In director James Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar,” a U.S. marine is transformed by technology into a blue-skinned warrior on a planet called Pandora, where he helps the Na’vi people fight evil corporate invaders and defend their sacred lands and traditions.

There seem to be some similarities in these epics.

“The ancient Hindu scriptures have forever reiterated that whenever the world would be on the brink of disaster and mankind faces extinction, whenever the vessel of sin is about to spill over to create death and destruction, the divine Lord Vishnu would … manifest himself in mortal, palpable form to save mankind from the impeding doomsday,” noted the Bengali director Sudipto Chattopadhyay, at the Passion and Cinema weblog.

When evaluating Cameron’s movie, he added, one thing is clear. “The use of the word Avatar hence could never be an accident. … The Avatar is meant to be the savior, the messiah of his own race and people.”

It was that kind of year at the multiplex, with a parade of films rolling through theaters containing obvious religious images, messages, themes and characters. This made it both easy and hard for the Beliefnet.com team to select nominees for its annual Best Spiritual Film award.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what a spiritual film is, since people have their own ideas as to what spirituality is,” said Dena Ross, the website’s entertainment editor. “We define it as a film which makes a serious attempt to grapple with the big questions in life: Why are we here? Why is there evil and suffering? Is there a God? Why do bad things happen to good people?”

This year, she said, Beliefnet.com made a conscious decision to nominate “more overtly religious films” for the Best Spiritual Film prize. A second category — Best Inspirational Film — focused on movies with uplifting messages, but few specific religious elements.

“We had so many amazing movies this time with strong references to religion,” said Ross. “I mean, ‘A Serious Man’ is about a devout Jewish man. ‘The Stoning of Soraya M’ deals with serious Muslim issues. ‘The Blind Side’ is about an evangelical family that is practicing its faith.”

Due to the historic success of “Avatar” — $700 million-plus at the domestic box office — there was a chance that Cameron’s 3D myth would get the Best Spiritual Film nod from both the judges and the website’s readers.

Instead, the judges selected “The Road,” a bleak drama based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel. It told the story of a father who teaches his son to remain “one of the good guys” while “carrying the fire” — a metaphor for hope and faith — in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by murderers and cannibals. The boy is shown praying for God’s help, and keeps striving to help the people they meet.

To the surprise of the Beliefnet.com team, their readers then picked “The Blind Side” as the year’s top spiritual film. In fact, 62 percent of the votes went to the real-life story of football star Michael Oher’s journey from a Memphis ghetto into the home of a rich Christian family that, literally, adopted him as a son. “Avatar” got 18 percent.

Meanwhile, Pixar’s “Up” was chosen as the Best Inspirational Film. It told the story of a crotchety old man who soars away on an adventure inspired by devotion to his recently deceased wife. Along the way, he forms a strong bond with a young boy who reminds him that his life still has purpose.

“Up” was another hit for Pixar, earning nearly $300 million at the box office, while “The Blind Side” shocked Hollywood with a total gross of nearly $250 million, with most of those tickets selling in the American heartland.

“In past years, we’ve gone back and forth trying to find films that fit our definitions. But this time it was much easier with all of these big, successful films that dealt with spiritual issues,” said Ross. “Maybe it’s a sign of the times. In hard times, people may be looking for these kinds of uplifting stories. It seems they went to movie theaters looking for something to inspire them.”

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“I try to bend even the worst of my roles, like ‘Training Day,’ ” said Washington, the day after a press screening of “The Book of Eli” in Los Angeles. “The first thing I wrote on my script was ‘the wages of sin is death.’ “

After that biblical pronouncement, the superstar pleaded for a crucial change in this role, for which he won the Oscar as Best Actor. In the original script, viewers learned about his character’s death in a television newscast. Washington insisted that this urban wolf be yanked out of his car and forced to “crawl like a snake” before being riddled with bullets, while people in the neighborhood turned their backs on him.

“I said, ‘No, no. … In order for me to justify him living in the worst way, he has to die in the worst way,’ ” explained Washington.

