top ten past lives movie list

************************************

Movies spread the panorama of the past before us, giving us insights and awareness that used to be enjoyed by only kings and philosophers. These are the best of those to help you heal the past... So break out the popcorn!

Please note these are my personal selections and do not reflect the views of "management" or the opinions of anyone other than myself. Where there is more than one movie listed in the group, I listed them in the order that I liked them.

1> Dead Again (with Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson)
.....On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (with Barbra Streisand)

The past is still present. In "Dead Again", the movie starts with the execution of an innocent man who says just before his death that "this is far from over." Revenge for wrongs done in past lives powerfully directs the future... as when all the key players in the murder reincarnate, then find one another again, and strive to "put right what once went wrong". Yet it is love more than revenge that keeps us coming back for more as a psychiatrist learns in "On A Clear Day" when he unexpectedly encounters a past life of a woman patient destined to be his wife in a future life!

2> Stir of Echoes (with Kevin Bacon)
.....Ghost (with Demi Moore)

Then again there are times when the dead cannot wait to come back... and take it upon themselves to intervene in the land of the living by dispensing instant karma. In "Stir of Echoes", the spirit of a murdered girl invades the psychic awareness of a neighbor. In a classic case of "After Life Intervention", she leds him - unwillingly - to discover her body and bring her murderers to justice. While in "Ghost", a wrongfully murdered man uses both "poltergeist" energy (to move objects) and "Instrumental Transcommunication" (to type on a computer) to exact his revenge.

3> Heart and Souls (with Alfre Woodard)
.....Heaven Can Wait (with Warren Beatty)

There are no accidents in the universe. When "accidents happen" in the universe of all possibilities, there are creative ways to work around them. In "Heart and Souls", four people who die in a bus crash become attached to a boy who grows up to help them complete their unfinished business before they move to their next life. While in "Heaven Can Wait", a soul taken out of his body too early attaches to another and finds the woman who becomes his reason for living and loving.

4> Somewhere in Time (with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve)
.....The Love Letter (with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Campbell Scott)

There are no barriers to love in the universe... not time, not distance, not death can ever truly separate those love with the passion of eternity. In "Somewhere in Time", a woman waits her whole life to convince the man she has already loved to go back to the past and love her again. While in "The Love Letter", a window to the past is opened by an antique desk which allows lovers parted by war in the past to find one another in the present and resume their long denied love.

5> Guarding Tess (with Shirley MacLaine)
.....Dolores Claiborne (with Kathy Bates)

The past is a nice place to visit... but you do not want to live there. And if you do, then I suggest that you rent these movies. In "Guarding Tess", the wife of a dead President keeps reliving the glory days of her past even though it is killing her (which manifests as a brain tumor). While in "Dolores Claiborne", a wife, suspected of murdering her husband, must come to terms with it, while under investigation in the death of her employer. In both cases, the main characters face their pasts and embrace their present by healing their troubled relationships with those left in their lives now. Both learn that living in the past... only keeps them trapped there.