If given the choice, this would not be the entry of the Chinese government, which immediately banned this depiction of one family beaten down by two horrible decades of Chinese history.
Category Archives: Epics
LAGAAN (2001)
This is a 4-hour Bollywood musical about cricket, which for some of readers may inexplicably not be enough to sell you on this movie, but maybe give it a chance.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
The last of the 2007 AFI Top 100 for us to cover is also an all-time favorite of mine. All of my dogs are named after its characters. But how to parse whether one of the parts of what is basically one long three-part movie is one of the best films of all time on its own?
DUNE (1984)
The first film version of Frank Herbert’s best-selling sci-fi novel was directed by David Lynch, of all people, and I found it both extremely watchable and an astounding disaster.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984)
A nearly four-hour period gangster movie that represented the culmination of director Sergio Leone’s career. It is also a super weird movie.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1944)
A historical epic filmed in Russia during World War II with an unlimited budget, but Stalin found himself regretting the end result.
BARRY LYNDON (1975)
Stanley Kubrick’s period epic tells the life story of a 1700s rogue with spectacular visuals and a maximum of emotional detachment.
EXCALIBUR (1981)
With King Arthur back in theaters, we revisit this tonally wild epic 1980s masterpiece (??) for the Arthurian completist.
GIANT (1956)
This sweeping story of a huge Texas cattle ranch over several decades lives up to its name, but I think falls short of its clear ambition to be “Gone With the Wind, but as a Western.”
SOLARIS (1972)
A heavily influential Soviet sci-fi epic that takes a lot of patience from the viewer to get to its basic message: no matter how far we go, we’ll never be able to escape our own humanity.
Movie Valhalla 