Rating: 
Summary: Let's hope it sweeps the oscars!
Review: Gladiator is a movie I saw a couple months ago and it still holds up in my opinion. Russell Crowe does a great performance as Maximus, a roman general who becomes a slave. Joaquin Phoenix is an excellent villian who is so evil you just want to gouge out his eyes with your bare hands. Like alot of epic films that get nominated for Best Picture at the oscars, Gladiator is long and a bit boring. But spectacular battles at the roman colosseum and great acting will keep you riveted right to the end. This film however should not be viewed by the weakened heart, due to graphic violence. But anyone who has a big set, is interested in the roman empire or who just likes great movies should watch this cinematic masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: **Fantastic!!**
Review: Turn off the lights, plop into an armchair, and don't forget that tub of popcorn! This super- charged, action packed movie with loads of heart and passion makes my cut for the top five movies of the year! There is a surprisingly low amount of crude blood & gore, and there is a detectable level of thought and emotion. *Gladiator* has tremendous appeal for all kinds of people, and is definitely worth seeing. Very entertaining, and highly recommended by me, make this movie your highlight of the evening!
Rating:
Summary: Two words: THE BEST!!!
Review: Russell Crowe jumps into the role of Maximus, a former Roman general, who's wife and son were murdered by the evil Comodus to keep Maximus from becoming ruler over Rome. After the murders, Maximus is sold into slavery and eventually ends up a gladiator. After numerus gory gladiator-against-gladiator fights, the group of fighters that Maximus is taveling with goes to the Colesium, and spectator arena in Rome for gladiator battles, maximus is chalenged to a duel by Comodus. I won't tell you the end, but you've gotto see this flick. Ranks in my top five with: Raiders of the Lost Ark/Gladiator(1); The Patriot(2); Goldfinger(3)Tomorrow Never Dies(4); and The Green Berets(5). All Great war/action/adventure flicks
Rating:
Summary: Best film of the year???
Review: Maybe. THis movie was a lot better then stupid crap like " ERin Brokovich" for sure.... This movie is great. Most of the time i cant deal with these historical epics cause most s***to be frank. There are exceptions i.e. Braveheart, Last of the MOhicans etc. and this movie. Ridley SCott did a brilliant job with this one. He is a genius. The visuals were great. But what propels the movie above other epics is Russell Crowe. He is amazing and keeps your attention. He is one bad mofo!! He will hopefully always be a big star. He deserves to be because of his raw talent. If u like him in this movie check out "LA CONFIDENTIAL" and "ROMPER STOMPER". Jaquien Pheonix also did a nice job here as the emperor. And by the way, the action scenes were amazing! They will blow u away. THE DVD IS GREAT!!
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie of the Year
Review: This movie Gladiator was my Titanic for the year. I absolutely loved it! The photography, acting and story line where just nothing short of magnificent. Russell Crowe was just wonderful as Maximus as was Joaquin Phoenix as the emperor. I have seen this movie about a dozen times now, and never tier of it, everytime I watch it, I see something new. I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Sillius Maximus - "Conan" on estrogen
Review: As reluctant as many people may be to admit it, this movie wouldn't have been made if it weren't for "Conan", not to mention Hollywood's earlier Roman extravaganzas "Ben-Hur", "Spartacus", and the others. The problem is that all the testosterone has been drained away: in our enlightened age, it won't do to have a man beat and hack the life out of another guy without getting the opportunity to show us his softer side. As a "revenge" movie, it works on a pretty superficial level. There simply isn't enough background for the audience to identify all that deeply with Crowe's "Maximus" - his family dies off screen without us ever really seeing them, and frankly, I didn't think find him a sympathetic character anyway. The entire plot was contrived - I felt thoroughly manipulated: wind up Maximus and let him buzz through all those bad old gladiators on his way to his eventual (and totally inevitable, entirely predictable, and wholly inconsequental) fight with Commodus. Ho-hum. Top it all with a big Hollywood-style happy ending ("Rome the Republic"... ...It was over-the-top feel-goodism. Crowe is pretty darned hammy, there's just no getting away from it. When he shouts to one audience, "Do I entertain you?", I wish they had shouted back "NO, you hambone, bring in Commodus!" But I guess he fills out a skirt nicely, so the ladies have something to look at. (There sure isn't anything for the guys, 'cause female lead Connie Nielsen, as Commodus' sister Lucilla, is draped chin-to-toe throughout, even when her brother is pawing at her.) Oliver Reed does well as the ex-gladiator running the team, but Richard Harris's Marcus was exhausted to the point of near incomprehensibility. And are we going to be stuck for the next decade with red-lipped, downy-cheeked