What a great start to the new year!
The Playlist compiled a list of The 20 Best Movies of 2017 That We've Already Seen and The Lost City of Z made the cut! The Playlist got a chance to see the film at the New York Film Festival and it left an impression.
Here's their verdict:
Verdict: Though perhaps slightly less so than when Brad Pitt or Benedict Cumberbatch were attached (it’s been developing as a film for the best part of a decade now), there’s a fair chance that “The Lost City Of Z” could be the film that finally helps James Gray, one of the best living American filmmakers but someone who’s often been under the radar, the mainstream acceptance he’s long deserved. An epic, almost Herzogian adventure (albeit with, as our NYFF review said, “a continuation of the quieter mood” of his previous film) that puts his themes of familial tragedy front and center once again, it’s absolutely gorgeous-looking thanks to DP Darius Khondji, and sees its stars deliver some of their best work to date. It might not be for everyone — it’s “classical, unrushed filmmaking,” but it’s likely to “inspire admiration and obsessives,” too.Click HERE to check out the full list.
The Film Stage also included The Lost City of Z in their list of 50 Best 2017 Films We've Already Seen:
It is the little-stated, undeniable truth that critics are surrounded by nearly innumerable factors when experiencing the work they’ve been assigned to review. Presentation is rarely treated as a basic on the level of form, theme, or auteurist interest, and most mentions will come only if something had gone terribly wrong. This issue sometimes being rather important, I feel compelled to say James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is a rather forceful thing when projected on 35mm, as befits the writer-director’s wishes and with which the New York Film Festival, premiering this picture as the closing title of their 54th year, complied. I can and will compliment the movie for a number of reasons not necessarily pertaining to what material it was printed on and what machine it came out of, so let it be stated upfront that this is most likely the best (only?) way to experience what Gray and cinematographer Darius Khondji, reuniting from The Immigrant, have achieved: a film that will often truly and totally appear to have been made in decades past and just discovered today.Click HERE to read their whole list and TLCoZ review.
I can't wait. We get to see Rob films every year, I know, but I grow impatient from one film to the next. A common ROBsessed problem.
The Lost City of Z will be released April 21st.