Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the ailing Roman Republic and its generals. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a ...

Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov
Directed By: Anthony Mann, Stanley Kubrick

A stupendous historical saga, Braveheart won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for star Mel Gibson. He plays William Wallace, a 13th-century Scottish commoner who unites the various clans against a cruel English King, Edward the Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan). The scenes of hand-to-hand combat are brutally violent, but they never glorify the bloodshed. There is such ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, James Robinson, Sean Lawlor, Sandy Nelson
Directed By: Mel Gibson

A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes movie-making back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marvelling at ...

Manufacturer: DreamWorks
Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris
Directed By: Ridley Scott

The Last Samurai gives epic sweep to an intimate story of cultures at a crossroads as Japan undergoes tumultuous transition to a more Westernised society in 1876-77. In America, tormented Civil War veteran Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is coerced by a mercenary officer (Tony Goldwyn) to train the Japanese Emperor's troops in the use of modern weaponry. Opposing this "progress" is a ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, William Atherton, Chad Lindberg
Directed By: Edward Zwick

Manufacturer: Prism Leisure
Starring: Nigel Havers, Frank McRae, Gerry Lopez, Nick Nolte, Marilyn Tokuda
Directed By: John Milius

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Christian Brendel, Hugh Fraser, Sean Bean, Amira Casar, Abigail Cruttenden
Directed By: Tom Clegg

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Daragh O'Malley, James Laurenson, Feodor Atkine, Philip Whitchurch, Cecile Paoli
Directed By: Tom Clegg

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Jeremy Child, Michael Byrne, Tony Haygarth, Pete Postlethwaite, Daragh O'Malley
Directed By: Tom Clegg

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Byrne, Hugh Fraser, Assumpta Serna, Nicholas Jones
Directed By: Tom Clegg

There are many reasons to recommend Troy as a good ol' fashioned Hollywood epic, especially if you've never read Homer's The Iliad. Dispensing with Greek gods altogether, this earnestly massive production (budgeted at upwards of $200 million) will surely offend historians and devoted students of the classics. But there's politics aplenty in the grand-scale war that erupts when Trojan prince ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Julian Glover, Brian Cox
Directed By: Wolfgang Petersen