Forever known (and, in some circles, vilified) as The Movie That Beat GoodFellas For The Best Picture Oscar, Costner’s commercial and critical smash has seen its reputation diminish over the years -- an unfortunate development for a truly exemplary film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 10, 2024

An exquisitely shot Western epic with majestic landscapes detailing the crimes against indigenous people and the final years of the American West.

| Jun 14, 2023

Dances With Wolves is Costner's crossroads. Amazingly, he emerges from it a better actor and an extremely good director.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 8, 2022

How much easier if the movie were crummy and could be dismissed. But, damn its smarmy soul, it's beautifully watchable, a return to the visual vernacular of the western epic and all its old-fashioned scenic values.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2022

Magnificent. It's the only word to describe Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. An epic in the grand tradition, it is a movie of breathtaking sweep and noble aims, and the story it tells is at once stirring and heartfelt.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 8, 2022

This epic was made by a bland megalomaniac (The Indians should have named him "Plays with Camera"). You look at that untroubled face and know he can make everything lightweight.

| Nov 8, 2022

[Kevin Costner] is winning too much puff press for "risking" his stardom. Washed in John Barry's symphonic syrup (close your eyes and you see Out of Africa), the film basks in the comfy, 1-2-3 storytelling that once ruled Hollywood.

| Nov 8, 2022

At times, Dances with Wolves comes dangerously close to becoming a stodgy historical drama. And yet, deftly inserted humor and strategically placed heart-tugs keep Dances with Wolves in step. It's a bravura piece of [David] Lean filmmaking.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2022

Even with its flaws, Dances With Wolves is cause for celebration, a haunting elegy to the end of the Great Plains wilderness.

| Nov 8, 2022

It's difficult for any actor to direct himself effectively. It's amazing when someone does it in an epic that turns out as fine as this tale of the Old West.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 8, 2022

Dances with Wolves is a flawed but stunning film and a remarkable debut for first-time director Costner.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2022

Dances With Wolves is an audacious personal film, done big and done right. Somewhere John Ford must be nodding his approval.

| Nov 8, 2022

Costner, always an underrated, charismatic actor, deserves his due: He set out to make a movie about an America long gone and American wounds too long forgotten. He has succeeded, grandly and gracefully.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2022

The story has comfortable familiarity, like a once-heard fairy tale unfolding as we expect and desire. Yet Costner's direction makes it fresh.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 7, 2022

Beginning with [a] kind of comically earnest freshness, Dances with Wolves stretches into an engaging, noble, epic vision worthy of filling a screen so wide it seems to literally sweep from sea to shining sea.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 7, 2022

It is a personal story played out in a wide-open setting. It has stunning action (especially a breathtaking buffalo hunt) and moments of serenity. But the one thing that sets this frontier story apart from the norm is its dignity.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 7, 2022

Dances With Wolves is the first truly great film of the decade, the kind of film that will stand the test of time. It stirs the senses in both its beauty and brutality.

| Nov 7, 2022

Whatever its flaws, however, this is a grand and caring film that every lover of the medium should see. It is admirable for many reasons including the madness of its conception and execution.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 7, 2022

The cynic in everyone wants to dig in its heels and stubbornly resist. But on a purely emotional level, Costner’s directing debut is extremely satisfying.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 7, 2022

Dances With Wolves takes a politically adventurous stance without being preachy, and packs a tremendous emotional punch besides.

| Nov 7, 2022