The Lost City of Z

An adventure in the most crystalloid form. Mapping areas that civilization has not reached and looking for the legendary city of gold. The effort to adhere to reality at all costs here is amazing. Piranhas, cannibals, remnants of ancient civilizations and the jungle as the enemy and great loves too. The acting can’t be faulted. Hunnam is excellent, clever, and preoccupied leader type, Pattinson in a perfect role of an unshaved orator. The type of movie that resounds inside you and triggers your desire for discovery. (04/02/2018)

An old-school tale that often hints at Spielberg's most ambitious works. Slow, consistent, directorially pedantic, with an emphasis on the exceptional atmosphere of the early 20th century and an extremely charismatic protagonist. A message of discovery greater than that of Medicine Man, and visually as brilliant as The New World – which it most resembles. In content, however, those films are incomparable, because Gray sticks to facts and tangibles and Malick plays on feelings, philosophising through the game of image and sound. The Lost City of Z is a slightly more conventional, middle-of-the-road film for people who don't mind lack of action in favour of a dense story, although the pace and rhythm are occasionally problematic. 2 hours 20 minutes is too long for the material and the chosen concept, and in the second half, after all the cards have been revealed, it feels rather monotonous. (13/11/2017)

James Gray is a director that doesn't seem to belong in today's world. This is how films were told in the 1950s and 60s, in the era of David Lean's thoughtful big movies, i.e. slowly, deliberately, with an emphasis on character portrayal, with a strong lead (the charismatic Hunnam was an ideal choice). Today's spoiled kids, addicted to Fast and Furious, Marvel and similar crap on steroids, let them go somewhere else, they wouldn’t appreciate this. This favors a strong story, and I like it that way. PS: Charlie Hunnam is a stud. There aren’t many more charismatic actors than him today. I hope that the lack of commercial success of his last two films won’t kill his career with producers. (06/07/2017)

Worse version of The Mountains of the Moon meets a worse version of There Will Be Blood. Which does not mean, however, that in any respect it was a boring or perhaps even a bad movie. On the contrary, this is not so adventurous movie about Conrad's destructive obsession with finding a chimera, and exactly the kind of old-school movie that would fit in a movie theater with the clatter of a classic "obsolete" film tape rather than the air-conditioned silence disturbed by popcorn crunch. The only mistake is that, unlike the best movies in this department, this works a little worse if you already know Fawcett's adventures. (24/04/2017)

A pretty appealing premise and a promising Charlie Hunnam, who made a decent name for himself after King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, but simply boring for my taste. On the other hand, if the whole film was set in the jungle with the cannibals, I'd find it much more entertaining, but once the story starts going home and back, it loses pace and my interest considerably. The production design is decent, visually it’s ok, but the slow pace and extremely long running time hurt the film. 55% (20/07/2017)