Dances with Wolves 1990

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: This is a big picture in love with our landscape as much as with the Sioux Indians who inhabit it. Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: The important issues raised by the film- centered on the cultural, racial and moral struggle that took place on the American frontier-are glossed over in favor of a juvenile fantasy of male bonding around the campfire. Read more

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times: Dances With Wolves is a clear-eyed vision. Authentic as an Edward Curtis photograph, lyrical as a George Catlin oil or a Karl Bodmer landscape, this is a film with a pure ring to it. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: A slow-moving but well-acted western. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: This collective array of talent has yielded a western that is at once original and traditional. Dances With Wolves looks back to the masterworks of the past and, with its relevance to our present, it deserves to be ranked with them. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Its triumph is that it is never exactly boring, only dulled. It's a movie in acute need of sharpening. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Sincere, capable, at times moving, but overextended, this picture is seriously hampered by its tendency to linger over everything -- especially landscapes with silhouetted figures, and not excluding its own good intentions. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: [A] beautiful and soft-headed frontier epic, which looks at Native Americans through New Age-colored glasses. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It's a rousing adventure, a touching romance, and a stirring drama. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A simple story, magnificently told. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Costner tells a personal story that never loses touch with the vast Western spaces encompassing and defining it. Dances With Wolves is an epic that breathes. And it's a beauty. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: As a director, Costner is alive to the sweep of the country and the expansive spirit of the western-movie tradition. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Once you're sucked into the leisurely narrative, it's hard to resist. Read more

Amy Dawes, Variety: In his directorial debut, Kevin Costner brings a rare degree of grace and feeling to this elegiac tale. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: A stunning combination of all-American boyishness and sweeping grandeur. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Costner (with Michael Blake's screenplay) creates a vision so childlike, so willfully romantic, it's hard to put up a fight. Read more