The spectacular Icelandic landscape of waterfalls and geysers, canyons and seas is a fitting backdrop for In the Shadow of the Raven, a bigger-than-life tale of feuding clans and primal passions drawn from Icelandic sagas, the Tristan and Isolde legend and the movie mythology of warlords and Westerns. The year is 1077. Christianity has nominally supplanted the old Norse religion of blood and thunder but when Trausti (Tristan) returns from studying theology in Norway, he soon finds himself caught in a foreordained drama of love, power and revenge. The raven, symbol of Odin, watches over all. Director Hrafn (the name means "raven") Gunnlaugsson, who put Icelandic cinema on the map with his 1983 When the Raven Flies, cites Ford, Kurosawa and Leone as his major influences. His vivid imagery and use of landscape, the raw immediacy of his epic storytelling, and his over-the-top bravura echo the masters in the novel and compelling context of medieval Iceland. Check out the wonderful Kurosawa quotation from Ran in Isolde's dagger-and-kiss confrontation with Trausti. --Alicia Springer