Epic #5 - Spartacus (1960)

I'm sure you've heard his before, but: I am Spartacus. It's true. Spartacus, is, in fact, so awesome that I would be totally willing to claim to be him. He is amazing. This whole movie is really awesome, actually. I would so totally watch Spartacus again. I would buy Spartacus. It's quite awesome. Let me tell you why.

Spartacus is about...Spartacus, a Roman slave who's sold into a Gladiator school (apparently they had those), and then leads a mass revolt and commands an army of slaves against Rome. And then dies. Which is a bummer, but also awesome, because Spartacus is always awesome. I sort of thought that Spartacus was going to be a lot like The Ten Commandments, except with Rome instead of Egypt, and more Gladiators, but it wasn't. I really liked Spartacus. I liked all of the characters, and I liked the romance, and I actually rooted for the main characters. So that's good.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I really love tag lines. It doesn't matter how good the movie is, the tag line is always silly. It's just a rule. This movie has really awesome silly tag lines. I was more entertained by reading these tag lines than I was by watching Reds. One of the tag lines describes Spartacus as "The thrilling adventure that electrified the world!", exclamation point and all. Another says that "It roars with fierce excitement!", which is totally the phrase I thought of while watching it. It's also "More titanic than any story ever told!" and I do have to give credit where credit is due here: Titanic was in fact more titanic than Spartacus. So good for them there. This last one is actually my favorite, so prepare yourself..."They trained him to kill for their pleasure...but they trained him a little too well..." I think the elipses make it. I love those elipses.

Spartacus is directed by Stanley Kubrick. I have seen Stanley Kubrick movies before, and I was very surprised by how...not weird this movie was. Seriously, there was no bizarre editing, no scenes in complete silence, no sweeping camera angles starting at the ceiling. There was some rather whimsical music. Surprisingly whimsical music, actually, for a movie about gladiators. There was also the single longest marching scene ever, when the Roman army advances on the slave army near the end. I swear this scene was five minutes long. It was just endless marching Roman soldiers.

Watching that scene is a lot like staring at this picture for four minutes.

Spartacus himself is really a lot like Charleton Heston's Moses in The Ten Commandments. There both very classic hero-type heroes. They're very manly and strong and dramatic. I liked Spartacus better than Moses though. Charleton Heston was very dramatic in his acting. The way he delivered his lines sounded a lot like he was dramatically delivering lines, which admittedly he was, but it shouldn't sound like that. When Kirk Douglas (He's Spartacus) delivers his lines, it sounds like Spartacus is a naturally dramatic person. It doesn't sound so much like he was acting. Usually the excessive hero-ness annoys me, but I liked Spartacus. He was very noble and strong and instead of being vaguely impatient with it, I could see why people admire that. Spartacus was a leader. It was very impressive.

In Spartacus, Crassus, the Roman lord in charge of defeating Spartacus, is played by Lawrence Olivier. Yes, not only is Lawrence Olivier The Best Hamlet Ever, he is also Sir Lawrence Olivier. I think that's why this movie is so awesome.

Lawrence Olivier is not the best part of this movie though.

This man is the best part of this movie.

That's Peter Ustinov, and he is awesome. In Spartacus he plays Batiatus, who runs the Gladiator school that Spartacus is sold to. The scenes he's in are some of the best scenes in the movie. He's just so good. You kind of have to watch the movie to know what I'm talking about, but he's great. He steals every single scene he's in. Apparently he actually wrote some of the scenes he's in, which explains why they're so terrific. It gets even better though, because he's been knighted. I know. You can't question knighthood.

Besides Sir Peter Ustinov, the best part of this movie is near the end. Spartacus' army has been defeated by the Roman army (I'm sorry if I'm spoiling this for anyone, but really you should know this, it's ancient history,) and the army says to the slaves, "Hey, if you tell us which one Spartacus is, we won't kill all of you." Faced with this decision, does Spartacus' army give him up? No! Every single one of them stands up and says "I am Spartacus." It is maybe the single most awesome thing I have ever seen. And what does Spartacus do? Spartacus is so touched by this that he allows one single manly tear to run down his face. Because Spartacus is that awesome.

I watched a restored version, and it looks really good. Really sharp and clear. Here's something cool: There's a scene in the middle of the movie that they cut out when the movie was first released, and they put the scene back in for the restoration. The sound had been lost, so they rerecorded it with other people. The person who recorded Lawrence Olivier's lines was Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins who was also knighted. I think it's obvious what makes this movie so incredible.

In conclusion, I would say that Spartacus is the best movie so far. I really enjoyed Spartacus, and I would totally watch it again. Kudos to you Stanley Kubrick.

