Twelve Films At Christmas: 12

A good old-fashioned epic to finish us off this Yuletide. The Fall of the Roman Empire bankrupted its producer Samuel Bronston by all accounts, which is a pity because it's actually not bad. Conceived and delivered on the grand scale, it is rather intelligent in its fanciful treatment of the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. A thinking man's Cleopatra perhaps. And if there is no Elizabeth Taylor to distract us there is instead Sophia Loren, my liking for whom the Groupie can never understand - I know what I like and I like what I bloody well know. 6.5/10.