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The Lost City

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The Lost City (2006)

25%
25%
64%
N/A
N/A
N/A
25 %
Reviews Counted: 72 Fresh: 18  Rotten:54 Average Rating: 4.8/10
 
Consensus: Its heart is in the right place, but what starts as a promising exercise devolves into an overlong, unevenly directed disappointment.
 

How does the Tomatometer work?

The Tomatometer measures the percentage of positive reviews from Approved Tomatometer Critics for a certain movie.[-]

Runtime: 2 hrs 23 mins

Theatrical Release: 2006

Box Office: $2,434,066

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 tropical bloom during the late 1950s. Where Buena Vista Social Club commemorated an era of Cuban... 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]

Genre: Dramas

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

Director: Andy Garcia
Screenwriter: G. Cabrera Infante
Producer: Frank Mancuso

DVD Info

Release:

Dec 31, 2006

[DVD Details]

Blu-ray Disc Features:

  • Region 1
  • Keep Case
  • Widescreen

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
  • Dolby Digital 2.0 - English
  • Subtitles - Spanish - optional

Additional Release Material:

  • Audio Commentary - Andy Garcia - Director
  • Behind the Scenes - Making of THE LOST CITY
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Featurette - 1. "Bill Murray: The Last Day"

Buy It On DVD

Reviews

 
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1 - 20 (sorted by date)
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Ratings Image
2/5

Garcia obviously has more ambition than skill.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/18/07
Christopher Campbell
Cinematical
Ratings Image
N/A

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

Full Review | comment Comment
03/01/07
Eric Monder
Film Journal International
Ratings Image
3/5

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 | comment Comment
08/30/06
Scott Weinberg
DVD Clinic
Ratings Image
N/A

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

Full Review | comment Comment
08/01/06
Sheri Linden
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
74/100

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

Full Review | comment Comment
07/22/06
Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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2/4

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 | comment Comment
07/14/06
Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Ratings Image
N/A

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 | comment Comment
07/01/06
Brian Gibson
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
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2.5/5

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

Full Review | comment Comment
07/01/06
Liz Braun
Jam! Movies
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2.5/4

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

Full Review | comment Comment
06/30/06
Duane Dudek
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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1/4

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

Full Review | comment Comment
06/29/06
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
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2/4

Book-ended by fine songs; in between, Garcia offers more than two hours of clumsy Coppola/Scorsese karaoke...

Full Review | comment Comment
06/26/06
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Ratings Image
2.5/5

Even though the movie is made with an abundance of heart, it's sad to report that the final result has only a weak pulse.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/24/06
Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
Ratings Image
2/4

It's handsome and heartfelt but mired in murky politics, plot inertia, musical montages and painfully pointed symbolism.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/23/06
Bruce Westbrook
Houston Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
2/4

Garcia needed better guiding hands and eyes in the editing room to jettison the many parts that bog down the story.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/23/06
David Germain
Associated Press
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B-

... when it finds its footing, it becomes the movie it longs to be. And that happens often enough to make it worth finding, even when it seems as lost as the city it loves.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/23/06
Carol Cling
Las Vegas Review-Journal
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3.5/5

Unsteady but often entrancing.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/22/06
Bill Muller
Arizona Republic
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
C-

Somehow simultaneously too much and not enough. At 143 minutes, it well overstays its welcome as a movie, but with a little more fleshing out it might have worked as a miniseries.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/22/06
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
1/4

Turgid, lumpy and almost unwatchably dull.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/16/06
Geoff Pevere
Toronto Star
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
8/10

It's a potent work, enlivened by fabulous Cuban music and Garcia's obvious love for his land and his culture.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/16/06
Jack Garner
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
Ratings Image
1.5/4

Unfortunately, Garcia is inept as a director. His scenes are shapeless and bloated with self-important speeches.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/16/06
Liam Lacey
Globe and Mail
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
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Related Forums

Political Clarity
by: mr_welch 3/23/07


If you aren't Cuban, you probably won't get it
by: Susanna65 2/5/07


Horrible movie...valuable history lesson
by: H. Upmann 11/25/06


Andy Garcia's movie "The Lost City" finally reaches New Orleans
by: boopkid 11/5/06


yayoshome05
Oscar for Best Score
by: yayoshome05 8/20/06

Around the Network

• The Lost City at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Lost City at IGN
• The Lost City at AskMen
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