ones, are among pic's highlights." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times described Bowie as "perfect casting" but thought the film was "a muddle," and suspected it was because he reviewed a version trimmed by 20 minutes for its U.S. run: "That would do a lot to explain why the movie proceeds from the provocatively cryptic to the merely incomprehensible." In a retrospective review, Kim Newman of Empire gave the movie five stars out of five, describing the film as "consistently disorientating and beguilingly beautiful." Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports the film has an 82% approval rating based on 66 reviews with an average rating of 7.7/10. The critics' consensus states: "Filled with stunning imagery, The Man Who Fell to Earth is a calm, meditative film that profoundly explores our culture's values and desires." On Metacritic, the film has achieved a weighted average rating of 81 out of 100 from 9 critic reviews, citing "universal acclaim". Legacy Since its original 1976 release, The Man Who Fell to Earth has achieved cult status. This status has been echoed by critics, especially as it was a popular hit with midnight movie audiences years after it was released. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out believed that the cult classic status, which he described as a "vaguely demeaning term", does the film a disservice. He labeled the film as "the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s." When re-released in 2011, Ebert gave the film three stars, stating that readers should "consider this just a quiet protest vote against the way projects this ambitious are no longer possible in the mainstream movie industry." The movie has been applauded for its experimental approach and compared to more recent sci-fi films such as Under the Skin. Rolling Stone ranked it second on its 50 best sci-fi movies of the 1970s, Timeout ranked it 35th on its 100 best sci-fi movies, it is 61st on the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time". Empire placed it 42nd on its list of 100 best British films. British Film Institute included it on its list of "50 late night classics", demonstrating its popularity as a midnight movie. Bowie's role in the film led to his casting as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, with director Christopher Nolan stating "Tesla was this other-worldly, ahead-of-his-time figure, and at some point it occurred to me he was