little boys instead of kids who look like they actually play outside and skin their knees? Digital tomfoolery. Feh. The opening scenes in Germania were simply awful. Totally inexcuseable. For crying out loud, when will the ninnies in Hollywood learn that only SNOW looks like SNOW? I guess it comes from never having seen the stuff themselves, but in this flick, you get feathers and down. That's right - feathers. It is SO obviously filmed through a blue filter on a bright sunny day with feathers drifting about that you wonder who's raiding the henhouse. (By the time the first 30 minutes was over, I wanted to take every filter in Ridley Scott's kit and make him eat them....) Look, at least TRY to film SOME stuff on location if you have a budget like that. But I forget - you're paying for auteur Scott and actors like Crowe and Reed and Phoenix and Harris, plus all the digital scenery - can't afford anything like realistic LOCATION shots. Hell, why bother - why not make it one big cartoon and leave ALL the real world behind? The rest (the Colosseum, Maximus' villa, Rome itself, etc.) - think "Perfect Storm". NOT convincing. You know, it would be preferable to have painted backdrops (which in effect is what we DO have, only digitally) with better shots of the actors than big screen-filling matte shots. Count me underwhelmed. I didn't bother with all the extras. Go for it you want them - I just don't care enough when you have something SO self-important, over-hyped, and at it's heart hollow and shabby. No kidding - I think Ed Wood *cared* more about his movies than the folks associated with this bloated blintz. SO - no sympathetic characters; hackneyed, trite, cliche-ridden plot; hokey digital effects; emotionally overwrought and JARRINGLY anachronistic soundtrack, plus a large dollop of 1990's-style political correctness, and you have the mediocre mush of "Gladiator". "Conan" without the cohones, "Spartacus" without the spirit, "Ben-Hur" without the....you get the idea. Pass.
Rating:
Summary: Must Have for any DVD owner
Review: The movie is good enough to merit a purchase, but the DVD's special features really bring it over the top. While not quite as spectacular special features as Seven or Fight Club, this movie includes 2 DVD's in a nice package. I think most people know the movie well enough so I don't have to explain it, but if you're a fan of action/drama or movies set in older times, this has everything. Joaquin Phoenix can be a little annoying at times but that's kind of the point of this character. Either way, this is a great dvd.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This is another case of a well prepared advertisement campaign. Weeks before the film entered the cinemas the world was praising the film as something nobody else had ever seen before. Now, there lay exactly the problem. The 1964 version of "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (with Sophia Loren) tells more or less the same story but without all the sound effects available now. Take those Dolby Suround/THX effects and you will have a very dull story. That's why I insist watching The Fall of the Roman Empire might lack some technical quality but it beats The Gladiator in most parts. If you like battle scenes and man-to-man fights you get the right movie. Anything beyond that is an insult.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated and Overhyped
Review: "Gladiator" was the box-office blockbuster of 2000, so you probably should see it if you haven't seen it already, just to be informed. Still, this is a mediocre and vastly overrated film-- both as a would-be epic and as an action film-- and don't let all the hype and hooplah fool you into thinking otherwise. I first saw this movie in the theater when it came out. I was unimpressed. I just rented it again on DVD to find out whether I missed something the first time. If I did, I missed it the second time as well. I still don't think it's a great movie. In fact, I still don't even think it's a *good* movie. In my book, I'd say it's just a bit below mediocre. If I were giving this a grade, I'd say it was a solid C-. In this review, I try to explain why. In the spirit of optimism and fairness, I'll start with what I liked about the movie, before I come to my dislikes. I generally like the first half an hour or so. In fact, I think the opening scene of pre-battle preparation (before the legion's battle with the Germans) is the movie's high point. Even after the battle, there's still a lot of good stuff going on here: good tension and contrast-setting between characters with different values and ambitions (Marcus Aurelius vs. Maximus vs. Commodus). Unfortunately, after the first half an hour, it's all downhill . Largely, I think, this is the fault of the writers. The story, as it is told, is just too implausible-- even within the internal world of the movie. At no point is my disbelief in the contrivedness of the plot ever suspended. The characters' actions seem to make little sense, given their place, position, and the circumstances in which they find themselves. At the same time, the movie's plot is boringly predictable. There are no dramatic surprises, no sudden reversals, and when tension