Spartacus (1960) review

 

 Hello, my fellow movie reviewers and blog-readers! I came from Rotten Tomatoes as The Creep to bring you movie reviews in other places in case Flixter screws it up anymore to where I lose all my reviews and can't post anymore. I will start with my Stanley Kubrick collection and post my earlier reviews latter. Now, Sparatacus!

(9 out of 10)

REBELLION-The first of the 9 favorite subjects of Stanley Kubrick, as told by the DVD booklet.

PLOT:Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) is a Thracian slave that is bought by Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) to teach to be a gladiator, but Spartacus is rebellious, and eventually starts a rebellion against Rome's slave opression with the other gladiators and takes a wife, a Brittanian slave named Varinia (Jean Simmons) and a friend named Antoninus (Tony Curtis). The slaves revolt against the corrupt Russian senator Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier). It is the classic story of Spartacus executed nearly perfect.

ACTING:The acting is truly brilliant. No one did a bad job! Douglas was perfect as Spartacus, Simmons does brilliant as Barinia, and Curtis does wonderful as Antoninus. Olivier and Ustinov also did a great job, considering this was Ustinov's Academy Award-winning role for Best Supporting Actor. 

SCORE:The score here is like a Babylonian John Williams. I loved it. Though I wouldn't call it beautiful or unque, it was still great.

EFFECTS:The blood effects are purely spectacular for the time being. They weren't damn CG and they actually made it look like real blood instead of strawberry cough syrup shit.

CAMERAWORK:Yes, the famous Kubrikian, angled camerawork is here for the best shots ever the grace the screen, as usual.

OTHER CONTENT:Now, this film is purely brilliant, but it has a couple minor flaws that I could find. Firstly, I believe (as well as some other tight-fisted critics) that the plot execution is a bit uneven. It is very well executed, but you can tell that it's a little too freewilling and loose than it needs to be. Secondly, I wouldn't count this one as much of a flaw than a directorial characteristic, but I also believe this doesn't have the 100% true feeling of a Stanley Kubrick film. I mean, I can feel in some scenes more than others Kubrick's presence, but I can't feel it throughout as I could with his other films I've seen. But let's stop with the flaws for a minute and glorify any other good things about this film. The script is very well-written; so much that it is almost poetry than a script. Also, the movie's pretty accurate to the tale of Spartacus if I might say so based on what I learned in 7th grade.

OVERALL,an awesome Kubrick film with a near-perfectly executed plot, brilliant acting, great score, realistic effects, Kubrickian camerawork, well-written script, and "historically" accurate, but the plot's execution, though near-perfect, is uneven and the presence of Kubrick in this film isn't as strong as in some of his other works.

-Creep Out-