Kudos to you.

Epic #6 - Titanic (1997)

I know what you're thinking. Yes, Titanic is a terrible movie. Yes, it's maudlin and the favorite movie of a large amount of preteen girls. (And yes, I did get "maudlin" from the thesaurus. It's a synonym for "schmaltzy.") Bizarrely, it's also a very good movie at the same time. It's an enigma. The romance, or the "plot," as they call it these days, sucks. It's ridiculous, and it's just silly. The actual sinking of the Titanic, however, is very, very well done. That is good film making. It almost has the opposite problem as All Quiet on the Western Front. All Quiet on the Western Front had a terrific story and terrible cinemtagrific movie stuff, for lack of a better term. Titanic has fantastic movie stuff, and a terrible story. Let us explore this.

Now, I've actually seen Titanic many times before (It's on TV a lot,) so when writing this post, I was able to focus some brain power on the actual blog itself. So far, my posts have been sort of lack-luster. They lack luster. So I thought, "Hey! Why don't I try a new format?" just exactly like that too, and then I thought: colons. Of course, I should present the movie in list form. It'd be like classic movie trading cards! Who doesn't want those? Let us proceed.


Release Year: 1997. But you knew that.

Director: James Cameron, but I bet you knew that too. His movies are okay, but make a staggering amount of money.

"Actors": Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Oscars: At eleven Oscars each, Titanic and Ben-Hur are tied for the most Oscars ever won by a single movie.

Super-Quick-Summary (The hyphens are absolutely essential): Rose, a rich girl who feels trapped, and Jack, a starving artist who feels free, fall in love on the Titanic, which predictably sinks. Dramatic irony abounds.

Any Knights? (Because, as you know, you can't question knighthood.): Not to my knowledge. Shame.

Anything Laughably Bad?: Oh yes. Most of the acting really is terrible. I feel that if my high school drama club did a production of Titanic, the quality of acting would be about the same. Beyond the awkwardly delivered lines is the awkwardly written script, which you can tell is bad because even the actual actors in the movie don't deliver it well.

Anything Tear-Jerkingly Good?: Yes. That's what's really weird about this movie: It's both very bad and very good at the same time. The little scenes there are during the sinking of the Titanic are so good. When we get away from the ridiculous romance and focus on these other people, it just this wonderful movie. That's when it's really strong. I would like to point out that Titanic is not in the list of greatest romances, but is in the list of greatest epics. I think it's clear that the American Film Institute agrees with me here. As a side note, the combination of the awesomeness of Molly Brown and the awesomeness of Kathy Bates creates an incredible center of concentrated awesome. True story.

Historical Significance: Titanic is probably the most successful movie ever made. If you don't adjust of inflation, the only movie that's ever made more money than it is Avatar. It won eleven Oscars, including Best Picture. It made huge leaps in special effects, it launched Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and it was just a huge movie. It's certainly very epic.

Historical Background: The sinking of the Titanic makes a great story all by itself. The irony of the ship that was billed with much hype as "unsinkable" sinking on it's maiden voyage is incredible. It's especially ironic because of the extent it did sink. You also have the theme of nature conquering man when he thinks he's conquered her, the warning against the dangers of overconfidence, the commentary on the class system, and the commentary on corporate greed. You can't make this kind of stuff up. It is a perfect story. It's no wonder they made a movie about it.

Framing Device?: Yes indeed. A group of undersea explorers search for "The Heart of the Ocean," an off-brand Hope Diamond, in the wreck of the Titanic, and hear the story from a survivor of the disaster, an elderly Rose.

Would I Watch it Again?: Oh, probably. If someone was like "Hey Abby, want to watch Titanic?" I'd be like, "Sure, I don't have anything else to do," but I don't think I'll ever actually seek out Titanic. 'Sokay. Definitely an enigma. Remember that. If anyone ever asks you to describe Titanic, you have to say that, okay. "It's an enigma." Good.

Epic #7 - All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front is a WWI movie, directed Lewis Milestone. It's about how unglamorous and dirty and painful war is, and how it's grossly romanticized by people with no experience with it. Saving Private Ryan did show us how terrible war is, but All Quiet on the Western Front is specifically about it. It's an antiwar movie, which was really groundbreaking at the time, that wasn't how you made war movies then. It did win the Oscar for Best Picture that year, so it was successful at the time it was made and really still is, which is a long time for a movie to be well-known.

