stylized and just plain bad all around.Taking place in the water logged city of Pittsburg, where it is constantly raining and dreary. Patricia Arquette plays Frankie Paige a hair stylist who becomes afflicted with the stigmata, or the wounds of Christ, after receiving a rosary from her mother as a gift. The rosary belonged to a recently deceased South American priest whose church recently had their statue of the Virgin Mary bleed. Frankie is an atheist and the stigmata usually only appears to extremely devout Catholics. The wounds of the stigmata cannot be transferred through physical items. Its also has nothing to with demonic possession, actually quite the opposite. We then meet Father Andrew Kiernan, a Vatican investigator of miracles. He is sent to meet with Frankie and we learn that she is 23 years old, yeah sure you are and I am Abraham Lincoln. They talk and she tries to seduce him, and he refuses for the most part. Later on she seems to be possessed by some evil spirit and writes all over her apartment walls. This is supposedly is a lost gospel of the Bible written by Jesus himself. It tries to be scary and horrific but epically fails.This train wreck was directed by Rufus Wainwright and like a lot of movies in the 90s it suffers from over stylization (AKA The Tarantino Effect). Style over substance and style just for the sake of trying to be "cool". It pays no attention to factual accuracy and just kind of creates it own thing on the fly. The musical score sound like something out of the 80s and not in a good nostalgic way. The entire look and feel of the film feels pretty dated and it wasn't even made that long ago. This is definitely a view at your own risk movie.

cousinoleg Yesterday stumbled upon this movie, and seeing how it's related with faith in Jesus Christ, i decided to give it a try. Bad idea - instead of bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people, it went for the easy route, providing flashy SFX, mixing secular humanism and religious mysticism, offering heretical theology, and possibly ripping you of your money and time for nothing of substance. A woman starts having stigmata, and the priest sent to investigate it somehow deduces it's a gift from God, though no such thing is ever mentioned in the Holy Bible, though it may have been present in later church history as some sort of religious show-off. Maybe this tries to show God as a sadist (a favorite argument of militant atheists), though it seems to me, the woman was possessed by an evil spirit, transferred to her, from a heretical priest. There are cases in New Testament, where evil spirits torture people, and Jesus expels them from their victims. Instead of exorcism, the priest-scientist, who confesses he hasn't prayed in a long while, gets a badly-acted/questionable romantic liking of the possessed woman, though she gets more and more signs of Hollywood possession - weird voice, creepy eyes, screaming wildly, then writes the supposedly "most true Gospel of Jesus Christ". Who would believe that a creepy demon-possessed human, bent on violence, is telling the true Gospel of Christ? God is almighty and wouldn't need to wait two thousands years to write the "true" Gospel in a language, almost nobody can read. The only good idea in this movie is to rely on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, from the New Testament, instead of religious rites and buildings and to beware of new pharisees among the believers. In the end after a ridiculous murder attempt (by catholics, of course) and a quarrel for the "true gospel" or "saving the church", fire SFX and bleeding statues, the priest-scientist suddenly remembers how to exorcise, though the evil spirit is shown to be the soul of a heretical priest, which is not biblical.In the end, the hidden "true gospel" is found, but its secret sayings are laughable and were clearly ripped off from existing Gospels and Old Testament scripture: "God is in rocks and logs, but somehow not in churches" saying, smells of new age and is useless; maybe it's a confused interpretation of Isaiah 66:1 and Acts 7:48; - "God's kingdom is in you" saying was already in Luke 17:21;Also a conclusive text speaks about Nag Hammad library discovery with the Gospel of Thomas, which if compared (together with this movie) with the current four Gospels, will prove Nag Hammad's heresy.NOTE: I've been speaking with some atheists once, trying to tell them about the Gospel. They categorically refused to listen, resorting to the usual "fairy tales" and "contradictions" arguments; but somehow they were all accepting that Nag Hammad religious writings were the "true gospel", but refusing to reveal their methods of deducing the truth. For a true gospel method, read 1 John 2:22. This i hope will tell of the lack of Christian value of this movie and those pseudo-gospels.Thanks to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, for giving us the true Gospel as described in the New Testament; and pity for those people that hate Jesus Christ and his followers and desperately try to confuse and destroy them. May God bless and help these militant antichrists to leave their angry futile struggle and return to God and receive his love and forgiveness.

debbieingram Regardless of if u fall under the category of you having faith or not, this movie will captivate you, we have all wondered at some point, if there is actually something else out there other than aliens or just ourselves, we where all so to speak, generally, brought up believing in the fact that God and his Son exists. Myself, personally never actually committing to this idea, but always wondering if there is a higher power, and if so could it actually be real and would it ever affect little old me, well, this is the movie to start u thinking, God never came into my life, so why should i believe he existed, the church claim only the worthy should manifest such claims as visits, stigmata, or blessings etc, what if,,,,, it actually happened to you, or your family/friends! would you then be a believer? and if so, would u then decide you had to attend a church to praise him? This movie opens and closes all chapters, and leaves u wanting more? You don't have to be religious to get this movie, you do have to have a mild understanding of whats its all about though, and if, like me, you tread the path of the unknown, this movie may yet make you wonder, there may actually be more to this whole game that i call life than i think, i still ain't a believer, well not in the church nor its foundations, but i now believe that i'm not alone with my thoughts. This is one of my all time favourite movies though. A must watch movie, again and again!

FlashCallahan A priest from the Vatican is sent to Sao Paulo, Brazil to investigate the appearance of the face of the Virgin Mary on the side of a building.While there he hears of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding tears in a small town outside of the city.Meanwhile, a young woman in the U.S. begins to show signs of stigmata, the wounds of Christ.The priest from the Vatican links up with her and cares for her as she is increasingly afflicted by the stigmata.Her ranting and raving finally begins to make sense to the priest who starts to question what his religion has stood for for the last 1900 years.....Stigmata is not a scary film. In fact, it's quite difficult to put this movie into a genre. Unless there was a 'heavily edited, made to look like a music video type' movie, because this is what basically the film is, all style and no substance.But it's quite endearing thanks to the two leads.Arquette is Alabama from True Romance without the fun or adrenalin, and Byrne is basically the same character from End of days, but playing for a different team.And we spend the duration of the film watcing arquette get wounded and everyone thinking she is mad, apart from Byrne, who thinks she is revealing something that happened at the time of the Crucifixion.But Jonathon Pryce won't let him go deeper, because he's still fresh from bad guy duty in 'Tomorrow never dies'.It's a confusing film, but done with a lot of class, and a lot good camera work.If more had gone into the story than the effects, we would have had a winner, but we just have, a great pop promo without the song