6 Week (sort of) Review

It's a few days behind schedule, but here we are: 30 Movies in!


Movies that have Made Me Cry: Never Let Me Go, Saving Private Ryan, Agora
Movies that Made Me Yell at the Screen: Agora
Favorite Movie so far: Saving Private Ryan (still)
Worst Movie so far: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (also as-yet-undefeated)

Movies I Can't Wait to See Again: Pulp Fiction, X-Men: First Class, Saving Private Ryan, Agora
Movies that took Two Nights: Giant, Camelot, The Godfather Part II
20th Century : 21st Century: 14 : 16


Movies I have Seen... 
In Theaters: 6 (Bridesmaids, Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides, Jane Eyre, Tree of Life, X-Men: First Class, Super 8 ) (First 2-week period with no new movies in theaters; guess I was a bit busy with the re-release of  The Lord of the Rings...)
Other Screening: 1
Owned/Borrowed DVDs: 10
Netflix DVDs: 8
Netflix Instant: 3
Other Computer Format (YouTube, iTunes, etc.): 2

Gladiator (2000)

Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design and Best Sound Mixing. Nominated for 7 others.

directed by Ridley Scott

starring Russel Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen

I've heard people rave over Gladiator's soundtrack for years. Being a soundtrack nut, this was one of the main reasons I was so excited to finally see the film. And then...for the life of me, I could not focus during any of the intense action sequences because I was too busy furtively searching for Captain Jack Sparrow. Thank you, Hans Zimmer. This score wasn't even quite as good as the one he later produced for Pirates of the Caribbean, in my opinion. But they're practically identical anyway.

Just...here:

So there's that.

And that's just one example, the similarities go on and on. I mean...it's good music, but it was a weird sort of letdown. And any suspension of disbelief or immersion in the story instantly vanished with the familiar themes.

But there were some characters and plots involved in this thing, too, so I guess we'll just have to move on.

Gladiator is, simply put, a good film. It is striking and memorable in many ways. It creates characters that you are interested in and want to root for. Does it do this through groundbreaking methods? No. Sure, it revived the Epic genre, but the redemptive story of Russell Crowe's simple-farmer-turned-general on a quest for vengeance is fairly textbook.

That isn't strictly a bad thing. The dialogue has a tell-not-show problem at times, but it's not bad writing. Maximus is a humble everyman chiefly defined by things done to him, but Crowe brings the correct skill to pull off lines that could have stumbled. The cast is a great asset to this film - Joaquin Phoenix also brings a mixture of brilliance and ham to the evil Commodus, and Oliver Reed's death during production only made his final, excellent performance as the once-honored slave trader Proximus even more stirring. Connie Nielsen's character was also a pleasant surprise - her scheming princess seemed a likely candidate for Evil Temptress, but instead, we got a female who is both ambitious and just, despite the early trepidations of her father and her corrupt foil of a brother.

The cinematography provides the best argument in the film's favor. Commodus' entry into Rome is stark and decolorized as bright red petals rain from the sky: a beautiful image, eerily similar to the bright chunks of blood that fly with near-artistic abandon in the fight scenes. Scott does not hesitate to rest the camera on the scenery and revel for a moment, whether it be the geographical beauty of the Roman Empire or the fantastic reconstruction of its cities and armies.

The film's structure allows for a splendid show of the hallmarks of a Rome remembered by Hollywood: a great battle to open the movie, idyllic Spain, a crime-infested and slave-filled Tatooine Africa on the outskirts of the Empire, and of course, the opulence and the chaos of the Roman mob and politics, the spectacle and the shock of the bloody sport of the Colosseum. We admire Rome and we fear it in our modern culture. Watching gladiators fight to the death makes professional wrestling look like the Enlightenment. But how far removed are we, really, from a people entertained by bread and circuses? Commodus may seem dim-witted, but he was truly ahead of his time; he invested in reality programming and received the compliance of the public. For a while, anyway. In a system that rewards conflict, he also made room for a rival.

In closing, a few other notable distractions throughout the film...

1. Okay, Rory's got to be here somewhere.
2. Flashbacks to Latin class. Yay, cognomens.
3. Wait, the prince who slays the ruler is also incestuous towards his sister? I KNEW IT.