Ridley Scott. Ridley. Fucking. Scott.

I mean just look at all the crazy shit he's covered in his career. I am beyond impressed with his body of work, and he definitely wows me in many ways with his latest, "Exodus: Gods and Kings".

I can't tell you how incredible the shots in this movie are. The battle scenes are some of the best I've ever seen. EXTRAORDINARY. They were so good that I wanted all of them to last longer. UGH every jaw-dropping shot was cut away from so quickly to another jaw-dropping shot, to another jaw-dropping shot, etc. that I had no time to really appreciate them as much as I wanted :/

I'm so glad epics are still being made. "Exodus" has the look of an epic, the feel of an epic.... but not the great fullness or depth that all great epics have.

As a viewer of the film, you are basically chucked into this world. Some expositional stuff is covered quickly. Two brothers. They're together but they will eventually grow to go against each other. Good, that's all we need to know.

You're then told to like this guy, Moses, played as well as he could have been played, by Christian Bale. Now my problem was I never REALLY cared about Moses. But nonetheless, he is what the film is about so you have to go with him.

Then basically what follows is a visually wondrous, larger than life film. A lot of cool stuff happens that as a whole isn't entirely captivating due to a choppy story and the fact that these characters haven't been built and rounded like I would have liked them to be.

But nevertheless, I was consistently riveted by "Exodus". It's performances are all great AND my jaw literally dropped to its lowest level a bunch of times, so I'll give it that. It's really that awesome.

But the best epics are ones like "Lawrence of Arabia", where not only are they spectacular to see, but even more riveting to feel.

p.s. There was once a rumor that Exodus was 3 hours and 20 minutes. It is not. It is around 2 hours and 20 minutes long. However... in my mind it may have been better if they split the difference, made it 2:50, and given us a little bit of a better story.