Willow

Director: Ron Howard

1988 / 126min / DCP

Based on a story by executive producer George Lucas, dating all the way back to 1972, Howard’s rousing sword-and-sorcery epic follows callow Nelwyn villager Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis) on a fantastic hero’s journey that will bring him in contact with a cocksure rogue swordsman (Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan), a pair of inexplicably French Canadian–accented fairies (Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton), a two-headed dragon called an “Eborsisk” (as in Ebert/Siskel), and still more wonders besides. A watershed work in the history of CGI effects that’s chock-a-block with old-fashioned swashbuckling brio and inspired production design, the whole package bouncing along on the back of James Horner’s exuberant, romantic score.