John Boorman is an intoxicated moviemaker, with a wonderful kind of zeal -- a greed to encompass more and more and more in his pictures... I don’t know-of any other director who puts such a burnish on his obsessions.

| Sep 18, 2023

The closer one pays attention to Excalibur, the more frustrating the experience is.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 26, 2023

Excalibur is an embarrassment... it’s the banality of much of the dialogue in Excalibur that’s so depressing.

| Jul 27, 2022

Excalibur can be regarded as a personal epic, a humanizing of mythological figures and on this level the film works superbly, aided by some remarkable performances.

| Jul 27, 2022

Excalibur is full of visual fustian -- flames in the night, mist rising ominously from the ground, bits of klutzy magic. Yet, despite all the rhetoric, the movie never takes off.

| Jun 17, 2022

Although Boorman was not afraid of weighty images, none of his excesses is really excessive. His images reveal an aesthetic of the supernatural that is necessary to the story of Excalibur.

| May 3, 2022

Boorman reveals a wonderfully individual gift for embodying the mystical and the magical.

| Jan 3, 2022

Excalibur is brilliant but ponderous, sincere but overwrought -- a medieval Star Wars foundering somewhere between play and prophecy.

| Jan 3, 2022

Despite its visionary imagery, the movie lacks the archetypal resonance that is a main ingredient of satisfying myth-making... In Excalibur, there's plenty to look at, but nothing to believe in.

| Jan 3, 2022

Excalibur is a miracle of pacing and seductive rhythm.

| Jan 3, 2022

This stilted reenactment of the Arthurian saga finds Boorman evolving into a modernist parody of Cecil B. De Mille, whipping up a kitschy custume spectacle.

| Dec 30, 2021

Some of the more exquisite intellects among us may find it excessive. The rest of us can call it wonderful.

| Dec 30, 2021

The film is held together by Boorman's singular eye -- he and his cameraman, Alex Thomson, are sensitive to the mood of season, to the endless ways light can fall in the forest.

| Dec 30, 2021

Excalibur may not be to everybody's taste, but taste it you can and sense some of the extraordinary completeness of Malory -- the way his world begins more and more to provide lessons for our own.

| Dec 29, 2021

Unfortunately, it seems this film has been made by two people. An important talent who has created memorable backgrounds and costumes. And a story hack, with little idea of how to handle pace, dialogue, and actors.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 29, 2021

Excalibur is so visually entrancing that it is possible, quite often, to ignore its huge flaws as myth and drama. It is entertainment designed for people to whom movies are no more than moving pictures.

| Dec 29, 2021

While Boorman's wide-ranging selection of stories makes sense, his switches in mood and style do not. Mockery and gore seem too closely inter-spliced for either to be effective.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 29, 2021

The film slows a bit too much, but most of the time, the glorious figures of those legendary days are, as they should be, larger than life. Excalibur is a fascinating film, rich in detail and highly enjoyable.

| Dec 29, 2021

The film dazzles and scintillates on-screen, marrying the magic spells of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur with the equally spellbinding cinematography of Alex Thomson to retell these beloved tales from the Dark Ages in a manner most modern.

| Dec 29, 2021

Part Star Wars, part Monty Python, the film adds up to a whole sharper than its point. On any battleground, Excalibur is a stainless steel stunner.

| Dec 29, 2021