The film doesn’t deliver much in the way of surprises, but it’s more honest than it might initially seem.
Criterion’s 4K Blu-ray offers a beautiful transfer of Ettore Scola’s long unavailable gem.
Like Nine, and like Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear, this dud coasts entirely on the reputations of its participants.
Nine is a passionless production by a creatively blocked director.
The film has always been unfairly overshadowed by its more popular predecessor, El Cid.
The HBO series may have orgies on its side, but Mann’s underappreciated epic goes deeper and darker into the fall of Rome.
Tough, lean and spare, The Fall of the Roman Empire was an epic swords and sandals picture coming fast on the heels of Ben-Hur and Cleopatra.
To say that El Cid is the most intelligent of the elephantine epics of the early ’60s is to damn it with faint praise.
A deluxe DVD package to match the grandeur of Mann’s admirable epic.