Not your average sword-and-sandal epic. The study of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), a scientific genius in the fourth century A.D., who taught with her father in the Library of Alexandria, which hoped to collect all the world's knowledge. She is so absorbed by her ideas that she fails to foresee the rising tension between pagans and Christians, which ends with Christians destroying the library. Hypatia was a real person. Weisz and director Alejandro Amenabar show her as an idealist not wary enough of real-world passions. -  Three stars