Excalibur (1981)

This John Boorman film delivers a terrific end result full of energy and mysticism. It includes all the key Arthurian elements and stands out for its glorious photography and epic drama, while emphasizing blood, guts and magic over sentimentality.

The critic calls the film exquisite, a near-perfect blend of action, romance, fantasy and philosophy that is finely acted and beautifully filmed. A somewhat extended Grail quest sequence is noted as a minor fault.

The piece praises the film's ambitious scope in covering Arthurian legend with mythic depth drawn from Jung and other sources, resulting in a cohesive and appropriately grand work. It highlights how graphic violence and nudity are integrated without feeling gratuitous.

The film is a wondrous but messy vision of Arthurian legend, a triumph of production design and visuals that nonetheless lacks a clear story line and consistent character behavior.

The critic calls Excalibur a staggering achievement of bloated artifice that dismantles the Arthur legend one invigorating aesthetic swipe at a time. They single out Boorman’s hallucinatory visual approach, linking processes of nature to human moods through stylized melodrama and overdone representations of magic and sex.

The critic praises the film's crazy integrity as a serious, R-rated fairy tale soaked in Jung and scored to Orff and Wagner, with a stubborn discipline in its visual style. She singles out its raging battles, balls of flame, and refusal to linger on beautiful images as elements that give it genuine storm-like energy.

The critic finds the film a big, solemn, grandiose retelling of the Arthurian legends that is pretentious and obscures its vision. He singles out the performances of Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgana for praise amid an otherwise uninhabited story.

The review finds the film a visually impressive but muddled and uneven adaptation of Malory that is overlong, incoherent and ultimately a misguided folly. It singles out the film's inability to sway the emotions despite its audacity and bizarre characterisation.

The critic hails it as the only good King Arthur movie, praising its ambitious, bizarre, and visually stunning take on the myth that captures its grandeur and cult classic status.

The critic praises the film's epic scale and visual imagination as doing justice to the Arthurian legend in a way no other version has, highlighting its thundering battles, passionate romance, and mythic atmosphere. They single out Nicol Williamson's unforgettable performance as Merlin and Helen Mirren's strong turn as Morgana for particular praise, while noting some weaknesses in the central casting.

The critic praises Boorman's stylized and strange take on the King Arthur legend, highlighting its visual style, performances especially Nicol Williamson as Merlin, and its deeper thematic elements about civilization and magic. It stands out among fantasy films of the era despite production challenges.

The piece celebrates the film as a bold, ambitious milestone in fantasy cinema, underscoring its uncompromising vision and powerful cinematography that bridges cinema and myth, despite some disjointed elements.