Asps...very dangerous...you go first.

Rating: 10/10 (19 October 2003)

Some films you can theorize about and speak in solemn tones about the nature of their artistry. Some films, on the other hand, just make you grin from ear to ear as you remember the sheer thrill of experiencing them for the first time. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is happily one of those second types of films, a movie you do not passively watch so much as you careen through with equal measures of fear and glee. It's the two-hour equivalent of the best amusement park ride you've ever been on, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. The opening scene alone is worth the price of a rental, as Harrison Ford's immortal Indiana Jones escapes an evilly booby-trapped treasure chamber only to run right into, and then past, an ambush. It contains one of the best fight scenes ever filmed, and possibly the best chase scene ever filmed. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is one of the first movies I can remember seeing in a theatre, and it is a film I love above nearly all others, because it is the sort of story the movies were really invented to tell.