Going Medieval: 25 films to watch while waiting for Game of Thrones season 8

20) Ladyhawke (1985)

Let’s visit Rutger Hauer again, this time in a decidedly different, and much cleaner, role than the one he had in Flesh and Blood. Ladyhawke is a warm, big-hearted action-adventure shot through with a timeless romance that made it one of the most memorable fantasy films of the 1980s. It stars Hauer, Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer, and was shot entirely in Italy.

In 13th century Europe, a thief named Philippe “The Mouse” Gaston escapes imprisonment in the dungeons of Aquila. During the manhunt that follows, he joins forces with a mysterious, cursed knight who is accompanied by a hawk during the day, and a beautiful, cursed woman who is accompanied by a wolf at night.

Ladyhawke opened to mixed reviews, with Variety calling it a “very likeable, very well-made fairy tale that insists on a wish for its lovers to live happily ever after,” while Vincent Canby of The New York Times was less impressed, describing it as a “film divided against itself…[S]cenes of high adventure or of visual splendor…are spliced between other scenes with dialogue of a banality that recalls the famous Tony Curtis line: ‘Yonda lies my faddah’s castle.'”

Rotten Tomatoes is also divided, with a reviewer score of 65% and an audience score of 75%. As one of the popcorn movies on this list, Ladyhawke is fun and made extra watchable for its lush cinematography and authentic period look. Look out for the ’80s pop/rock style score, however, which is now quite jarring.