The film is a coup in Bigelow’s early exploration of men’s love of themselves and one another.
The power of the film is the endurance of an Elvis Presley song (or two), the staying power of a children’s movie, and the sight and sound of a match being struck.
The film was a first sortie for William Peter Blatty’s all-out attack on unbelief in the summer of 1990.
In the summer of 1989, vampirism became instead a symbol of contemporary urban angst.
For many years, I maintained a Top 10 list. It was changing all the time, but by the mid-1980s, I had pretty well nailed it down.
It laughs at its hero, but recognizes that he is a hero nonetheless.
A busier and more densely populated film than either of George Miller’s first two pared-down, souped-up, post-apocalyptic road epics.
Kasdan’s film, containing respectful homages to a lot of the great westerns, is neither the summing up nor the revival that Kasdan wanted it to be.
For Boorman, the motif of environmental spoliation was never the message but the metaphoric medium for his continuing vision of the human being.
An initially naturalistic depiction of late medieval existence quickly becomes a larger-than-life mixing of history and fantasy.
It’s a film that from the first to the last frame never forgets what it’s about, and remains unrelentingly faithful to its theme throughout.
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