For Washington, this “bending” process is part of his ongoing efforts to make sense of his Christian faith in the midst of a career as one of Hollywood’s most powerful players in front of, and behind, the camera. The goal isn’t to sneak faith into mainstream films, but to pinpoint themes about sin, redemption, justice, dignity and compassion that mesh with what he believes to be true as the son of Pentecostal pastor and an active member of the giant West Angeles Church of God in Christ.

That’s what he was doing while playing Malcolm X, emphasizing that his sermons built on racial hatred were evolving into messages rooted in equality. In the violent “Man on Fire,” Washington played a bodyguard who decides to sacrifice his own life to save a young girl from kidnappers. This “bending” process is easier in some movies than others.

In the R-rated “Book of Eli” — directors Albert and Allen Hughes call it a “post-nuclear western” — the actor plays a warrior who marches through a devastated American landscape while, literally, on a mission from God. He is carrying the last surviving copy of the King James Bible, along with his machete and a few other weapons that he uses with righteous fervor. Call it “Mad Moses” in “The Prayer Warrior.”

“Here’s a man who, like Saul, or Paul, gets knocked off his horse and has this epiphany, this moment,” said Washington.

In a vision, the voice of God tells Eli, “Take this book west,” and promises to protect him until he can deliver it into safekeeping. There is one big difference between Eli’s story and the biblical account of St. Paul’s conversion, the actor admitted, with a laugh. “I don’t know if it said anywhere in there, ‘And kill everybody on your way.’ “

While early drafts of the script contained even more religious material, the film does show Eli reading the Bible and praying every day. In a pivotal scene, he teaches a young woman how to pray, while trying to protect her from a strongman who wants to seize the Bible to use it as “a weapon aimed at the hearts of the weak and the desperate.”

Eli’s basic message is simple: “Do more for others than you do for yourself.” The movie ends with a prayer that includes a famous quotation from St. Paul: “I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith.”

Washington said these are the kinds of messages that linger after the Bible studies that he strives to fit into each day. He has worked his way through the Bible three times, spurred on by the example of Pauletta, his wife of 26 years.

While reading the Book of Proverbs recently, he began looking around his house, marveling over “all this stuff.” This led to a sobering question: “What do you want, Denzel?” He focused on “wisdom,” which led to the word “understanding.”

“I said, ‘Hey, there’s something to work on. How about wisdom and understanding? How about that? I started praying, I said, ‘God, give me a dose of that,’ ” said Washington. “I mean, I can’t get … anymore successful, you know, but I can get better. I can learn to love more. I can learn to be more understanding. I can gain more wisdom.

“So that’s where I’m at.”

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But there was one big complication. Steven didn’t want to abandon his buddy Michael Oher (pronounced “Oar”), a street kid who slept on their floor most nights. “Big Mike” was afraid to return to the bleak foster homes he knew after police tore him away from his mother, her crack pipe and her 13 children.

So Henderson took both boys to Briarcrest Christian School on the rich side of town, hoping for scholarships that would make a grandmother’s dream come true. School officials were impressed by Steven’s grades. Coaches were impressed that Oher was 6-foot-4, weighed 340 pounds, could dunk a basketball and looked like God’s gift to quarterbacks who needed a left tackle to guard their “blind side.”

The rest is a long story, one that weaves together themes of race, sports, money and education. But a key player in the real-life version of “The Blind Side” stressed that this is also a story about faith.

“We’re convinced that faith guided and controlled this whole thing,” said Leigh Anne Tuohy, the steel-magnolia matriarch of the rich, white, evangelical family that finally embraced Oher as a son, after providing food, shelter and clothing. “We absolutely believe that none of this was a fluke. … This was God-driven from the start.”

Author Michael Lewis didn’t hide that faith element while writing “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” a bestseller that mixed Oher’s story with information about how the left-tackle position evolved into a crucial, and lucrative, slot in any National Football League offense. Then writer-director John Lee Hancock included religious details about the family in the new movie, while avoiding heavy-handed sermons. “The Blind Side” grossed $34 million at the box office on its opening weekend, while scoring a rare A-plus CinemaScore audience rating.

