The Austin Film Society’s latest Essential Cinema series – the magnificently monikered “The Epic Kink of Cecil B. DeMille” – continues with this 1934 spectacular. Elizabeth Taylor’s version of the titular Egyptian queen is the more enduring one in the popular imagination, but Claudette Colbert’s take is more playful, decked out in a proto-Princess Leia bikini top and other swoon inducers that get straight to the heart of what makes this excitable tale of romantic and political intrigue so fun: It’s opulent, horny, and hugely ambitious. – Kimberley Jones
Sept. 16 & 20
