Set to meet with Hollywood elites over the weekend as part of a larger effort to engage with creatives, Pope Leo clearly has movies on his mind. Ahead of the meeting, the pontiff has revealed his four favorite films—or should we say fav-or-ite films. Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965) makes the list alongside Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Robert Redford's Ordinary People (1980) and Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997), CNN reports.
The last "must be renounced," jokes Guardian movie critic Peter Bradshaw. In Life Is Beautiful, Benigni plays an Italian Jew in a Nazi death camp who tries to trick his son into believing their reality is just a game. It's a bit "overbearingly sugary" for Bradshaw, who sees more sense in Leo's other picks. It's a Wonderful Life and The Sound of Music are universally adored, he writes. As for Ordinary People, about a family's grief after the loss of a son, it's "pretty secular but it's all about family values," he notes.
Saturday's meeting at the Vatican will explore "the possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church and the promotion of human values," the Vatican said in a statement. Among those attending are actors Cate Blanchett, Chris Pine, Viggo Mortensen, and Alison Brie, and directors Spike Lee, George Miller, and Giuseppe Tornatore, Variety reports, noting the pope has previously met with actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
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