On screen, the Tuohys attend plenty of sporting events. After all, Sean was a University of Mississippi hoops star and Leigh Ann was an Ole Miss cheerleader. Their daughter Collins is both a cheerleader and volleyball star, again at Ole Miss, and their young son, Sean Jr., seems to have inherited his father’s gifts as a tireless sports entrepreneur.

The movie does skip the ritual when everyone heads to Grace Evangelical Church, a growing congregation the family helped start. Oher began attending soon after the wet winter night when the family first spotted the shivering giant in shorts and a floppy shirt, walking back to the shelter of the warm Briarcrest gymnasium.

Leigh Anne Tuohy said that “from day one,” Oher was the first person ready to go on Sunday mornings. Church was part of everyday life, like homework, piano lessons and trips to sports events and practices.

The key is that expressions of faith were a natural part of this true story, said actress Sandra Bullock, who plays Leigh Anne. No one was faking anything.

“This family, they were themselves for no other benefit other than because they wanted to reach out, lend a hand, and had no idea that they would get a son in return,” she told reporters, after a press screening of “The Blind Side.” Bullock said that, while making the movie, she regained a little “faith in those who say they represent a faith. … I’ve finally met people that walk the walk.”

While Tuohy stressed that she can now see God’s work in the events that changed Oher’s life, and their family, that doesn’t mean the details were clear at the time.

The family had reached out to others before, but not to the same degree. Now, it’s impossible not to think about how many other talented, gifted children are, literally, on the run in America’s cities, she said. What is the family supposed to do now? What should Oher do, now that he plays for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens?

After one of her Southern chuckles that Bullock had to master to play her on screen, Tuohy said that it’s hard to talk about the future when she is still trying to understand the wild changes that have changed her family forever.

“A miracle is what this is,” she said. “Childbirth is easier to explain than all of this.”

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This may seem strange since Asay works for Plugged In, a media Web site sponsored by Focus on the Family — a powerful brand name in evangelical media. Yes, he knows the hip writer, actor and director is a proud, articulate atheist. However, he also thinks that Gervais is “actually quite talented and a very funny guy.”

Thus, Asay had mixed feelings when he reviewed, “The Invention of Lying,” the comedian’s new comedy. After all, Gervais had publicly pledged that it would be both a “sweet Hollywood” romantic comedy and the “first ever completely atheistic movie with no concessions.”

For Asay, watching the movie became a “frustrating, disturbing, deeply saddening experience. And it was funny. Which makes it, in some ways, that much worse.” While the movie displayed Gervais’ talents, it also revealed that he has “very little knowledge of what he seeks to skewer. He takes an infantile interpretation of spirituality — one that most of us leave behind for deeper truths by the age of 3 or 4 and deconstructs it to the point of imbecility,” wrote Asay.

But here’s the plot twist. While “The Invention of Lying” has received bad reviews from most religious critics, it has not provoked headline-friendly calls to arms by the usual suspects on the religious right.

This has not, in other words, been “The DaVinci Code,” “The Golden Compass” or even the anti-faith “Religulous” sermon from provocateur Bill Maher. So far, the Gervais opus is drawing small crowds into theaters and zero protesters onto sidewalks. As it began its third week, it had grossed only $16,956,375 while sliding to 16th place at the box office.

“The whole movie industry today is such a one week and you’re done affair,” noted Asay. “If you don’t make waves right away, you’re kind of over. … In retrospect, Gervais and his people may have wanted to pump up that atheism angle in the marketing to get a bigger splash in the press. They needed to do something.”

“The Invention of Lying” takes place in a parallel world in which people cannot lie. Thus, advertisements are rather blunt. The Pepsi slogan is, “When they don’t have Coke,” and a nursing home is called, “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.”

Then along comes Mark Bellison, a pudgy loser who, in a moment of desperation, intentionally overdraws his bank account and gets away with it. This discovery changes his life, but he also learns that lying cannot solve all his problems. In the movie’s pivotal scene, the liar played by Gervais comforts his dying mother by telling her she soon will be reunited with her loved ones in a land of peace, love and happiness, where there is no pain.

Hospital workers overhear this proclamation and the loser quickly becomes a pseudo-messiah, offering stunning revelations about a great “man in the sky” who controls people’s lives and decides whether they spend eternity in a good place (lots of ice cream) or a bad place.

