Showing posts with label David Grann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Grann. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Movie 'Lost City of Z,' lost in time


Tom Holland and Charlie Hunnan with new friends in Lost City of Z/Amazon Studios and Bleeker Street

Save your time and money and avoid this film which is way too long, s-l-o-o-w-w-w, and laborious.

Had it been squeezed in half by a python, it would have been far better.

As it is, there is too much yakety-yak from England and the Royal Geographical Society, but I read the book (which drew me to the film) which was far better, included lots more about the jungle exploration and lacked the silly script like patronizing women's issues which, I suppose, was inserted to make the movie more palatable to moviegoers.

Overall, the movie failed to capture the jungle's dangers and conditions which David Grann recounted in his book by the same title and lacked the edginess so necessary in a movie of terror, or near terror. (Okay, the movie has one snake, an artificial panther, and lots of spears.)

For a ratio, the movie was 50/50 homefront v. jungle, whereas the book's ratio was three-quarters jungle v. one quarter, homefront.

Now which would you find more thrilling, appealing, and exciting to watch?  Me, too.
It was one of those movies which almost found me asking:  "When is this going to take off?" Always, a bad sign.  But, I expected it to be languid, and my expectations were not exceeded.

Besides, the movie's ending in the jungle is fiction since the ending is unknown.

The biggest standout performance in the film comes from Sienna Miller as the wife of explorer Percy Fawcett.  Again, to patronize women, I suppose, she had a far bigger role in the movie than in the book, but so did most of the characters. (Thank you, writers, for omitting the obligatory sex scene!)   

Yawn.  I did.  With and without the sex.

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