Dances with Wolves

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointting statement
Review: When you watch the run of the arrow of Samuel Fuller, you'll know why this a adaptation of that one, but without its force.
I didn't have notice of Fuller's movie till I read a long interview in 1996 in a Spanish magazine called Nosferatu, in which Mr. Fuller complainted around the special fact that Dances was a light reading of the run of the arrow.
But we know what happened with Samuel Fuller.
I think Mr. Costner who undoubtly is very original with the use of the camera, seems to carry by the safe road of a tearful movie, in a clear searching of touching the soul and heart of the viewer. The excess of romanticism about an outlaw who decides to rebel against the rules.
There're too many elemental situations close to cliché, the story is too predictable than you'll be wondering why this movie won so many Academy awards if you compare with deepest and ambicious films , like The searchers, The naked spur, Ride the high country, Rio bravo, The man of the west, The life and times of judge Roy Bean, Sundance kid, Johnny guitar, The treasure of Sierra Madre, The wild bunch, The ballad of cable Hogue, Once upon a time in the west, or Tombstone (the best western in the last decade) to mention just a few.
Don't forget that the western is the mithology of the american cinema. So having this statement in mind, it`s difficult conciliate the anti-hero figure and accept it like political correct.
Thanks God that Mr. Costner thought a lot about that point and with his new film Open Range, he inscribed this film as the best western in this new century. I'm very glad about that. Because like Robert Refford and Clint Eastwood, Costner will be better remembered as director instead a standard actor And don't surprise if this new film is not so recognized like Dances, because it's too hard that another western be prized again by the Academy. It would be a record, considering that the Unforgiven won an Oscar by the best picture in 1992.
The fact that four films like Dances with wolves, Unforgiven, Forrest Gump, American beauty,have been rewarding with the Oscar in just the last decade is a point that deserves an apart mention. But if you turn your attention in films like Patton, Braveheart and Gladiator, (winners too) you'll understand that there's something in the air.

Rating:
Summary: costner makes his point
Review: i find it funny how many folks are upset that white men are portrayed as unflattering in this movie. the whole point of this movie is not only to entertain but to give us plain old white folks a taste of how those of other cultures felt when they had been portrayed as idiots,etc. Growing up and watching movies as a child on saturday mornings the only cool indian i remember was tonto. and what about tarzen kicking a whole bunch of natives behinds darn near single handedly? costner wants us to think and fill a little of what others have felt over the years.this i think was one of his main points of this great movie. also check out open range.

Rating:
Summary: shameful.....
Review: I know I am going to get a lot of flack for panning this film that everyone and their brother seems to love, but I have got to speak my peace. I actually saw this about seven months ago in my American Indian Studies film class at school, and although I am well aware of the kind of work done by Kevin Costner to make the film authentic, I am disgusted by the objectification, New Age feel and sappy Hollywood feel of this movie. Yes, the White soldiers from the story were an embodiment of the devil, and yes, I realize that the Native people were a lot smarter, more sophisticated and intelligent than was believed in the history books, and in the minds and hands of the Catholic church who forcibly removed children from their homes, stripped them of their culture, imposed on them a religion that was "purer" in contrast to their "heathen" ways.

I can't help thinking that this was a huge ego trip on the part of Kevin Costner, and his guilty-white-man instincts weren't central to this project. I know a lot of people marvel at the cinematography, the supposed humor, the tragedy and the triumph that this film brings to the table, but I was all at once bored, horrified and disgusted.

Rating:
Summary: Everyone's a critic
Review: I saw Dances With Wolves at the theatre in 1990 and have always counted it as one of my favorite films.

As I began building my DVD collection, I considered it a "must have." But, I really hesitated buying the Special Extended Edition because a lot of reviewers had stated that the DVD was "overly long" and that the extended scenes had really hurt the content of the film.

Well, in my opinion, these critics are dead wrong. The special edition is every bit as beautiful and stirring as the original release. Yes, the pace of the film is slow, but never boring or dull. There is so much for the viewer to just sit back and take in.

And I wonder how many of those who complained about the movie's four hour length have ever sat through a 4-6 hour mini-series, plus commercials. My advice - view longer films over 2-3 nights, take your time and enjoy an epic such as Dances.

I highly recommend this version. It's a real shame that Kevin Costner's run at the top was so short. In a span of only a few years, he gave us The Untouchables, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and of course, his masterpiece, Dances With Wolves. We have all heard enough Waterworld jokes, so I will refrain. Who knows, maybe some day soon, KC will find that cinema magic once again.

Rating:
Summary: DVD OPTIONS - DTS IS OUT THERE ...
Review: The Region 1 /2 SE versions are just a tad disappointing .Check out the Japanese/German editions if you can - 4 discs with both theatrical & extended versions in DTS & with full commentary . In english so don't worry there ! Only trouble is getting hold of them when you live where I do - England !

So why shortchange us Brits & you guys in the US with a second rate production .

Rating:
Summary: Dances With Wolf C**p
Review: This is an over blowen pack of drivel.

Rating:
Summary: . . . Extended . . . yeah . . .
Review: Dances With Wolves is a good movie, a very good movie in fact. But . . . it's longer. Wasn't three hours long enough? Now it's four hours long. Seriously, I do not want to sit through a four hour movie when I could watch the same movie in three, especially when the extended version really doesn't help the movie in any way. It's just longer.

