Gladiator

In case you can't tell, my guy is on nights this week. I watch a lot of movies when he is on nights because I usually stay up late. The last couple of weekends I have discovered that there is a lot of movies on tv every weekend, and I have kind of been looking forward to what's playing. Why is it that you're so much more likely to watch a movie when it's on tv? Some of the movies that are on I own and I haven;t seen them in years, but if it's on tv I'll sit through those commercials and watch it. Tonight I had all sorts of options: Ray, Unforgiven, War of the Worlds, Beowulf, and a  whole bunch of others.

I went with Gladiator, Ridley Scott's 2000 film starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. It was playing on the History channel, and as a fan of all things historical I really appreciate how the History channel prefaces and concludes each movie they play with some extra historical info. One thing I did not appreciate though was the running time was three and a half hours, and I'm sure some was cut out because they always do that when they play movies on tv, and the actual movie is only two and a half hours, so if my math is correct, that is a solid hour plus of commercials. Super annoying.

As far as historical accuracy, I wouldn't say it was as off as Braveheart, but don't watch this for a history of Maximus (who never existed) or Commodus. But Gladiator tells a good story, a classic story, and an epic story. It has romance, revenge, fighting, death, severed heads, power, etc etc (just about everything!) The scenery is authentic, Russell Crowe is still hot, and Joaquin Phoenix is mesmerizing.

An epic movie.