Before he would go on to make such classics as Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and The Shining, Stanley Kubrick was just a hired director, taking over for Anthony Mann by the recommendation of star Kirk Douglas on the big, bloated, but ultimately pretty fun Spartacus. It’s probably the least “Kubrick” kind of movie ever made, as there is very little of his later styles seen in the movie. It’s long, and a little bit sporadic, but there are also moments of greatness, and strange moments where you go, “huh?” A particularly memorable scene involves Spartacus having to battle an African-American man in front of various up-scale voyeurs, who relish in watching two men destroy each other. (It’s basically their version of reality television.) And then there are really bizarre moments, like when Tony Curtis’s character Antoninus is seduced by Marcus Licinius (Laurence Olivier), and we hear dubbed lines from an older Curtis and Anthony Hopkins, of all people, over this extremely homoerotic scene. Apparently it’s a scene that was cut from the original release but retrieved and re-stored for the film’s 30th anniversary. There’s a whole lot of classic Hollywood in this great-looking movie, from the stars to the sets to the cinematography to the music. I’ve always had a soft spot for epics, and this one’s no exception. I thoroughly enjoyed this film.