Julius Caesar (1953)

Julius Caesar can be viewed online at amazon.com.  The script comes directly from Shakespeare.  It was directed by Mankiewicz who also directed Cleopatra, but being in black and white it lacks a lot of the pageantry of the later movie.  It more than makes up for it in substance.  Marlon Brando is hypnotic as Mark Antony, especially in the famous "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" scene.  The patterns on the men's clothing were very innacurate, many or them containg bold geometric designs.  Roman men of this period wore plain fabric with stripes indicateing their rank.  This innacuracy is fogivable however considering that period appropriate clothing would appear especially boring in black and white, with everyone wearing basicly the same outfit.

Cleopatra

Cleopatra (1963) is an orgy of beautiful clothes.  It is available for streaming on Amazon, but I suggest seeing it in the highest definition possible.  The acting is decent, if a bit stage-y, and the plot is interesting, although I feel it loses steam after the Navel battle, even when broken up into two viewings.  As for the accuracy of the costumes, it varies depending on the scene, as Elizabeth Taylor has a new dress on every time you see her.  Some of them look very appropriate and some are more fanciful.  One perfectly good dress was ruined by a visible zipper.  But all together if you have four hours to kill and a high definition television I recommend giving it a look.

Spartacus

We now enter the Roman Republic with Spartacus.  This was yet another movie that I broke up into two viewings.  I did not find Kirk Douglas as Spartacus to be very appealing.  I found myself a lot more interested in Antoninus.  I was completely bored by the Spartacus/Varinia love story/  The costumes were generally pretty accurate.  The climactic fight scene was ridiculous.  It looked a lot more like a medieval battle than a Roman one.  Roman soldiers did not march forward in a single line, and they had a man called an Optio standing behind them who held a big stick so that the soldiers couldn't back up like they did in the movie, where the Optio was completely missing.  Altogether it was pretty entertaining, even if the main character was a jerk who got a lot of people killed unnecessarily.

The 300 Spartans

The 300 Spartans is probably most famous to modern audiences as the movie that inspired Frank Miller to write 300.  But it still holds up as a pretty entertaining film.  I did have several costume related annoyances, which I will now list.  Some of the Persian danceing girls were blonde, and there outfits pretty implausible.  Most of the men were once again wearing too many clothes.  Dureing the scene where the Greeaks are haveing a meeting there were two men in the background who I thought looked distinctly Byzantine.  Some of the male characters were wearing togas.  Overall, the men's clothes looked more Greco-Roman than altogether Greek.

Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans can be viewed in it's entirety here, provided you have a subscription to the right Comcast service.  I'm not going to go into all the ways this movie differs from the Perseus myth, as I would have to recount almost the entire plot.  Also, despite the title, there aren't any Titans in it.  I found this movie to be tolerable, but I started to get bored towards the end.  The acting is pretty terrible.  A lot of the male characters were wearing too much clothes for Greek men, and I noticed that at least one of Andromeda's dresses appeared to have elastic at the neckline.

Masada

Masada is a TV mini-series that aired in 1981.  It was four episodes long and one very hard slog for me.  It pretty much ignores history and turn the Jews into Americans so you know who you are supposed to root for.  There is one particularly narm-y part where the Romans start catapulting Jewish prisoners at the fort.  The best part of the whole movie for me was when my boyfriend came down the stairs, watched a few seconds of the Masadians playing in the water and said, "Nothing enrages Jews like the sound of other Jews having fun."  I thought about placing this movie further down the list since it occurs in the 2nd century C.E., but then I decided I wanted to get all of ancient Israel out of the way at once.  Soon I will be leaving the Jews behind and moving on to Classical Greece.

King David

King David is relatively short for a Bible movie.  The acting was pretty good, and I really like Richard Gere in it.  Especially when he was danceing around in his underwear.