I haven’t mentioned Mel Gibson’s new film Apocalypto thus far because I haven’t really known what to say about it.

Gibson’s latest is another non-English-language film. Apocalypto takes place about 600 years ago during the decline of the Maya, as the Spanish were about to conquer them. The Maya, as we’ve mentioned here before, were famous for their ceremonial headdresses, their pyramids and especially their calendars.

By most reports, Apocalypto is a beautifully made, brutal film. A pair of recent reviews on Ain’t It Cool News disagree about its quality; one calls it out as one of the best recent films; the other review describes some of its motifs as cliched heavy-handed.
(more…)