Watch Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey. Known for his ambitious filmmaking with practical effects and IMAX cameras, Nolan promises a grand retelling of Odysseus's ten-year journey home after the Trojan War. The film features a star-studded cast and is expected to be a cinematic spectacle.
Watch the epic science fiction film Dune, based on Frank Herbert's novel.
Nolan's emotional voyage through space and time (2014).
Peter Jackson's Middle-earth trilogy, ideally the extended editions.
Lynch's 1984 adaptation and Villeneuve's two parts of the same first novel.
Paul rides the worm and takes the Fremen south; the half that pays off.
Villeneuve's Arrakis: the ornithopters, the Sardaukar chant and half the book.
Watch Spartacus, the 1960 epic historical drama directed by Stanley Kubrick (the film is often incorrectly attributed to David Lynch; it stars Kirk Douglas as the Thracian gladiator who leads a slave revolt against the Roman Republic). The film is famous for its massive battle scenes, the iconic 'I am Spartacus' sequence, and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (a blacklisted writer who received credit, helping break the Hollywood blacklist).
The Iliad as a summer blockbuster, with Pitt as an Achilles who fights like a dancer.
One accusation told three ways, ending in the last judicial duel France allowed.
Moses against Ramesses, with the ten plagues staged as natural disasters.
Lucius comes back to the arena twenty years on, with rhinos and a sea battle in the Colosseum.
Columbus crosses, then governs badly; the Vangelis theme outlived the film by decades.
Austerlitz and Waterloo hung on a marriage; Phoenix plays him as a sulk.
A blacksmith becomes a knight and holds Jerusalem against Saladin; watch the director’s cut, not the release.
The flood as an environmental epic with rock angels; Russell Crowe builds the ark.
Fifty years of Yugoslavia in a cellar with a brass band; Kusturica's second Palme d'Or.
Five hours of a coal-mafia feud across three generations; Anurag Kashyap's Godfather.
A man raised in a village discovers he is the heir of a kingdom; Indian cinema at its most enormous.
A family through forty years of Chinese history, from the civil war to the Cultural Revolution.
A village woman raises her sons through famine and debt; the Indian epic of 1957.
Jet Li tells the King of Qin three versions of a story, each in a different colour.
Adrien Brody as a Hungarian architect in postwar Pennsylvania, in VistaVision with an intermission.
Two revolutionaries in 1920s India, a tiger, a motorbike and "Naatu Naatu"; Tollywood at full scale.
Six stories across five centuries with the same actors; the Wachowskis and Tykwer's huge gamble.
Pandora, the Na'vi and the 3D film that became the highest-grossing ever.
Two Peking opera stars across fifty years of Chinese history; the only Chinese Palme d'Or.
Burt Lancaster as a Sicilian prince watching his world end, and Visconti's hour-long ball.
Lean's Russian Revolution romance, the ice palace and "Lara's Theme".
Leone's four-hour Jewish gangster epic across fifty years of New York.
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