Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This is an excellent film but that is not at all a surprise considering it is directed by Stanley Kubrick and his movies are all incredible, at least the most famous of his movies are.Kubrick also shot this movie after he took over for his cinematographer but because he wasn't credited that cinematographer took home the Academy Award so that is an interesting bit of trivia and I bet he wouldn't be too happy about that! Ha ha.The fight scenes and "look" of the film are a bit dated of course but the writing and acting and direction of course are all still great and the movie holds up almost as good today.Kirk Douglas produced this movie so he could cast himself in the title role of Spartacus and that is probably the main problem of this movie. He is 45 here and obviously too old to be playing the young gladiator/slave Spartacus but if you suspend your disbelief it doesn't matter very much. He is actually quite good in this.This movie is worth watching just for the "I'm Spartacus!" scene alone. What a great ending.

Just as Ben-Hur is the most famous biblical movie ever, Spartacus is the most famous gladiator movie ever. (Sorry, Russell Crowe.) In 1960, the year after Ben-Hur's spectacular success, producing a three-hour movie about Roman gladiators was risky. Everyone in the audience would be comparing it to Charlton Heston's slavery scenes, so it'd better be good! Well, it was good, and it's remained a classic through the decades.Spartacus focuses on the treatment and life of slaves, and the dissension within the Roman Empire, rather than copying any Biblical theme from the countless religious movies to come out of the 1950s. There are so many famous scenes and lines that have come out of this movie, it's almost superfluous to give a plot summary or even mention the cast. Briefly, Kirk Douglas plays the title character, an unruly slave who is sent to train as a gladiator. He falls in love with Jean Simmons, and while his fellow slaves turn to him as a leader, he bonds closely with one in particular, Tony Curtis. Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and John Gavin give very memorable performances as Roman politicians, a slave trader, and Julius Caesar, respectively.Spartacus is one of those classics, like Gone with the Wind, that everyone sees at least once in their lifetime. If you have no idea what the phrase "I'm Spartacus!" means, your film education missed a key course. Go rent the movie during your next guys' weekend, and get ready to appreciate the movie that fathered all the modern gladiator movies we know and love.

"Spartacus" is one of the greatest of all the historical epics - chiefly because it has a lot of humanity and intelligence to go along with its grand spectacle. More than "just" an account of a slave rebellion, it is also a love story for the ages, and a look into the political power play of 70 BC Rome. Dalton Trumbo's savvy script has a lot of remarkable lines ("We buy everything else these days, no reason why we shouldn't be charged for patriotism" or "I'm even more of a civilian than most civilians"). Kirk Douglas heads a distinguished cast and gives one of the finest performances of his career; I cannot picture anyone else in the title role. His love story with Jean Simmons has a passion and a purity that are rarely equalled in Hollywood. Peter Ustinov steals every scene he's in as a groveling slave trader, and Woody Strode is unforgettable as a huge, taciturn gladiator. The production values are top-notch, from Saul Bass' imposing title sequence and Alex North's superb score to the incredible crowd scenes and the painful-looking stunts. It's one of my all-time favorite films; it holds up beautifully in repeat viewings, and I never fail to cry with Tony Curtis' song. ***1/2 out of 4.

Though it's a fairly long historical epic, this essential drama features some terrific performances and huge battle sequences in the movie-making era before CGI, which enabled such scenes to become more commonplace.Directed by Stanley Kubrick with a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, based on the novel by Howard Fast, and featuring Kirk Douglas in the title role, the film includes Best Supporting Actor Peter Ustinov as a droll self-interested gladiator-owner-businessman Lentulus Batiatus; it also won for Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Cinematography and Costume Design and was nominated for Editing and Alex North's Score.Laurence Olivier as Crassus and Charles Laughton as Gracchus provide the Roman Senate political backdrop as they alternatively manipulate the younger more naïve among them: John Gavin – as Julius Caesar – and John Dall, the less capable Glabrus. #62 on AFI's 100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies list. #44 on AFI's 100 Most Inspiring Movies list.Spartacus (AFI's #22 hero) is a proud, combative slave that's saved from death when he's picked by Batiatus to become a gladiator. After being trained by Batiatus' ex-slave gladiator-trainer Marcellus (Charles McGraw), he's forced into a ring "fight to the death" with Draba, another slave-gladiator (played by Woody Strode), for the pleasure of some visiting Roman 'royalty': rich Crassus, Glabrus and their women (Nina Foch and Joanna Barnes).After losing to but being spared by Draba, who chooses to take out his anger futilely against the Romans, Spartacus leads a revolt of the gladiators against their captors, which becomes an insurgency and then a quest for freedom by all of "slave nation".The major subplot involves the slave leader's love for the slave woman Varinia, played by Jean Simmons. Later, she too becomes a pawn in the Senators' manipulations. John Ireland plays Spartacus' loyal right- hand man Crixus; Harold J. Stone plays the silent David, another loyalist.Tony Curtis plays Antoninus, a slave gift to Crassus that's scared away by his master's advances, runs away to join Spartacus and, with his 'singing' and other entertainer talents, adds a culture to the uneducated slave clan as they revel in a freedom that must inevitably end. Herbert Lom plays a negotiator on behalf of some Sicilian pirates that were to join the slaves' rebellion against Rome.The memorable scene in which Antoninus and each of the other slave survivors claim - "I'm Spartacus" - to keep their Roman conquerors from identifying their leader is nowhere near the end of the story.