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El Topo

1970

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva ...

6.6

5,837

Western. Fantasy A fascinating collision of Sixties avant-garde theater, Latin American symbolism, European radical cinema and the furthest reaches of the movie western, El Topo chronicles the exploits of a master gunfighter and cosmic mystic (played by director Jodorowsky himself) as he sets out to do battle with four sinister, sharp-shooting rivals. John Lennon himself declared the film a masterpiece, and the rest was history: Jodorowsky’s film became ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"As a greasy, grimy, gore-dripping Western, it works just fine, and not even the early Clint Eastwood films had so much sweat and sadism (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"
		Chris Cabin Slant	"Jodorowsky balances so carelessly between creating spiritual art and succumbing to total artifice that his film seems to sprout and show off new feathers every time one revisits it (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"
		Neil Smith BBC	"Without the aid of mind-expanding narcotics though, 'El Topo' can't help looking laughably ramshackle (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		David Parkinson Empire	"Trippy, cult classic (...) Violent, visionary, vital (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Andrew Pulver The Guardian	"If you're stone cold sober, it comes out a charmingly slapdash assemblage of mostly extraordinary - though sometimes idiotic - images and setpieces (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"[It is] more enjoyable for its unending string of outrages than for its capacity to make coherent sense (...) If you're looking for pure sensation with intimations of pseudoprofundity, this is the place to go"
		Roger Greenspun The New York Times	"It comes down heavily on first and last things, and leaves out a lot that might have been in the middle"
		Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times	"'El Topo' seems just as pretentious and shallow as it did more than 35 years ago"

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