Braveheart (1995)

  Remember Braveheart, you guys?  I hadn't seen this movie in forever!  This came out just as I was about to go into high school and my friend Kristen and I were in loooooove with Sophie Marceau's costumes.  Ah, nostalgia.

Having been orphaned at a young age and raised by his uncle Argyle (Brian Cox), William Wallace (Mel Gibson) wants nothing more than to marry his childhood sweetheart Murron (Catherine McCormack) and be a farmer.  Unfortunately, he lives in 13th Century Scotland, which is oppressively ruled by the King of England, Edward the Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan).  After Murron is killed, Wallace becomes an outlaw and a rallying point for all the other frustrated Scots.  The Scottish nobles are much more reluctant, but they follow Robert the Bruce's (Angus Macfayden) lead.  Faced with mounting problems abroad, an ineffectual heir (Peter Hanly), and a full-blown insurrection in Scotland, Longshanks dispatches his son's beautiful French wife (Sophie Marceau) to try and negotiate.

This is a historical epic if there ever was one:  hugely dramatic monologues, crashing battle scenes, sweeping bagpipe score, not one but two tragic love stories, dastardly villains, and a tortured hero with his loveable sidekicks (Brendan Gleeson and David O'Hara).  At least one of those things should interest you.  If not, then you're probably an alien and you should pretend to be interested or you'll blow your cover.

You should probably have seen this already.  It's good to dust it off every once and a while, though, and remind yourself of a time when Mel Gibson wasn't just a crazy drunk anti-Semite misogynist.