I have so many movies and shows that if you found out I hadn’t seen them, you would go “WHAT”
Until a few days ago, one of them was Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s Best Picture-winning Dad Movie. A long time ago, I got my dad the DVD for Father’s Day or his birthday, but I never watched it myself.
But I got an assignment to review the upcoming gladiator drama series Those About to Die, so I figured I needed to familiarize myself with the most important piece of gladiator art of my lifetime — and honestly, one of the most pivotal Dad Movies in all of cinema.
Gladiator is a movie about a Spanish dad who wants to quit his high-pressure job to spend more time with his family. But his boss won’t let him because he’s just too dang good at it. He’s so good, in fact, that his boss wants him to take over the family business instead of his own son, who’s too much of a weird, sister-horny crybaby. Then the boss is murdered by the son, and the Spaniard gets fired and his family gets murdered. So the Spaniard embarks on a quest to get revenge and either finish the job his boss hired him to do, or die and join his family in the afterlife. It’s a win-win, really.
Gladiator has everything a dad could want in a movie. Mostly, that’s Russell Crowe delivering simple, declarative statements in the most authoritative way possible. Lines that have inspired a million dumb-guy motivational Instagram posts: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” “Strength and honor.” “I'm the greatest actor in the world and I can make even shit sound good.” These are things dads can say to their sons, or to AYSO soccer teams they coach.
Russell Crowe was on an incredible run there for a while. He got three Best Actor nominations in a row and won for Gladiator. But, as Slate’s Dan Kois notes in a fun retrospective of Crowe’s career from last year, his stardom declined as Hollywood stopped making the kind of movies he starred in, and he didn’t do enough press to remind people why they like him. He’s still good in the movies he does now — I liked The Pope’s Exorcist, in which he plays a Vespa-riding Italian priest — and his media appearances are charming. When he recently talked about how he doesn’t like what they’re doing with Gladiator II, he did it with a mischievous little half-smile that made me like him. He seems like a guy who has mellowed out as he’s aged, and accepts his humbler place in the world with grace.
I don’t have much say about Gladiator that hasn’t already been said. It’s a really good movie and an even better Dad Movie. It’s probably somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of Best Picture winner rankings. The fact that it was the second-highest grossing movie of 2000 is some real “we used to be a proper country” shit. I’m now anticipating the sequel, which won’t be the second-highest-grossing movie of 2024 and is more likely to be bad than good. But it has Denzel Washington, so it will be watchable at bare minimum.
In conclusion, I’m glad I wasn’t alive during the time of the Roman Empire. Roman society was decadent and depraved, and I’m happy it collapsed. America is on its own Roman trajectory, but at least as a society we don’t kill tigers for entertainment.
Papa Bear
The Bear is not a Dad Show, it’s an Everybody Show. I won’t be writing a full entry about it partially for that reason, but also because I don’t like it very much. I think it gets overrated because it’s the only creatively ambitious dramedy that’s actually popular, and people are so starved for anything that feels even a little bit real.
The Bear is a good show, and I’m grateful that it exists. It’s the only show on TV right now that reminds me of Mad Men, in that it’s set in the real world with emotionally authentic characters and doesn’t have some kind of plot hook where they’re trying to solve a murder or whatever. It’s a workplace sitcom that’s shot like a Scorsese movie and has an unusually intense lead performance.
But the things that differentiate it make it seem better than it is.
There is so much about The Bear that tries too hard and rarely succeeds. I respect it for trying things like the impressionistic trip through Carmy’s memories that opens Season 3, but I don’t necessarily enjoy watching it when it goes on for an entire episode. A lot of things in Season 3 go on for too long, which is a very common affliction for shows whose success grants their creators the freedom to not edit.
People yelling “fuck you” at each other for five minutes straight with slight variations in phrasing and inflection isn’t comedy, it’s an acting exercise.
The Faks are annoying. The standalone episodes are overindulgent. The repetitive dialogue is cool when Scorsese does it, but The Bear isn’t Scorsese. Here it’s like the writers and actors get stuck on ideas that weren’t that cool the first time they said or did them. I never want to hear the word “haunt” again. I’m glad they dropped Carmy and Sydney’s corny chest-rub thing in Season 3.
The only time the show goes from good to great is when things are going wrong in the restaurant. That’s the stress that only The Bear can provide.
Great review!