RottenTomatoes.com
Log In | Register | What is RT?
RT's Blu-ray HQ
  • Home
  • Movies
  • DVD
  • Celebrities
  • News
  • Critics
  • Trailers & Pictures
  • CommunityBeta
  • Box Office
  • | In Theaters
  • | Opening
  • | Upcoming
  • | Best Of
  • | Certified Fresh
  • | Showtimes
RT Search Powered by Google
help icon Enhanced RT
searches on Google
Click here to turn on enhanced search results from RT on your Google searches.
 
Movies / On DVD / The Lost City
The Lost City

Rate this Movie Help Icon

  • Write a Review
  • Read Reviews
  • Add to List
  • Get this Movie
  • Buy Poster External Icon
  • Visit Official Site External Icon
Bookmark and Share

The Lost City (2006)

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
  • DVD
26 %
Tomatometer
Template ImageTemplate Image

How does the Tomatometer work Help Icon

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: Not Rated

Runtime: 2 hrs 23 mins

Genre: Dramas

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... 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]

Get This Movie

Rent DVD
 
 

Click on the "ADD" button to put this movie into your Netflix queue.

 
 
Buy DVD
 
 
Release:

Aug 8, 2006

No Details Exist
 
 

Reviews for The Lost City

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
  • DVD
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
Arrange By:Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch | comment Comment
05/27/06
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Havana may remain, in many ways, a lost city, but it'll take more than this movie to find it.

Full Review Source: E! Online | comment Comment
04/28/06
E! Online

...even trying to put [politics] aside, The Lost City has a number of problems.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles CityBeat | comment Comment
04/27/06
Andy Klein
Andy Klein
Los Angeles CityBeat

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)

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

Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | comment Comment
06/23/06
Bruce Westbrook
Bruce Westbrook
Houston Chronicle
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]

What makes this movie interesting is the family (and not just because it's made up of 3 beautiful brothers). It's a love story, between a man and a woman and between a people and their country.

Full Review Source: TheMovieChicks.com | comment Comment
05/26/06
Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
TheMovieChicks.com

You can see why Garcia was drawn to this material, but he hasn't had much luck shaping it into a film.

Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | comment Comment
05/18/06
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

'That's not filmmaking,' I thought, 'that's photography.' 'That's not acting, that's posing.' 'That's not Jon Lovitz, it's Andy Garcia!'

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
05/18/06
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

The coming CD, not the DVD, should be the keeper.

Full Review Source: San Diego Union-Tribune | comment Comment
05/26/06
David Elliott
David Elliott
San Diego Union-Tribune

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

Full Review Source: Associated Press | comment Comment
06/23/06
David Germain
David Germain
Associated Press
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

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

Garcia offers the film to the Cuban community as something we should all be happy to see, but his esteem does not excuse the film's aesthetic mediocrity, cultural ignorance, and colossal self-absorption.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
04/21/06
Ed Gonzalez
Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

... the film seems like a mini-series edited to feature length without time for character development.

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
04/28/06
Ed Scheid
Ed Scheid
Boxoffice Magazine

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 Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution | comment Comment
06/22/06
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

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

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

While earnest in intent and visually elegant, simply too narratively amorphous and emotionally desiccated.

Full Review Source: One Guy's Opinion | comment Comment
05/26/06
Frank Swietek
Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion

Noteworthy and well-intended, The Lost City isn't exactly a lost opportunity, just a sincerely limited one.

Full Review Source: Reel.com | comment Comment
04/28/06
Gary Goldstein
Gary Goldstein
Reel.com
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
See All

More DVDs

Close
Top Rentals
Tomatometer Percentage Movie
44% 44% Night at the Museum: B…
32% 32% Terminator Salvation
36% 36% Angels & Demons
95% 95% Star Trek
25% 25% Four Christmases

More Rentals…

New On DVD This Week
Tomatometer Percentage Movie
88% 88% Inglourious Basterds
78% 78% The Hangover
49% 49% Taking Woodstock
26% 26% The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
47% 47% The Girl From Monaco

More New Releases…

See All

RT On Current TV

The Rotten Tomatoes Show on Current TV

DIRECTV 358 | Comcast 107 | DISH Network 196 | More...

Learn how you can be part of the show

More...

What’s Hot On RT

Sam Worthington

Sam Worthington

A video interview with the Avatar star!

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Throwing fireballs with Nicolas Cage!

