One of the most unabashedly enjoyable cinematic events of the 1980s.

Rating: 10/10 (12 June 2010)

In the 1930s, an American archaeologist and explorer (Harrison Ford) beats the Nazis to a priceless artifact, the magical box containing fragments of the stones on which God wrote his laws.
Raiders Of The Lost Ark was commercially very successful, this attempted wrap-up of pre-war Saturday morning serials spends a great deal of money and expertise on frightening rather than exciting us. Second time around, one can better enjoy the ingenious detail of the hero's exploits; still, there are boring bits in between, and the story doesn't make a lot of sense. Yet this was the genesis of the modern action-adventure blockbuster for all the family, and few of its successors have a fraction of its wit, verve or sense of fun. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.