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

NASA's worst nightmare turned into one of the space agency's most heroic moments in 1970, when the Apollo 13 crew was forced to hobble home in a disabled capsule after an explosion seriously damaged the moon-bound spacecraft. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton play (respectively) astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise in director Ron Howard's intense, painstakingly authentic ...

Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Starring: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris
Directed By: Ron Howard

The satirical sensibilities of writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) were ideally matched in this Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Shaffer's hit play about the rivalry between two composers in the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II--official royal composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), and the younger but superior prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice, Simon Callow
Directed By: Milos Forman

The biggest (and arguably the best) from Hollywood's Golden Age of Epic, Ben-Hur cost a staggering 15 million dollars in 1959 and was one of the largest film productions ever undertaken: the Circus Maximus set alone, constructed for the climactic chariot race, covered 18 acres and was filled with 40,000 tons of Mediterranean sand. Fittingly the movie scooped an unprecedented 11 Academy ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Herman Rottger, William S. Hart
Directed By: Frank Oakes Rose, Frank Rose, H. Temple, Harry T. Morey, Sidney Olcott

A heartfelt epic from Irish director Neal Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire), Michael Collins is the biography of the charismatic and controversial Irish rebel leader who led the fight for independence from Britain. Among the most beautiful and atmospherically photographed movies of the 1990s, Michael Collins is also a rich and intelligent study of the ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, Ian Hart, Richard Ingram
Directed By: Neil Jordan

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

Manufacturer: Sunflower Pictures

One of the big Elizabethan-era films of 1998, Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth serves up a brimming goblet of religious tension, political conspiracy, sex, violence and war. England in 1554 is in financial and religious turmoil as the ailing Queen "Bloody" Mary attempts to restore Catholicism as the national faith. She has no heir, and her greatest fear--that her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth ...

Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough
Directed By: Shekhar Kapur

Manufacturer: Starz Home Entertainment
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Irene Papas, Michael Ansara, Johnny Sekka, Michael Forest
Directed By: Moustapha Akkad

Manufacturer: GT Media
Starring: Harry Allen, Guy Bellis, Lionel Braham, E.E. Clive, Clyde Cook