A powerful, beautiful, moving movie. By far, Costner's best acting performance. This movie is a great example of a drastic character's journey: the progression of faithful dutiful Civil War soldier Lieutenant John Dunbar at the beginning of the movie to passionate Sioux Indian tribe member Dances with Wolves by the end of the movie. Dunbar is a drastically and completely different person at the end than he is at the beginning. If you were to compare the two, you wouldn't believe they were the same person, and it is pretty fascinating. But enough about that. And of course what good movie doesn't have a love story somewhere in there?
Little fun fact: In 8th grade, I had this history teacher named Mr. Hill and he was actually one of the Civil War reinactors that are featured in the opening battle sequence and he has about one second of him falling over.