The actual literal story is about a group of young men who are inspired to enlist in the German army after hearing a rousing speech from their school teacher on the honor and glory of war. When they actually go to war, of course, they discover that it's not as glamorous as it seems from the outside. I didn't actually know there was a main character until about halfway through the movie, which says something about their characterization, but there is, his name is Paul. He's played by Lew Ayres, who apparently was quite successful later, and was decent in this movie. I can't say that I actually got very connected to any of the characters. Something about this movie made it really hard for me to follow. It also actually doesn't have any music behind it at all, which makes the quiet scenes really, really quiet, and there are a surprising amount of quiet scenes in this movie. The actors have to rely on their delivery to put emphasise on pieces of dialogue, rather than the music, and sometimes they fails, which probably contributes to my difficulty in following it.

I actually caught the movie on the Turner Classic Movies channel, which was lucky for me. I was watching a Charlie Chaplin movie I had recorded when the ad for it came on, and the movie was starting on live TV at exactly the time I was watching the recorded advertisement. I attribute this incredible coincidence to the influence of Charlie Chaplin's unquestionable knighthood.

All Quiet on the Western Front is an old movie, and it doesn't quite stand the test of time. It's very 1930s. Something about the whole thing gives of this old movie vibe. If you watch a lot of old movies you know what I'm talking about. It's just something about the way they deliver the lines. More than that though, It's not as good artistically as really any of the other movies I've watched so far. It's like they just pointed the camera at the actors and left it at that. It doesn't really look good, and in a movie, that's important. It's a very visual medium.

I know it sounds like I'm questioning the American Film Institute, but of course I'm not that's not possible. All Quiet on the Western Front is historically significant. It's the first movie to really treat war this way, which is why it ranks how it does. It's a very powerful movie, and it's got a lot of really good scenes; It's a good story. It's just not done significantly well, movie-wise. It's not that effective to watch it. The movie is based on a book, and I'll bet the book is much better. It's about how terrible war is, which is a fine and dandy message I suppose, but it's delivered rather heavy-handedly. There's just slightly too many speeches about it. They show it well enough with the events of the movie, the events are very powerful, and they don't need so many monologues about it.

It does have a very good ending though. The ending is very nice and symbolic and all that, and very famous. I'm sure you're familiar with the hand reaching out of the trenches for a butterfly? Well, that's from this movie. It's very powerful, and I can only wish that it was filmed slightly better.

As a side note, I've always inexplicably confused All Quiet on the Western Front with No Country For Old Men, and I have no idea why. They're completely unrelated movies, it's just the titles I get confused really, it's very strange. Fun Fact there.

Epic #8 - Saving Private Ryan (1998)

War is the worst thing ever. I am completely, utterly convinced of this by watching this movie. Saving Private Ryan is supposed to be among the most accurate war movies out there, and it is brutal, violent and chaotic. Just like real war. War sucks, and the people who fight it deserve all kinds of respect. Saving Private Ryan really demonstrates that.

Saving Private Ryan is a World War II movie, directed by Steven Spielberg. It opens with the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. I've been told that this is one of the best cinematic war scenes ever, and it is very good. I haven't seen very many war movies, so I can't really judge it as compared to other scenes, but on it's own it's obviously very good film making. It's this huge, crowded, chaotic scene, and it's noisy and dirty and people are dying, and within it there are all these tiny little horrible moments. People are picking up there own arms, and people are just avoiding death, and then being killed shortly afterwards. In one section, a group of medics save a soldier and congratulate themselves, only for the soldier to be shot through the head. The whole scene is filled with these kind of moments. We don't even know any characters yet. All we're watching is the warfare; that's all we have to focus on. It ends with a shot of the bodies on the beach, with the ocean with all the blood in it washing over them. It's a very powerful scene.

The Plot: Basically, three brothers from the same family, the Ryans, all die in combat. There's one brother left, Private James Ryan, and they, they being the government, decide to send him home, since all the brothers are dead. Because war isn't very organized, they don't know exactly where he is, so they send out Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks, who sounds distractingly like Woody in this movie,) and a squad of soldiers to find him, including Daniel Faraday from Lost. The major source of conflict in this movie is, obviously, World War II, but conflict also arises from the fact that eight men are being sent out to risk their lives for the life of one man. A huge theme in the movie is making the decision between doing the decent thing, and doing the practical thing. Saving Private Ryan is the decent thing to do, but is incredibly impractical, a lot of people are put in a lot of danger because of it. This is really what the movie is about.