Rating:
Summary: A DVD worthy of an epic Best Picture
Review: For those who have seen, Dances With Wolves, this extended edition, with 52 minutes on additional footage remastered and worked into the films, does the movie a service it's long deserved. Like the case refers to it, this "beautiful story simply told" pulls you in to the lives of its characters in a way other movies that forego character development can't. The additional footage only adds to the story, and the special features do justice to one of my favorite movies ever.

Well worth the money, this edition of Dances with Wolves will quickly remind you why you loved the film.

Rating:
Summary: Turned the tide in Hollywood's picture of Indians
Review: Granted, the movie has it's inaccuracies. By the time of the civil war actual war between Whites and Lakotas had been raging for a decade already. Although Lnt. Dunbar's Winchester rifle wouldn't be developed until 10 years after the time frame of the movie, the Lakota did already have guns. However, the mayority still hunted and fought with bow and arrow. The Lakota had been trading with whites for at least two generations already and therefore had a lot of trade items when the film suggests otherwise. Granted.

But what makes this film outstanding is that it lets the Lakota speak mainly for themselves, in their own language, neither in Tonto-speak suggesting an IQ below room temperature nor in english spoken backwards as in so many other distortive Hollywod films about Indians. Sure, the main character is not Indian, it is Dunbar who lets the predominantly white audience discover the Lakota through white eyes. I wonder when we will see a film which doesn't rely any more on this crutch of culture mediation. Its Lorence of Arabia on the plains. Similar to the dramaturgy of "The Man they called Horse", the Lakota seem to have waited for Dunbar to lead them to success. But without that element there wouldn't have been any room for Costner in the cast ;)

There are quite a lot of people who resented this film for being PC propaganda. GA Custer buffs and John Wayne fans have come to talk of "revisionist" Hollywood propaganda painting an overly saintly picture of Indians.

I disagree. This is just one of a handful of films which portrays Indians not as the "bad guys" posing as pop-up targets for the glorious cavalry but as what they really were: members of a colorful, close-to-nature culture that was mercilessly crushed out of greed and race hate. Let's face it, whites who travelled to the west or joined the army had been fed since early childhood days with abduction and torture tales, the first and most prevalent category of truly American literature. That the "indian savages, the red devils" had to be exterminated could be read in countless books and newspaper articles and would be reiterated by congressmen and Presidents from Jefferson down to Roosevelt a century later.

Some people objected to the whites being often depicted as filthy as opposed to cleanly indians. Well, whites on the frontier mostly had a proper bath once a week and many maybe once a month. Indians bathed every day in the next river, they just had a different attitude to the body than christian whites of that period ;)

It is also not correct that the element of violence in Lakota culture is completely blended out. At the band meeting when the Lakota people discuss how to react to Dunbar's presence Wind-in-his-hair suggests to shoot a few arrows into the white stranger in order to set straight who is boss. Strangers on the prairy were mostly considered enemies until circumstances proved otherwise. The movie doesn't gloss over this at all. Later on, enraged by the sight of slaughtered buffalo herds left to rot in the sun by white hunters, the Lakota track down the hunters, butcher and skalp them. At night the whole village rejoices in a scalp dance. Dunbar feels repelled and realizes that a huge cultural chasm separates him from his new friends. Is this PC? I don't think so. What Wind-in-his-hair was not allowed to do is later accomplished by the Pawnees: they kill and scalp Dunbar's stagecoach driver on his way back. A warrior is nothing without war and enemies to overcome, this basic rule of plains cultures is also part of the colorful mixed bag Costner presents to us.

The huge merit of this film is that it gives a very authentic picture of indian life, actually how it used to be a few decades prior to the civil war. The movie leaps across the division line of "us vs. them" and views the "clash of cultures" from the native side. Most of the soldiers Dunbar is confronted with after returning to his post are absorbed with hate and contempt of the "injuns". This characterization is unflattering but, sadly, most accurate. The movie portrays whites essentially through indian eyes. Is this imbalanced? Well, we all have seen hundreds of traditional westerns where it was the other way around. This latter movie helps to create a sort of balance in our minds which has been so sorely lacking previously.

Someone here suggested watching Bruce Beresford's "Black Robe" (1991) instead for "a balanced representation of the clash of two disparate cultures". My advice: do so if you think that whites only came as missionaries instead of soldiers, that whites do upper-class house music whereas indians do it all day and night doggy-style in the dirt, that matriarchaic democratic Iroquois communities are in reality under male dictatorship and that captive women and children are tortured to death instead of being adopted into the tribe and that the same fate awaits white captives although they just passed the initiation ritual of the gauntlet etc. Oh yes, and if you think that Mohawk people speak Cree instead of Mohawk ;)

Now for real, see Dances and Little Big Man and maybe Soldier Blue if you want to know what Sand Creek was like and have an itch to have Saving Private Ryan topped in terms of carnage (uncut version, only availlable outside the US). The rest is white history distortion to the bone, not history.

Rating:
Summary: Classic in the making !
Review: This movie is a classic in the making. The story clearly details how the US minipulated and persecuted the indians. The focus is on Kevin Costner who is assigned to a military outpost and was left to fend for himself. Once the indians found him he was forever a changed man. After befriending and marrying an indian woman, he is welcomed into the tribe and quickly forgets the murderous tails told of the indians. In the end, of which I will not ruin, you tend to see the story from a different perspective and quickly relate to the emotions one man can feel when drawn into such a dramatic situation.