Nevertheless, the prophet knows he is a fake. While visiting his mother’s grave he confesses, in a fit of guilt: “I know you’re not up there in a mansion. You’re right here in the ground and I’m the only one who knows that.”

It was impossible to watch that scene, and others in “The Invention of Lying,” without feeling some kind of compassion, said Thaisha Geiger, a language arts teacher who reviews movies for the ChristianAnswers.net Web site.

Since she was not familiar with Gervais, she did some online research to learn more about his beliefs. She was struck by the fact that Gervais lost his faith as a young child. However, he also told ShortList.com, “I always knew that if my mum asked me when she was dying if there was a heaven, I’d say yes. … I think that’s how religion started — as a good lie.”

That painful conflict made it onto the screen, said Geiger.

“The movie really is about his beliefs … so he was probably expecting Christians to yell and scream after they saw this movie,” she said. “But I didn’t feel anger when I saw it. I really walked away feeling sad. … I thought, ‘He’s an atheist. We should pray for him.’ Maybe he’s disappointed that more people aren’t mad.”

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“You mean the day they stop needing the church,” she shouts, weaving together the novel’s main themes. “But the church is not the only enlightened soul on the planet! We all seek God in different ways. …

“God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!”

This long speech is not in the movie based on Brown’s first novel about the dashing Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who uses his encyclopedic knowledge of art, religion, history, literature, architecture and archeology to crack through layers of ancient conspiracies that bedevil modern humanity.

This is, however, a speech that — as a sermon by the author — offers insights into the worldview behind “Angels & Demons” and the novel that followed it.

That, of course, was “The Da Vinci Code,” which ignited a global firestorm because of its depiction of Jesus as a brilliant, charismatic and ultimately misunderstood mortal man who married the brilliant, charismatic and misunderstood Mary Magdalene and had a child with her before his untimely death. This power couple’s goal was to create an inclusive, dogma-free, sexually enlightened faith. But, alas, the power-hungry patriarchs who created Christianity — especially the Roman Catholic Church — conspired to wreck and bury their work.

Director Ron Howard, who also directed “The Da Vinci Code” movie, admits that large parts of “Angels & Demons” were scrapped and rewritten while turning the prequel into a sequel. Brown gave his blessing since the book’s major themes remained intact.

As with “The Da Vinci Code,” Howard is convinced that he has not created an anti-Catholic film. His goal, he said, was to raise questions about the nature of faith.

“I believe in God, yes, I do. I’m not a member of a church at the moment,” he told reporters, before “Angels & Demons” reached theaters. “There is no personal struggle, for me, between my beliefs and religion. Basically, in a nutshell, I believe that our intelligence, and our curiosity, and our drive to know more are a part of the plan. … But I haven’t worked to directly sort of inject my personal spirituality and belief system into the story.”

The goal, while spinning another conspiracy-theory thriller, was to focus on “the threat that some in the Vatican may feel about what science represents, what it proposes to say about the origins of the universe and the origins of man,” he said.

The plot begins with the sudden death of a “progressive and beloved pope.” Then, all hell breaks loose as someone claiming to represent a secret society of freethinkers called the “Illuminati” kidnaps what the book describes as the four “liberal,” reform-minded cardinals who were the top candidates to become pope and begins murdering them in public rituals.

As the coup de grace, this mysterious killer has arranged to steal a container of antimatter produced at the CERN Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border. Langdon and Vetra have to rush around — call it “24” meets a papal conclave — and find this missing “God particle” stuff before it explodes and vaporizes Vatican City.

By the time it’s all over, Langdon and company have solved a papal-murder mystery, saved the enlightened cardinal who ultimately becomes pope and, literally, saved the throne of St. Peter from being captured a madman who is, of course, the story’s most articulate conservative Catholic.

This villain “feels that the church is going down the wrong path” as it pursues peace with science and modernity, noted actor Ewan McGregor. “He thinks that the church is becoming watered down and is becoming weaker and weaker. … He’s trying to put it back on course.”

The key is that “Angels & Demons” offers a Vatican that contains good Catholics and bad Catholics. By the end of the film, said Howard, Langdon has gained a “more complex view of the church.”

