The best Best Picture winner so far of the 21st century

Rating: 10/10 (6 February 2017)

When I invest in watching a movie, I want my money's worth and my time's worth. I give the directors and actors a fair shot, a benefit of the doubt even in those I'm skeptical of, and I want them to pull me in. I want them to astonish me. Take me into a world I don't know, and make it hit hard. Move my emotions.
Give me scenery, a stage of an ancient world, and perfect it so that I feel like I'm there. Then, give me a hero and a villain, give me an arc of the hero, and let me know their soul. Entertain me, but keep it smart.
As fictional as a world may be, or as fictional as a story may be based on a real world in this case, make the characters' motives and emotions as real, raw, relatable, and justified as in modern times, or any time for that matter, and make them believable through great acting. Suck me in to this world, and keep me engaged. Make me feel like I'm watching a great movie, deliver the drama and climaxes.
Gladiator is 100% pure movie. It's a spectacle. It gives you just about everything you can ask for in a film experience. It's a modern epic woven together in a way few films of the century have been.
"Are you not entertained?" Maximus yells to the audience. Thanks, we are. This is a real movie. It's the best Best Picture winner of the 21st Century so far.
Only negative is: I just wished it had a better ending, but I've learned to accept it through the years.
Recommendation: It gets better on multiple watches. First time, the action and spectacle can be so overpowering that some stuff in language is missed, but multiple views reveal it to be classic status.
10/10