Napoleon

“He came from nothing. He conquered everything.”

Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) claws his way from obscure artillery officer to commander of France's armies, driven by ambition and hunger. His marriage to Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) burns with the same intensity as his campaigns, but she becomes collateral to his conquest. Ridley Scott stages the battles with operatic scale, and by the end the film suggests that a man who cannot stop climbing has nowhere left to stand.