This is movie is made up of definite exciting events, with calmer sort of interludes in between them. Obviously in a movie you need both exciting scenes and calm scenes, but in this movie it's very pronounced. Because this is how most action-y movies are structured, it gives the film a very action-y movie feel. It is a action-y movie of course. It's definitely a war movie, and, beyond the gritty realism, a pretty standard one, judging from the war movies I have seen. It's a very good standard war movie though. After all, the war movie is a tried and trusted genre, and this is certainly a very good movie that treats war with the dignity that it deserves. Well maybe not war itself per say, that's a tricky subject, but definitely the people who fight it. It's ground-breaking in its violent and accurate portrayal of war, and definitely summons up respect for soldiers, but beyond that it's a war movie. Now that I think about it, I have to wonder why our friends at the American Film Institute don't have a list of the best war movies. Seems like an obvious choice, over, say, the oddly specific genre of "Courtroom Drama." Strange.

Saving Private Ryan won five Oscars, including Best Director, but did not win Best Picture. It actually lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, which is considered one of the greatest award snubs ever. True story.

Saving Private Ryan is, so far, the best movie I've seen through The Project, which is good because that's what's supposed to happen. The Ten Commandments was very "Look we have Technicolor and lots of extras," making it's epic-ness kind of forced, and Reds was, frankly, long and boring. Saving Private Ryan entertained me through the entire film, I enjoyed all of it, it was good film making, and it was just a good movie. It's a very powerful movie made about a very powerful subject matter. You can not question the American Film Institute. It cannot be done. I am not, however, to the point where I would actually seek out the movie to watch it again, which is a shame. Fingers crossed for All Quiet on the Western Front, then.

Epic #9 - Reds (1981)

I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.

Reds (directed by Warren Beatty) is about communism. Sort of. Reds is the true story of the radical revolutionary journalist Jack Reed (Warren Beatty), who is a jerk, and his wife Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), who get swept up in the events of the Russian revolution, and attempt to bring the revolutionary spirit to the United States. It's epic and romantic and historic commentary, but mostly it is long. And kind of boring. Not bad, though, it's definitely a very well-made movie. It's just very, very long and uneventful.

Like The Ten Commandments, Reds is split into two parts. The first half is mostly about Jack and Louise's budding romantic relationship, an the second half is mostly about how they've gotten caught up in Bolshevism and Communism and the Russian revolution, and how this affects there lives. There's no Intermission music though, which is lame. The second half is far more interesting than the first. A whole lot of nothing happens in part 1, but part 2 is very eventful. People go to Russia, people get thrown in jail, it's very excited. They more to the seaside in part 1.

In the first half of the movie, Louise has an affair with Eugene O'Neill, the playwright (Whose son-in-law, by the way, was Charlie Chaplin, who was a knight. You can't question knighthood.) Eugene O'Neill is played by Jack Nicholson. Do you know who's creepier than Jack Nicholson? Nobody. Nobody is creepier than Jack Nicholson.

Nobody.

I wonder if Eugene O'Neill was really that sinister in really life, or if that's just Jack Nicholoson. There was a point in the movie when he was angry at Louise, an I literally thought Eugene O'Neill was going to kill her.

Stephen Sondheim, the great writer of musicals, actually did the score for this movie. I didn't actually notice the music most of the time, but there was this one song that's heavily featured in the first half of the movie, and comes to symbolize the relationship of Jack and Louise. As the movie goes on and they start movie away from this relationship, we hear this song less and less. The point in the movie where they finally get back to each other is when we hear the song again, and it's a really strong point in the movie. It's my favorite part, actually.

Do you know what there are a lot of in this movie? Montages. There is an incredibly large amount of montages in this movie. I swear there is a montage for every single major event in these people's lives. When we're not watching a montage, we're watching a series of very short, incomplete scenes, which I know sounds like a montage but isn't. A montage has music over it. This movie is made up almost entirely of scenes lasting no more than a minute or two, and montages. It's very bizarre, and I can't figure out if it's good film-making or not. Since it's the American Film Institutes's #9 epic, I'm going to assume it is, but the way this movie moves is still vaguely unsettling.

The part of the movie that isn't montages is mostly made up of people who really lived through the events of the movie, "Witnesses," summing up what's happened, introducing what happens next, and giving historical background. The historical background helps, to be honest I know very little about this point in history. This is really cool and all, and definitely interesting, but they talk for really long periods of time. The movie does a lot of telling, and not a lot of showing, which I've been told is bad. I wish we got to see more of what the main characters did.

For the most part, I'm pretty indifferent to this movie. There was nothing in it that I really disliked, but there wasn't much that I really liked, either. I sat through it, but I wouldn't necessarily want to watch it again. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that they watch it, but I wouldn't tell anyone that they should never watch it ever. It was average for me, though it's obviously a well-made movie. Good critically. Won three Oscars. Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Maureen Stapleton as revolutionary Emma Goldman), and Best Cinematography. It did have very good cinematography. Congrats, Warren Beatty.

