The Lost City of Z (2017)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Director/Producer/Writer James Gray certainly takes on complex subjects - giving himself some difficult tasks as well as a challenge for his distributors. As with his lushly detailed 'The Immigrant' in'13, 'The Lost City of Z' presents us with a series of dazzling images from prolific director of photography Darius Khondji, to grace this haunting, factual, unsolved expedition into the jungles of Peru. The title (while accurate) may be an unwise choice as it suggests a silly Indiana Jones type adventure yarn - and that, this high quality, serious, movie is defiantly not. This feeling can be picked up through the tone of some unkind viewer comments from those only wanting cheap action fiction. Superb locations, performances, and a lush music score all contribute to an engaging cinema experience. While the movie is quite longish (though, fully sustained) one curious problem re-occurs in several sections - that the film looks as it may have been edited from a longer narrative via pre or post-production cuts. If this were the case then it would explain some odd continuity gaps tending to leave the viewer to fathom out some unexplained time shifts. Otherwise, it's always compelling and offers totally professional production values to recommend it to the discerning viewer.

After reading the book this film was based on, I was so excited to hear it was being made into a feature film with Brad Pitt as the star no less. I see now why Brad had the good sense to bow out of this project. I have to say the acting and cinematography was fine, the script is what sinks this in the mud. The book went into detail about Fawcett learning his explorers trade at the RGS and made it so fascinating! The film touched on the most mundane minutia of Fawcett's time with the RGS. It made me wonder why they even bothered with it at all? Most of all I was ready for a great Jungle story with all its horrors and heroics. It was as if someone read this wonderful adventure book, picked out the boring bits ( there weren't many ) and made a film with the same name. Like filming War and Peace with the "War" left out. The book made sense of everything the film didn't. The why's and the reasoning behind everything Fawcett and Nina did. The book also told the story of the author's research, a back story almost as interesting as Fawcett's. Facts that were intentionally deleted to make the film more appealing. Such as Fawcett being bald in his twenties. The lush head of hair Mr Hunnam sported, bothered me as much as if you had an actor with Dreadlocks play Winston Churchill. The WW1 trench scenes, the "over the top" charge, in reality never happened. Fawcett was an artillery Lieutenant Colonel pushing 50 and never got close enough to the front lines for any of those clichéd heroics. That's even if the brass would have let him try them in the first place. Lastly Fawcett's Son's friend Raleigh Rimmel who went along on the last expedition was totally left out? As I sat there wondering why such a Great story was so disfigured, the scene in the native village is shown, Walmart Tiki torches with wicks, lining the way to the river! Really? Maybe today but Not in 1925. I guess what is so maddening is this could have been another Bridge over the River Kwai or Lawrence of Arabia. Instead it's a boring, talky, overly long non-epic destined to be forgotten.

I was wondering when a full production on this subject matter would be done, overall pretty good watch. I think it was very very accurate to the real life story, a little bit of fantasy on the lost city would have been great, focused a little to much on the dram side of things, but that's a personal perspective.

Since about 1970, I've been interested in Fawcett and so this movie fits into the niche of 'gotta see it.' I liked the movie's daring to be made at all, frankly, so congratulations to Pitt; the subject of exploration with hype suited to early 20th century mindsets rang true. The depiction of the departure final trip's acclaiming crowds made me happy for Fawcett and to see him charmed by the fame and financial support touched me. He certainly had it difficult for years and years.Now I've read Grann's book and yes, admired its treatment of a difficult personality to our 21st century ways of thinking. For him to explore years at a time, and on more numerous expeditions than the film covers, by leaving his growing family behind is hard to take. It's like workers who leave their countries to work in other countries for the money and leave their families behind; it's acceptable but certainly not desirable to have to go 'where the work is.'As a movie, the cinematography of jungle and countryside captivated me and the British costumes looked right. The attitudes of Fawcett and his wife seemed to me to be okay for the period, as Fawcett lived in a strict military world and Mrs. Fawcett played along to a certain extent. Her yearning to accompany her husband into the wild was wrong-headed basically, but her 'independence' dictated that she at least try to come along, I guess, in terms of emotional logic. A movie without Miller's Nina Fawcett would have been a poorer movie. I liked her performance even while disagreeing with the urge to leave her three children behind. Other reviews stated how the raft miraculously floated upstream and ha, I didn't even notice that bit! The character study that was this movie carried me along and I didn't care about that unrealistic part. All in all, I recommend this movie as a paean to courage and love of the unknown; the cost of that love sure looks to have been paid by Fawcett and his son.