They don’t make them like this anymore.

It is an oft-repeated and tired saying that glorifies the past and belittles the achievements of the present yet, in the case of David Lean’s sweeping, Lawrence of Arabia, it is entirely true. Whilst epic films are still produced today few can match the scale, artistry and majesty of this larger than life tale of a narcissistic British army officer and his conflicted loyalties during the Arab Revolt. At just shy of four hours, Lean takes the audience on a grand journey that manages to juggle the personal travails and wider issues of an entire nation.

What makes this stand above nearly every other epic is that the film perfectly balances these small…

Today was the day...

...that I finally conquered Lawrence of Arabia.

I'm only 51 years late to the party. How did I manage to miss out on this golden gem of cinema? Well, I honestly couldn't tell you. I've been swept away by other great films throughout the years, I have always been short of time and my backlog grows and grows with every day. It's sad that a monumental film like this got pushed so far back but my mindset was always "I'll watch that soon. I HAVE to watch that soon."

Repeat that for a few years and you get why I'm only just now seeing Lawrence of Arabia here in May of 2013. But I'm glad I…

One of the grandest epics ever produced on film celluloid, Lawrence of Arabia isn't just a film but a journey of a man's life & his love for a nation, and even with its nearly 4 hours of runtime, it manages to keep the viewers completely glued to their seats, thanks to the sheer magic of David Lean's stellar direction, breathtaking cinematography, stunning production design, spectacular score & Peter O'Toole's dominating performance.

Set during the First World War, Lawrence of Arabia follows the life of a controversial British figure named T. E. Lawrence and covers his experiences in the Arab Peninsula where he was sent to investigate the progress of Arab revolt against the Turks but later leads them in winning their…

After erasing The Wizard of Oz from my list of films I was ashamed to have never seen, I decided to move right into another one: Lawrence of Arabia.

I'm almost overwhelmed by how brilliant a picture this is.

So I had a rough weekend. This isn't meant to elicit compassion or well wishes, I'm not on my death bed or anything, but it started with a trip to the emergency room after an infection spread through the entire left side of my face like something out of a horror film. The positive side of this is that for three straight days I have barely moved and essentially watched movies constantly, which is something I always love to do. The…

"For some men, nothing is written unless they write it."

Lawrence of Arabia is a massive, sprawling epic of a movie. You've heard of it before and you know that it's big, but it's impossible to overstate just how gigantic it really is. There's a shot in which a large number of camels appear on screen all at once, and they're each about the size of an ant. I watched this on my 40" HDTV and I could tell there was still a huge abundance of detail I was missing out on. I'm going to run out of synonyms for the word "big" pretty quickly, so just take my word for it. This movie is big. Big big.

But sheer…

**Part of the Best Picture Project**

What is a perfect film?

It really hard to pin it down in specifics what makes a perfect film. It's a whole bunch of things really.

First of all, a perfect film needs a great story. Great stories come in all shapes and sizes. For example, it could be a 4 hour film that paces itself beautifully towards the finish line. A big giant conflict with little beautifully realized subplots that arise and develop the character as he goes on throughout the film to resolve the bigger one by dealing with the smaller ones, until he reaches the end of his journey.

Next, in that narrative, there should be a character that is equally…

An oddity, a miracle of movie history, that this film was even made in the first place. A film with no major stars, a flamboyant lead in a time when that was deeply frowned upon. No major romance. Not a whole lot of action, although it's certainly there. It's four fucking hours. And they filmed the whole thing in a big-ass desert. It's a miracle that somebody was willing to fund it, and we should thank the movie gods that they did.

Despite the length and scope, Lawrence is not a film of complex story, or even a lot of story beats. Could the story have been told in half the time? Maybe. Would it have resulted in the masterpiece…

If this isn't the most well-shot movie of all time, I don't know what is. Good lord, every frame is a work of art. The score is as lush as they come and the screenplay is phenomenal. With four hours of material, nothing in it is expendable. 

Peter O'Toole is perfection in the title role, and it's thrilling to watch the evolution of the character over the course of the film. It blows my mind that he didn't win the Oscar for this, no matter how early in his career it was. The rest of the cast is excellent as well, particularly Omar Sharif. I do wish there were fewer white people in offensive makeup, but I understand that was…