Popular reviews

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★½ 6

  Dances With Wolves? More like slow dances with wolves, amirite?

  All right guys, that’s my time! You’ve been a terrific crowd, be sure to tip your waitress and get home safe.

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  Review by Jabba Jabba ★★★★★ 9

  Wow, this does NOT feel like a 3 hour movie. It seriously feels like 2 hours, max.

  The pacing is "slow", but it needs to be, as it pulls us into the landscape, the situations, and the characters before raising the tension. This is a movie that is an experience - it stays with you days later and it makes you think what could have been if we had done things differently when we settled North America. When we finally meet the rest of the American military troop, we are given a look at a people who haven't changed much in the last 150 years. People always joke about how Britain sent their criminals to Australia, but North America wasn't…

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  Review by Sam Meltzer ★½ 63

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  If you are a fan of this movie, at least respect my opinion and don’t comment some long-ass thing saying why its a masterpiece because “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.”

  I really really really wanted to love this. I wanted to say that it was actually good and wasn’t a bad movie to beat Goodfellas and Misery.

  I guess I’m gonna say more than I thought. While I can appreciate this movie from a technical level, like seriously the cinematography, score, editing, and even directing are gorgeous, from a narrative perspective I can’t. I wanna get out a flaw with the movie that I have before I actually disect this movie for its story. It’s been said…

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  Review by CinemaJoe ★★½ 14

  From a technical standpoint, it’s an impressive watch. The panorama of the American plains and all of its majesty is only made more epic by the John Barry score. The world that once was, until it was decimated by hubris.

  Yet, despite having good intentions, it’s narratively misguided and to be frank, dreadfully boring. Is Costner intentionally narrating in the most monotonous tone and cadence? If you’re going to center the story about a white man, at least center it around a white man who can act. 

  Anyways, I see why the world ate this up in 1990. The exploration of white guilt has always been a popular, but more importantly, profitable trope— its 2023 and that certainly hasn’t changed.

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  Review by megan ★★½ 4

  they didn’t even dance with wolves  :((

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★½ 35

  It’s an odd affirmation for the goodness of the world that “Dances With Wolves” is the highest grossing Western of all time. 

  Kevin Costner’s nearly four-hour epic about a Union Army Lieutenant who integrates into a Lakota tribe could easily have been a colossal feat of hubris. It could have been, well, “Heaven’s Gate.” 

  But where “Gate” had perhaps an exuberant excess of pride, “Wolves” is burdened only with too big of a heart. The film all but requires its lengthy run time to hold all the sentiment it possesses. 

  Every aspect of “Wolves” emanates with love. 

  For better or worse, it is a movie that must be called ‘precious.’ Details of production include: the extent to which Costner and…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  I've always enjoyed this as a rousing adventure movie heavy with clunky sentiment and a terrific John Barry score, and for its white movie-star hero abandoning colonialism. It's kind of like AVATAR on the American frontier or something*. The bit where Dunbar symbolically finalizes his friendship with Two-Socks the wolf by getting it to eat out of his hand pretty well sums up both the overriding motif of harmony with nature and the clueless representational politics.

  *these are the jokes you guys.

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  Review by luke? ★½ 2

  Can't fucking believe Kevin Costner won Best Picture for his self-insert Civil War epic fanfiction

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  Review by Lee ★★★★★ 3

  This personally to me is Costner's best film he has ever made.
  He fully deserved the awards he received from releasing the film world wide in 1990.
  The cinematography is absolutely stunning and I was in awe when the extended 4hr cut was being shown at the cinema.
  It might not be everyone's cup of T but it is in my category of top 100 films of all time.

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½ 3

  Dances with Wolves is significant for portraying to a mainstream audience a much more realistic depiction of native Americans than that of the conventional characterisations of the past. It follows wounded Union Army lieutenant John Dunbar whose appointment to the vastness of the western frontier is strengthened by large expansive images of the unspoilt plains of America; disseminating powerful impressions of seclusion and self-sufficiency. Adapted from Michael Blake’s 1988 novel, it documents the spiritual development of Dunbar as he interacts with a group of the Teton Sioux tribe while stationed at Fort Sedgwick in Colorado.

  Directed, produced and starring Kevin Costner and arguably the crowning achievement in his career; going on to obtain seven of its twelve Oscar nominations, including…

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  Review by Wesley Stenzel ★★ 3

  I appreciate that Dances with Wolves attempts to subvert some of the egregious stereotypical depictions of indigenous Americans that Westerns so frequently depict. It’s great that the Sioux are the heroes and the U.S. government is the villain.

  But Dances with Wolves doesn’t really succeed with much else. Director and star Kevin Costner centers himself in this story (which is based on a book and true events) despite being surrounded by talented Native American actors, making this a defining example of the white savior narrative. If that’s not enough to deter you, most of his characterization comes via some of the worst, most aggressively monotone narration that I have ever seen in a movie. 

  Aside from the majestic score, every facet of Dances with Wolves is merely competent and rarely memorable or moving. If you’re really into Westerns or Kevin Costner, then this might be worthwhile, but it’s pretty bland and misguided overall.

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  Review by john ★★★ 4

  Congrats, Mr. Costner. You finally gave me the motivation to make my list.

  this movie had no business being this long.