In the end, there are good Catholics and bad Catholics and Brown and Howard get to determine who is who.

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Once a scandalous Hollywood insider, the author of twisted thrillers such as “Basic Instinct” and “Jagged Edge” can quote chapter and verse about life and death in Tinseltown. Consider the ruthless movie mogul who died during a beach vacation when a metal bar fell from a construction crane and pieced his heart. Or how about the Casanova actor whose reputation made his testicular cancer a bit too ironic?

Eszterhas will name names, when confessing his own sins.

The screenwriter’s egomaniacal tantrums were the stuff of legends, along with his appetite for alcohol, cocaine and first-person research for the lap-dancing scenes in “Showgirls.” Then there was his foul, blasphemous mouth.

It was tempting to connect the dots when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, said Eszterhas, during his blunt and mildly profane testimony at Biola University’s annual conference on faith and the entertainment industry. The resulting surgery claimed 80 percent of his larynx.

“Was it possible,” he mused, in his one-foot-in-the-grave voice, “that God had to cut my throat?” Then he heard the harsh commandments for his new life.

“I adored my wife and children, so I tried,” Eszterhas told the audience at CBS Studio Center. “I stopped smoking. I stopped drinking. I was trying my best to stay alive. I was trying my best not to die, but I knew that I couldn’t do it.”

Thus begins the wild conversion story he has shared many times, reading from his book, “Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith.” The turning point arrives with a weeping sinner on his knees, his heart skipping beats, his hands shaking, his voice moaning through his tracheotomy tube. Then Eszterhas hears his own voice mumbling strange words.

“I didn’t know why I had said it. I had never said it before,” he said. “Then I listened to myself say it again and again and again. ‘Please God, help me.’ ‘Please God, help me.’ ‘Please God, help me’ … I thought to myself, ‘Me, asking God, begging God? Me, praying?’ “

Then his pain was gone and he was staring into a bright light. He decided that, with God’s help, “I could defeat myself and win, if I fought very hard and if I prayed. … God saved me from me.”

Condensed into the punchy talking points that sell screenplays, Eszterhas said his life has gone from “Malibu to Ohio, from booze to diet Sprite, from Spago to McDonald’s, from Sharon Stone to Jesus.” Now he walks five miles and prays for an hour every day. With his second wife and their four sons, he worships at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where he volunteers to carry the cross in Sunday Mass.

“The twisted little man” who wrote his scripts still lives in his head, he said, but is no longer in charge. The big question was whether Eszterhas could write without the tobacco, alcohol and deadly darkness that fueled his 16 screenplays, which became movies that grossed more than $1 billion.

Eszterhas said he sat frozen at his old typewriter, feeling “like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining.’ ” He faced a complete mental block until he pounded out: “This is how I found God or how God found me.” The memoir had to come first.

Since then, Eszterhas has written two scripts, including a “narco-terrorism” thriller he thinks would fit Nicholson. He also wants to write a small-budget movie about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In an age in which Hollywood keeps remaking old blockbusters, he wonders why no one has produced spectacular, digital versions of “The Silver Chalice,” “The Robe” or “Quo Vadis.”

While he wants to keep working, what Eszterhas can’t imagine is writing the kinds of scripts that made him rich and famous.

“My head’s not really in that place. I mean, the thing that I would like to do very much, in the time that I have left, in terms of my own screenwriting, is to … write some things that reflect my faith,” he said. The goal would be to put “the same kind of energy, … into doing faith-based films that I think can really be commercially viable, that I put into other films of a different sort that became commercially successful.”

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However, since this man was scientist, Father Gary Thomas wasn’t surprised that he was a skeptic when it came to supernatural evil. That was fine, since one of the first things the priest learned in Rome while training to be an exorcist was to remain as skeptical as possible, as long as possible. Still, there were troubling facts in the man’s story — such as an episode when a counselor urged him to channel spirits.

Finally, the priest turned to “De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam (Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications),” the Vatican document released in 1998 that contains a modernized exorcism rite. He has been fighting this man’s demons ever since.

