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The Lost City

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The Lost City (2006)

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Reviews Counted:82

Fresh:21

Rotten:61

Average Rating:4.7/10

Consensus: Its heart is in the right place, but what starts as a promising exercise devolves into an overlong, unevenly directed disappointment.

Rated: 15

Runtime: 2 hrs 23 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:05-12-2008

Synopsis: The Lost City is actor/director Andy Garcia’s bittersweet lyric celebration of Cuban culture that took him 16 years to make. Using music, literature and dance, City captures Havana in full... The Lost City is actor/director Andy Garcia’s bittersweet lyric celebration of Cuban culture that took him 16 years to make. Using music, literature and dance, City captures Havana in full tropical bloom during the late 1950s. Where Buena Vista Social Club commemorated an era of Cuban music before it slipped away, City captures the moment where performers like Beny More electrified audiences with that rhythm, a rhythm that made Havana the Pearl of the Antilles. Scripted by Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, whom critic David Thomson likened to Jorge-Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marques, City builds like a vivid tropical fever-dream; a love story and revolution set to music. Centered in El Tropico, a nightclub roughly modeled after Havana’s famous Tropicana, proprietor Fico Fellove tries to hold his family and club together as the dictator Batista’s reign of terror comes crashing down around him. Ultimately, to survive, Fico must leave everything he loves. City is every immigrant’s story—a paean to lost culture. It’s a time and place in history that still lives vividly in the imagination of the exile. And as conjured by Infante and Garcia, this is a land where rhythm can’t be exiled. You can leave the country, but the rhythm will never leave you. Along with its original score, City sings with 40 different songs. Mambos, chachachas, rumbas, toques, danzones, boleros. Together they create an oral history of Cuba. They are love songs to an indomitable culture—a culture that reveals itself in music, but also in dance, in poetry, in Catholicism, in African and European heritages, in Revolution, in tobacco, in Santeria and the azure sky and water that surround the island. These are the residents of The Lost City. -- © Lions Gate Films [More]

Starring: Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Inés Sastre

Starring: Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Inés Sastre, Jsu Garcia

Director: Andy Garcia

Director: Andy Garcia
Screenwriter: G. Cabrera Infante
Producer: Frank Mancuso
Studio: Lions Gate Films

[See More Credits]

Reviews for The Lost City

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
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‘The Lost City’ is intriguing as a historical document and adequate as cinema, but it has a blandness at its core that no amount of spicy mambo and booty-quaking dance routines can disguise.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
12/05/08
Tom Huddlestone
Tom Huddlestone
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

There may be a good film here, but it struggles to break free of the cumbersome framework.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
12/05/08
Stella Papamichael
Stella Papamichael
Channel 4 Film
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Andy Garcia’s preposterous vanity project The Lost City is an all-singing, all-dancing version of the Cuban Revolution.

Full Review Source: Times [UK] | comment Comment
12/05/08
James Christopher
James Christopher
Times [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The script is scrupulously even-handed, but Garcia can't seem to get a grip on this sprawl.

Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | comment Comment
12/05/08
Cath Clarke
Cath Clarke
Guardian [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Great music and costumes, but with a woeful plot and jaw-droppingly stilted dialogue. Cuban-born Garcia's main complaint against Fidel seems to be that rich, corrupt Cubans could no longer dance the night away.

Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | comment Comment
12/05/08
David Gritten
David Gritten
Daily Telegraph
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Not an embarrassment, but definitely a missed opportunity.

Full Review Source: Sky Movies | comment Comment
12/05/08
Rob Daniel
Rob Daniel
Sky Movies

Andy Garcia's directorial debut is a flawed and overlong but nonetheless watchable drama with strong performances, a superb soundtrack and bizarre appearances from Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray.

Full Review Source: ViewLondon | comment Comment
12/04/08
Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

Unfolds like a series of as outtakes from Hollywood productions

Full Review Source: CinePassion | comment Comment
08/30/09
Fernando F. Croce
Fernando F. Croce
CinePassion

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Hollywood.com | comment Comment
11/20/08
Michael Szymanski
Michael Szymanski
Hollywood.com

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Sacramento News & Review | comment Comment
08/07/08
Jim Lane
Jim Lane
Sacramento News & Review

Garcia obviously has more ambition than skill.

Full Review Source: Cinematical | comment Comment
09/18/07
Christopher Campbell
Christopher Campbell
Cinematical

Garcia is just too earnest to make his dream project anything but deadly dull.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
03/01/07
Eric Monder
Eric Monder
Film Journal International

It's by no means a flawless film, but it's a meaty one, and if you're a big fan of Andy Garcia, I'd definitely recommend it. (Plus, Bill Murray's in there.)

Full Review Source: DVD Clinic | comment 1 Comment
08/30/06
Scott Weinberg
Scott Weinberg
DVD Clinic

When it succeeds, the film conveys a bittersweet longing for a lost moment and the unfulfilled promise of a democratic Cuba.

Full Review Source: Hollywood Reporter | comment Comment
08/01/06
Sheri Linden
Sheri Linden
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

...plays like a confusing and inferior Caribbean analog to The Godfather, without anything like the narrative drive of Coppola's film.

Full Review Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | comment Comment
07/22/06
Philip Martin
Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

While the soundtrack of Cuban dance music is superb, this historical drama is leaden and simply too long-winded for its own good.

Full Review Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City | comment Comment
07/14/06
Jeff Vice
Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

Shapeless stories that drift away from the revolution, puffed up by a biased take on 1959 Cuba with the hot air of romance.

Full Review Source: Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) | comment 1 Comment
07/01/06
Brian Gibson
Brian Gibson
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)

Garcia's storytelling lacks highs and lows and has far too much going on. And on.

Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | comment Comment
07/01/06
Liz Braun
Liz Braun
Jam! Movies

The result has a potluck rather than persuasive, integrated quality.

Full Review Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | comment Comment
06/30/06
Duane Dudek
Duane Dudek
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For a tribute to a lost city, Garcia has made a lost film.

Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star | comment Comment
06/29/06
Phil Villarreal
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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