Golden Globes

Golden Globes

Up in the Air leads with 6 noms!

RT on DVD & Blu-Ray

RT on DVD & Blu-Ray

Inglourious Basterds & The Hangover

Other News

Close
  • Top Stories
  • Popular
  • Interviews
 
 

Comments

 
 
Top Stories
Headlines Comments
  
  • Trailer Bulletin: Robin Hood Source: ComingSoon.net
33
  • Mel Gibson Plans a Mexican Vacation Source: Variety
4
  • New Iron Man 2 Clue Posted Source: Screen Rant
18
  • Gibson and DiCaprio are Going Norse Source: HitFix
36
  • Lord of the Rings Coming to Blu-ray April 6 Source: Hollywood Reporter
8
  • Tobey Maguire Rumored for The Hobbit Source: Latino Review
34
  • Mila Kunis Talks Aronofsky's Black Swan Source: Collider.com
12
  • Visiting the Set of The Sorcerer's Apprentice Source: ComingSoon.net
7
  • Weekly Ketchup: James Cameron Plans a Fantastic Voyage
93
  • James Cameron Talks Avatar Sequels Source: Collider.com
8
Popular
Headlines Comments
  
  • Tomatometer Watch: Will Avatar Live Up To The Hype?
236
  • Total Recall: Keith David's Best Movies
82
  • Box Office Guru Wrapup: Girlpower Rules Again with Princess at #1
69
  • Awards Tour 2009: Inglourious Basterds Lead Critics Choice Noms
42
  • Awards Tour 2009: Golden Globe Noms Here!
38
  • The Gimmicks That Changed Cinema: Part 1
37
  • Awards Tour 2009: Avatar Best Picture at NYFCO!
34
  • Weekly Ketchup: James Cameron Plans a Fantastic Voyage
31
  • The Effects of Where the Wild Things Are
30
  • Robert Downey Jr. talks Sherlock Holmes & Iron Man 2 - RT Interview
21
Interviews
Headlines Comments
  
  • Robert Downey Jr. talks Sherlock Holmes & Iron Man 2 - RT Interview
21
  • Director Ruben Fleischer Talks Zombieland
2
  • "I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
17
  • Eric Bana talks Love the Beast - RT Interview
12
  • Fight Club Sound Designer Reflects on Film's 10th Anniversary
23
  • James Schamus talks Taking Woodstock - RT Interview
8
  • John Hurt Talks Harry Potter, Quentin Crisp and Alien - The RT Interview
15
  • Terry Gilliam Talks Doctor Parnassus
23
  • Wes Anderson Talks Fantastic Mr. Fox - RT Interview
9
  • Wolverine Creator Len Wein Talks About the Film
28
 
 

Sponsored Links

Around The Network

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

Fresh Links

Featured
Best Sci-Fi This Decade
Best Sci-Fi This Decade External Link

Techland lists the best Sci-Fi films of this decade.

40 Worst Films of the 2000s
40 Worst Films of the 2000s External Link

Moviefone takes a look back at the biggest stinkers of the past 10 years.

10 Questions For Zac Efron
10 Questions For Zac Efron External Link

The Me and Orson Welles star answers reader questions on TIME.com.

Best Decade Ever!
Best Decade Ever! External Link

Hollywood.com's C. Robert Cargill offers his thoughts on what the best decade for film was.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure External Link

In the AV Club's "Scenic Routes," Mike D'Angelo reminisces about the Tim Burton film.

Promos
Follow RT on Twitter
Follow RT on Twitter External Link

Get the latest Tomatometer updates on upcoming movies!

 
 
About| Site Map| Help| RT To Go| Contact Us| Critics Submission| Linking to RT| Licensing| Movie List| Games| Celebs List| Newsletter
IGN Logo

IGN.com | GameSpy | Comrade | Arena | FilePlanet | GameSpy Technology
TeamXbox | Planets | Vaults | VE3D | CheatsCodesGuides | GameStats | GamerMetrics
AskMen.com | Rotten Tomatoes | Direct2Drive | Green Pixels


By continuing past this page, and by the continued use of this site, you agree to be bound by and abide by the User Agreement.
Copyright 1998-2009, IGN Entertainment, Inc. About IGN | Support | Advertise | Privacy Policy | User Agreement | Subscribe to RT's XML feed! IGN RSS Feeds
IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA
Certain product data ©1995-present Muze, Inc. For personal use only. All rights reserved.