One Paragraph Movie Review: Ben Hur

Thirty-fourth film: the 1959 Charlton Heston version of Ben-Hur. I honestly didn’t realise this was a god-related movie, but there you are — intermittent Jesus cameos in between scenes of sweaty men rowing, sweaty men massaging oily men, and sweaty men thrashing their horses. Charlton Heston is a brooding blonde Jew towering above shorter, brunette Jews, bitching about Romans, and breezing straight past most of the absolutely blatant gay subtext. I hear some horses died, and I tell you what — they died slowly and for nothing. One tedious below-deck arm-stump out of five.