appears, it is usually a brief bubble brought about by some very good acting by Joaquin Phoenix (such as during the "busy little bee" confrontation), doing the best he can with a sub-par script. The plot contrivances that are mixed in along the way rarely rise above the level of cliche-- and many lack any real relevance to the overall story. Take Commodus' incestuous attraction to his sister. It's extraneous and never goes anywhere-- except maybe to reinforce the (already well established) idea that he's a creep. In truth, Commodus, degenerates into a parodic strereotype of a corrupt and decadent tyrant after the scene where he kills his father. All that complex characterization that appeared at the beginning just gets tossed out the window. The same is true for his sister as well. Initially, she's supposed to be a ruthless schemer, a skilled liar, etc., but she degerenates into a naive love interest with so little skill at intrigue that she can't even keep a crucial secret trom her eight-year-old son, or stand up to a few threats by her brother. As for Maximus itself, do we really have any sense of what's motivating him after he gets captured? Is it a desire for vengeance? A sense of duty to Marcus Aurelius? Love for Commodus' sister? Duty to the principles of Rome? Ambition? It certainly doesn't seem like any of those are at work here. To me, it seemed like the only thing really motivating his actions was that the script said he was going to do them... I also have some gripes about the historical aspects of this movie. No, I'm not just talking about little details-- like the fact that swordsmen in the arenas always wore helmets, or that Marcus Aurelius died fighting the Dacians (not the Germans) or even that Commodus' reigned for 12 years rather than six months-- those are just historians' nitpicks. My gripe is the bizarre decision to make Commodus into an wimp with little taste for (or skill in) battle. Far from being the milquetoast wuss that he's been made into here, the historical Commodus grew up in the legion camps with his father and was very much as soldier and commander. He also loved gladiatorial fights, and yes, was even known to participate in them himself in order to increase his popularity with the masses. It seems to me that this would have been something that the makers of this movie would have wanted to *use* rather than to change. Doing so could have made Commodus' decision to go out into the arena at the very end seem believable. It also would have helped to make that final battle into something that was worthy of the name-- an epic struggle between two great warriors. I think it also would have helped illustrate some of the points about modern-day mass political culture that Scott was trying (unsuccessfully) to comment on in the film. I'm not even going to get started on some of the strange unhistorical (and IMHO, largly ideological) representations that were made here to 'sanitize' Roman culture to make it (and Maximus) seem so much nicer and palatable-- such as the decision to present slavery and gladiatorial schools as phenomena of 'foreign' Africa rather than as native Roman institutions), or the fact that when Maximus thinks about his villa in Spain, he imagines it as this pastoral setting with just his wife and children, with no allusion to all of the slaves who would have done the actual work there. All that said, I think I could still forgive all of the faults I allude to above (and many others I'm not bothering to mention) if the combat scenes kicked butt. But, they don't. In fact, the action scenes here are embarassingly awful. At first, I thought the weird and jarring photography during the opening battle (between the Romans and the Germans) was supposed to be an artistic effect to simulate the confused and fragmented experience of battle (like the landing sequence of "Saving Private Ryan"). But, as the same thing cropped up again and again in each gladiatorial combat-- and even in a few scenes involving more mundane action (e.g. Commodus stepping out of a litter)-- I'm convinced that there's just really *bad* editing throughout this. (The worst was during his battle with the Gaul and the tigers.... the action here looks about the same quality you might find on a 1950's sci-fi film... or perhaps more accurately, from some sort of streaming video being viewed on a slow modem connection.) For a movie entitled "Gladiator", you would have at least they could have come up with better combat action than this! I couldn't stand it... In short, this may be a "must-see" movie, but it's also a quite mediocre movie.
Rating:
Summary: hidden footage
Review: A great film and enough has been said about it already, so here's the trick to seeing a hidden section on the 2nd disc showing more about the cut Rhino scene. On the 2nd disk find the cut rhino scene, then when you see the three frame concept art of the rhino fight, select "UP" and the rhino in the middle frame should highlight.. Then press enter and that will take you to the test footage of the computer animated rhino and also the full text of how the fight would have been played out. This works on the R2 ( UK ) disk not sure about R1
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