NeverarGreat said:

Excalibur (1981)

I can't believe this movie escaped my attention for so long.

It does a good job of compressing a massive amount of Arthurian legend into a reasonable running time. Though many early scenes seem to end abrubtly, it flows quite well.

I was not expecting to see Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson in it, Neeson in his first major acting role and Stewart very early in his film career. Very cool to see for that alone.

Some of the location shooting is absolutely gorgeous, and though the combat can be clunky and awkward, it just adds to the realism in my opinion.

Merlin (Nicol Williamson) was excellent, serious, cheeky and droll, often at the same time. Clearly the standout to me.

9/10 knights of the Round Table

Boorman really admired what Roger Christian did with Black Angel and a number of the sequences in Excalibur mirror that film.He wanted to make Lord of the Rings in much the same way George wanted to make Flash Gordon so thank heavens the rights were held back, we ended up having this film as well as all the Peter Jackson films and Bakshi's version too.