Simon's Movie Reviews

Spartacus (1960) is an interesting movie in Stanley Kubrick's filmography because it doesn’t really feel like a Stanley Kubrick movie. I don’t exactly know why, but his signature style doesn’t seem to be present unlike in classics such as The Shining , A Clockwork Orange , or Dr. Strangelove. It does however feel like one of those big sword-and-sandals epics in which you have British thespians acting as Roman politicians with the occasional big battle sequence. In that respect it is spectacular and features Kirk Douglas at his best as the titular hero. The story of the rebel slave Spartacus has inspired a bloody and sexy TV series (so far unseen by me, but I hear it’s great) and the story behind how it was made is one of those cases of life imitating art. The Bryan Cranston film Trumbo tells how screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s for his communist beliefs and had to rebel against the system by writing screenplays for cheap movies under ...

Paths of Glory (1957), one of the many great films by the iconic Stanley Kubrick, is somewhat of a lesser-known entry in his filmmography, but in a way it is as violent as Full Metal Jacket (1987). Due to its portrayal of the French military it was not shown in France until 1975, which is unfair since the actions depicted could have been those of any army that fought in World War I. Wars are generally insane, but that particular war holds a special place in the pantheon of madness for employing trench warfare, which effectively turned battlefields into killing fields for all soldiers. As it is one of the few movies to portray historical events in a boldly accurate way, despite having American actors play French characters, I got to see Paths of Glory in a high school history class during my last year in Chile in 2002. I had a pretty good teacher who held an interesting debate after the end credits to see which officer was most at fault. It is a conversation that could yield a ...