“When we started, he told me, ‘Wait! Can’t you just take this thing right out of me?’ But that’s rarely how things work,” said Thomas, the official exorcist in the Diocese of San Jose in northern California. “It’s hard to get people to understand that no two exorcisms are the same. Reality isn’t like the movies.”

The subject of demonic possession remains controversial, as illustrated by the media storm that greeted the revised exorcism rite, which was required by a Vatican II mandate three decades earlier. Later, the Vatican announced that Pope John Paul II had personally performed three exorcisms during his pontificate.

While the new rite warned exorcists not to confuse diabolic possession with mental illness, it also affirmed ancient teachings about the reality of spiritual warfare, as illustrated by biblical accounts of Jesus performing exorcisms.

Truth is, stressed Thomas, the events of Holy Week — especially Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter — make no sense without real demons, real temptations and a real hell. But many Catholics disagree.

“There are plenty of bishops and priests who simply do not believe in Satan and demons and they have told me so,” he said. “That makes a difference. What most people do not realize is that bishops are like independent contractors and they can do whatever they damn well want to do. … That’s why we don’t have many exorcists in America.”

At the request of his own bishop, Thomas took a Vatican-approved approved course on demonic possession while living at the North American College in Rome in late 2005 and early 2006. As part of his studies, the second-career priest — who worked in a mortuary before seeking ordination — participated in more than 80 exorcisms with a senior Italian exorcist. These experiences form the heart of “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist,” a new book written by American journalist Matt Baglio.

For the past three years, the 55-year-old priest has quietly been using the techniques he learned in Rome. He said that his teachers, from the beginning, emphasized that an exorcist must strive to remain the “ultimate skeptic,” pursuing every pastoral option before turning to the exorcism rite as a last resort.

Modern exorcists are urged to work with psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians while evaluating those who are suffering. They also test to see if spiritual health can be restored through confession, healing rites and frequent participation in Mass. However, Thomas noted that these contacts with “holy things” occasionally trigger open displays of demonic powers.

It’s one thing to hear the voice of a demon on a recording or to read pages of blasphemies in transcripts. Face-to-face encounters are another matter.

The classic signs of possession have been established for ages. The possessed may exhibit superhuman strength, describe private events in the life of an exorcist or possess the ability to speak languages — such as Latin — they have never studied. They often suffer bizarre physical reactions to contact with holy water, crosses or icons.

Most people seeking exorcisms are simply physically sick, mentally ill or emotionally distressed. Some may try to fake “Hollywood-esque symptoms” in order to draw sympathy or attention.

“You may see case after case in which there are other explanations for what these people are suffering,” stressed Thomas. “But then, every now and then, you see things that let you know that you are dealing with the real thing. That’s when you know that sin is real, hell is real and Satan is real. That’s when you learn what the cross and the resurrection are all about.”

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But in his next movie adventure, a Vatican official catches Harvard professor Robert Langdon off guard with this eternal question: “Do you believe in God?”

As a scholar, he says that he will never be able to answer that question. The papal aide then asks what his heart says.

“It tells me that I’m not meant to,” says Langdon.

Meanwhile, Hanks does believe in God and, during early press events for the upcoming movie “Angels & Demons,” he stressed that he isn’t a believer when it comes to conspiracy theories. This puts the superstar in an interesting position since he’s playing the hero in a franchise built on the unorthodox visions of novelist Dan Brown — who is on his way to creating a Universal Unified Field Theory of Vatican Conspiracies.

“Conspiracy theories, I think, are … conjured up by people who can then sell their books about conspiracy theories,” said Hanks, with a shrug. “Anytime someone says, ‘You know how they did that? You know what that’s about? You know what the conspiracy is?’, I automatically tune that person out.”

Of course, looming over the May 15 release of this film is the global firestorm created by Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” which opened with the infamous claim: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” The novelist then spun a tale about a charismatic and ultimately human Jesus who married, had a child and tried to create a feminist, sexually liberated faith two millennia before Woodstock.

Brown wrote “Angels & Demons” before “The Da Vinci Code,” which became a movie from director Ron Howard. The new film is framed as a sequel, with a tweaked plot that opens with humbled Roman Catholic leaders turning to Langdon for help in unraveling another ancient conspiracy. This time, a shadowy network of freethinkers — the “Illuminati” — are seeking revenge by blowing up the Vatican.

