This film, as with all, has good points and bad points.

In general, I feel that the good ones far outweigh the bad.

The film simply gives the story of the rise and death of Emperor Caligula in a very straight-forward manner. Indeed, it can be seen as shocking, but I think that this is a side-effect of it's desire to be realistic, rather than a deliberate act on the part of the film-makers.

The cinematography and camera work is awful. The huge sets seem at times almost claustrophobic which is an absolute crime considering the magnificence of them. There is also too much emphasis on Caligula himself, to the detriment of revealing some important traits in other characters, making them seem somewhat shallow at times.

The sex scenes are very well placed within the context of the film. I thought that only two scenes stood out as being unnecessarily overt, but for the most part, the explicitness is on the fringe of the focus of each scene, while also playing a major part in the atmosphere.

Never once did I feel that any dialogue was out of place, nor did the acting strike me as being bad.

By far the biggest problem with this film is the fact that the sexual content is widely advertised and therefore anticipated before viewing. This may cause people to focus dominantly on those scenes without really looking at the film as a whole. For me, it enhanced the film. Not in a particularly titillating way, but in the fact that there was no compromise during scenes of sexual acts. Roman orgies are regarded to have been extremely opulent and promiscuous - I found it refreshing to see one as it may have actually been rather than lots of fully-clothed laughing fat men pouring red wine over their faces and eating grapes while draped with female automatons.

In summary, Caligula definitely has it's place in film history due to it's controversy, but if you look beyond that controversy, you should find a rather good film which neatly tells the story of how power can turn someone into a madman.

This film is one of the most influential films I have ever watched. It reaches out to you - and you are touched by it. No matter what little sub-culture you were shifted into whilst going through the trials and tribulations of Secondary school you could relate to it.

It may have been clich

Imagine a story where super heroes are not always the good guys, and where they could be just as vicious and cruel as many of the villains they fight. This story would be very similar to the film Watchmen. Watchmen is a film that deviates from the average super hero story by making its heroes more human and much darker than the average super heroes. Actually, Watchmen seemed to be more of a murder mystery than a super hero movie to me. The murder mystery aspect of the movie makes it extremely interesting to watch and view.

Watchmen starts off when a "hero" by the name of the Comedian is killed. After the murder a masked hero by the name of Rorschach, who wears a mask of constantly shifting ink blots, begins to investigate and comes up with a theory that someone is killing off masked heroes. To not spoil the movie, the rest of the movie consists of Rorschach and the other heroes trying to find out who is trying to kill off the heroes and what is actually going on.

Since Watchmen is essentially a murder mystery with super heroes thrown in, it is somewhat hard to compare it fully to other movies. Watchmen is definitely unique and is in a league of its own, and does a great job at keeping the viewer interested. The story is full of surprises, twists, and suspense.

The Watchmen film does a great job at staying true to the graphic novel that it is based off of. While most film adaptations of novels take many liberties with the stories and characters, Watchmen takes care to stay true, for the most part, to the graphic novel. The only real liberties taken, aside from a plot twist at the end, were to make one or two of the characters' costumes more frightening. This can be seen when comparing the costume worn by the Night Owl between the graphic novel and the movie. Surprisingly, the film still holds many of the dark themes that the graphic novel does. Both stories explore the darker side of humanity and its effects on the heroes. This can easily be seen with what happens to Rorschach, and what events make him become a violent and brutal vigilante. The event is hard to watch and very sad, but the film does a excellent job at portraying it.

The heroes in the movie are not really all that "super," as in only one, Doctor Manhattan, actually has super powers. The rest of the heroes are just regular people who are adept at fighting and dress up in costumes. Doctor Manhattan is the exception to this because he was granted super powers because of a freak science accident. Also, as stated previously, the heroes are not portrayed as having to be "good guys." For example, in one scene the Comedian is in a bar along with Doctor Manhattan in Vietnam, after the Vietnam War is over, when a pregnant Vietnamese girl walks in and tells him that she has his baby. He states, "I'm leaving. I'm going to forget about you and your horrible sweaty little piece of sh*t country." He then proceeds to tell the girl to leave, but she just stays. Then the pregnant girl breaks a bottle and slashes the Comedian across the face in anger. The Comedian immediately pulls out his gun and shoots her until she is dead. Doctor Manhattan, standing right next to him, asks her why he shot the girl who is pregnant with his baby. The Comedian answers, "You watched me. You could have turned the gun into steam, the bullets into mercury