Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar is murdered, she redirects her attentions to his general, Marc Antony, who vows to take power—but Caesar’s successor has other plans.
Cleopatra (1963) is a lavish epic renowned above all for its extraordinary production design and widescreen cinematography — the sets, costumes, and visual grandeur are genuinely exceptional, earning a 4 in Cinematography. The plot, while covering the sweeping historical drama of Caesar, Cleopatra, and Antony, is overlong and uneven across its four-hour runtime, landing at a solid 3. Acting is watchable and occasionally electric (Taylor and Burton's chemistry is real) but uneven enough to sit at 3. The film occupies a distinctive place in Hollywood history as the most expensive film ever made at the time, but it follows a fairly conventional epic-biography structure without radical reinvention, keeping Novelty at 3. The ending, faithful to the tragic historical conclusion, is suitably dramatic but not transcendent, rating a 3.