Pretty much perfect.

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2020)

'Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)' is pretty much a perfect movie, entertaining and iconic. It's so severely burnt into pop-culture that it's easy to forget just how amazing it really is. Spielberg's direction is phenomenal and shockingly efficient. The flick's several superb, subtle long-takes prove he's the absolute master of blocking, transitioning from shot-type to short-type in a ballet of underplayed choreography. There isn't a single frame in the film that doesn't need to be there. The action sequences are exciting, pacy and palpable; they're some of the most enjoyable of their kind. The experience as a whole is just pure fun from beginning to end. It has aged in some areas (Indy and Marion's previous tryst is supposed to have taken place when she was either fifteen or seventeen, depending on whether you believe the initial script and novelisation or the 2008 character guide) but it's effortlessly entertaining and wonderfully constructed nevertheless. It deserves all the praise it gets. 9/10