Rome wasn’t amused by “The Da Vinci Code” and didn’t embrace Howard and crew this time, either. The director was denied permission to enter the Holy See or to film key scenes inside the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria. As a church spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: “Usually we read the script but in this case it wasn’t necessary. Just the name Dan Brown was enough.”

Howard stressed that his new film includes good Catholic believers as well as bad and that Langdon’s character is forced to develop a “more complex view of the church.”

“I feel that the good and bad believers have to do with the good and bad in their deeds,” said Howard. “Belief is personal and to be respected. But behavior and actions taken on behalf of those beliefs, well that’s something that society has to react to when it’s bad and applaud when it’s good.”

For example, Hanks quoted key lines in which the Swiss Guard commander aims this shot at the hero: “My church feeds the hungry and takes care of the needs of the poor. What has your church done? Oh, that’s right, Mr. Langdon, you don’t have one.”

“This is true,” noted Hanks, whose complex family history included doses of Catholicism, Mormonism, the Church of the Nazarene and several years as a Bible-toting evangelical teen-ager. “The church does feed the poor. It does take care of the hungry. It heals the sick. I think that the grace of God seems to be not only in the eye of the believer, but also in the hands of the believer.”

These days, he said, he still ponders the big questions, while raising a family with his Greek Orthodox wife, actress Rita Wilson. Miracles are everywhere in daily life, he said, and it’s the “mystery of it all” that continues to haunt him.

“I must say that when I go to church — and I do go to church — I ponder the mystery,” he said. “I meditate on the, ‘why?’ of ‘Why people are as they are,’ and ‘Why bad things happen to good people,’ and ‘Why good things happen to bad people.’ … The mystery is what I think is, almost, the grand unifying theory of all mankind.”

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Then a miracle occurs and his female counterpart — her name is EVE — arrives seeking a sprout of new life that says it’s time to heal this world condemned by the sins of previous generations. Her mission is to take this green sign of hope back to the giant vessel that has sheltered humanity during this ecological storm.

Recognize any names, symbols and themes from an old book?

This is the story at the heart of Wall-E, the latest hit from Pixar. A panel of judges at Beliefnet.com selected this parable as the year’s best “spiritual film,” praising it as the story of a “lovable robot who miraculously rids our planet of pollution and causes a global spiritual transformation.”

“Of course the robot Wall-E falls in love with is named EVE,” said Dena Ross, entertainment editor for the interfaith website. “Some people see this as another Noah’s Ark story, too, and it ends with humanity coming home to start over with a new earth. …

“So there are obviously biblical elements here. These themes of stewardship and creation will resonate with Christians, but you’ll find these same themes in many other religions, as well.”

Critics at Christianity Today reached a similar conclusion and selected Wall-E as the year’s top “redeeming film,” noting that, “Existential longing, awe and apocalyptic hope form the ambitious thematic terrain of this poetic, mesmerizing film.” The biblical symbolism wasn’t a shock, since director Andrew Stanton had previously discussed how his Christian faith influenced the film.

It didn’t take a giant leap of faith to pin the “spiritual” and “redemptive” labels on Wall-E. But things get more complicated when applying these terms elsewhere.

After all, the 2008 “People’s Choice” award from Beliefnet.com went to Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” the story of a violent, racist, foul-mouthed Korean War veteran and his unlikely path to brotherly love, redemption and sacrifice. Laced together with Catholic threads, it ends with one of the most obvious visual references to a crucifix that moviegoers will ever see.

At the same time, Beliefnet.com judges and readers skipped over the evangelical hit “Fireproof” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” based on the novel by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

What is a “spiritual movie,” as opposed to a “religious movie”? Beliefnet.com editors argued that “spiritual” movies “shed light on, or make a serious attempt to grapple with, the big questions. Why are we here? What’s the meaning of life? Is there a God? Why is there evil in the world? Of course, this will inevitably include movies with overtly religious themes — Christian or otherwise — such as redemption, forgiveness, keeping faith, life and death, good vs. evil, and more. But sometimes they’re simply about the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.”