Epic #10 - The Ten Commandments (1956)

The Ten Commandments is, first of all, a huge movie. It's directed by Cecil B. DeMille, the great director of epics, and is about, of course, Moses leading the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, and then presenting them with the Ten Commandments, as given to him by God. Presented in brilliant Technicolor. It’s all very exciting.

The movie stars Charlton Heston as Moses and the voice of God, and Yul Brynner as Ramses II, apparently because he was tired of being the king of Siam. Vincent Price is also in it, playing, as far as I can tell, Vincent Price (He's so Vincent Price-y), and it also features Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Now, I really don’t know exactly who Cedric Hardwicke is, but I do know this: he was a knight. And therefore awesome. You can’t question knighthood, ladies and gentlemen. That’s a fact.

The Ten Commandments actually won the 1956 Oscar for special effects, which doesn't surprise me. The parting of the Red Sea is really quite impressive. Not by today's standard, of course, but nevertheless. Props, Cecil B. DeMille. Props.

The Fire Tornado is, however, far less convincing.

The Ten Commandments starts with the baby Moses (Who is actually played by Charlton Heston's son, fun fact that is), son of Hebrew slaves, being floated down the Nile in a basket to save him from Pharaoh Ramses I (Ian Keith)'s order that all first-born Hebrew sons must be killed. He floats down to the palace, or where ever it is that Egyptian royalty lives, and is saved by the Pharaoh's daughter Bithiah (Nina Foch), who raises him as his own. He then grows up in the court of Pharaoh Sethi (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), who, other than the enslavement of an entire race of people, is pretty awesome. He is loved by the throne princess, Nefretiri (I watched the entire movie and I'm still not sure how to pronounce that. She's played by Anne Baxter, who seems pretty awesome), and really kind of hated by the Pharaoh's son, Ramses II (He's Yul Brynner remember).

Eventually, Moses's Hebrew heritage is found out and he is cast out of Egypt. He crosses a desert, gets married, is spoken to by God, and then returns to Egypt. He demands that the Jewish people be set free (This is where "Let my people go," comes in). Ramses II, who is now Pharaoh, refuses, and seven plagues descend upon Egypt. Ramses II eventually set the Jewish people free, changes his mind, pursues the slaves, and looses all of his army to the Red Sea. It's an Easter classic. There's also some kind of side romance between Joshua (John Derek) and Lilia (Debra Paget) that's sort of interesting, but not really that relevant. Lilia wears a lot of color though, so it looks nice, which is always good in a movie.

It's a good movie. I was entertained by the whole thing. Mind you, it was billed as "The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History," so, bit of a letdown there, but, you know. It was big, mostly. Big acting, big sets, big story. There was always lots of people on screen, and just huge crowds of extras. It's also very long. I actually knew that it was going to be long before I watched it. This was my first clue:

Yes, Netflix sent it to me on two separate disks.

And then it began with an Overture. So I was prepared. It didn't actually seem to drag at all though, I was engaged throughout the whole thing. It was very entertaining, although I was kind of hoping that Charlton Heston would say "Let my people go!" more often then he actually did. Oh well. It certainly deserves the #10 slot in the Best Epics Ever, at least so far, which just goes to reinforce the American Film Institutes complete trustworthiness.

So it is written, so it shall be done.

That's how the movie ends, see. I thought it was clever. Perhaps a bit abrupt.

Genre #1: Epics

I'll admit, I always sort of thought that an epic had to be a poem. Evidently this is not true.
I also thought that an epic had to be about something specifically heroic, like a war, or a quest or something. An epic, to my knowlege, has to be very, very long.

And ships. I feel there should be ships.

However, Titanic, for an example, is on this list. Mind you, a ship is heavily featured in Titanic, but I've never noticed anything particularly heroic about it. But the American Film Institute has, and the American Film Institue is never wrong. Clearly, I don't know exactly what an epic is.

I asked Dictionary.com for a strait definition of the word. Among the first couple of definitions, Dictionary.com assured me that an epic was "an epic poem," "epic poetry," or "something worthy to form the subject of an epic," which was less than helpful. After some further digging,
"Any work of literature, film, etc, having heroic deeds for its subject matter or having other qualities associated with the epic," came up, which was much more helpful, although still a bit vague toward the end. This is about what I said earlier, but without the ships.

Interesting.

First up: The Ten Commandments.