Christianity Today critics used this definition when listing their “redeeming” films: “We mean movies that include stories of redemption — sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so. Several of them literally have a character that represents a redeemer; all of them have characters who experience redemption to some degree. … Some are ‘feel-good’ movies that leave a smile on your face; some are a bit more uncomfortable to watch. But the redemptive element is there in all of these films.”

The critics at Beliefnet.com, for example, struggled with “Slumdog Millionaire,” which was named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The story of a boy’s rise from the Mumbai slums wove together themes of destiny, compassion, love and justice. It was a feel-good movie, but was it “spiritual”?

Over at Christianity Today, the same movie was described as a “Dickensian chronicle” that rises above its success story plot to become a tale “about providence and how all things are used for good by something greater than ourselves. As the film clearly says, all things happen ‘because it was written.’ “

The bottom line is that it’s impossible to put these artistic and spiritual judgment calls into simple formulas, stressed Ross. But people who care about the mysterious role that faith plays in real life know a spiritual movie when they see one.

“There are movies,” she said, “that appeal to religious people and there are also movies that, in some strange way, appeal to all kinds of people by touching their souls. That’s hard to describe, but that’s real.”

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Then something strange happened in his philosophy of communication classes. Students began arguing that slavery might be acceptable in certain cultures and under certain conditions. Besides, who were they to judge others?

So here’s a new question. What if you had two ferries and each contained a bomb. One ferry is full of criminals, while the other contains ordinary citizens and, there’s a catch, each contains a remote control that can trigger the other boat’s bomb. Then there is this sick Joker who vows that he will destroy both, if one doesn’t destroy the other.

Wouldn’t it be moral for the good guys to destroy the bad guys?

This is, of course, a soul-wrenching scene in “The Dark Knight,” the Batman sequel that is soaring toward the $500 million dollar mark at the U.S. box office.

“The audience is torn between these two choices and that’s the point,” said Newman, who teaches courses on the rhetoric of film at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. “You want to see good triumph over evil, somehow. But just look how far these movies have to ratchet up the nature of these violent acts so that the whole audience can agree that they’re evil.”

Newman believes that one reason that consumers are paying — over and over — to see this dark, distressing movie is that they are drawn to its depiction of a culture in which violence has become senseless, random and all but unstoppable.

In one nihilistic sermon, the villain with a death-mask smirk tells the powers that be, “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I am a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. I just do things.” Later, he proclaims: “Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It?s fair.”

This note of despair fits the times. Thus, the movie strikes a chord.

“We see in ‘The Dark Knight a fictional expression of our own world gone mad,” argues Newman, at his MovieMinistry.com website. “Under interrogation, The Joker rejects the idea that his is some alien ideology. Providing his analysis of the bastions of rules and laws — the police department — The Joker explains, ‘You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster … I’m just ahead of the curve.’ “

The question religious believers have to ask, he said, is “whether The Joker is right.”

Newman is not alone in hailing “The Dark Knight” as — like it or not — a must-see epic for clergy and others who want to keep their fingers on the cultural pulse. But there are strong voices of dissent.

“No movie I’ve ever seen has been so emotionally disturbing and spiritually oppressive,” warned Brian Fitzpatrick of Human Events. While some claim that the movie’s tale of good and evil contains essentially “conservative” values, he argued that it “showcases violence, betrayal and sadism in the name of frivolous entertainment. The movie is morally corrupt.”

The key to this tension, noted Newman, is that “The Dark Knight” leaves viewers yearning for its anti-hero — Batman is aware of his own flaws and mixed motives — to find a way to remain true to his personal vow to defend the innocent, even if that means bending society’s rules.

As this movie lurches to its conclusion, it becomes clear that the Joker has only one goal and that is to strip Batman of his moral convictions, to shatter his belief that good can defeat evil without being corrupted.

This implies that some kind of moral absolutes do exist.

“But we are left,” Newman added, “with an important question: Where does Batman get his convictions about what is right and what is wrong? He has a moral vision, but where did it come from? That isn’t in the movie. There are no answers there.”

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