The Lost City

An enjoyable spring film packed with great actors, a fine setting and effective humour. I didn't expect much from Lost City and it could be said it is a spring surprise that combines several elements and genres in one, and it all works well together. Sandra Bullock is traditionally excellent as a sexy and smart woman. She plays a successful writer who is kidnapped by a mad millionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) because he thinks she her book describes the path to a lost city and hidden treasure. Sandra is about to be rescued by a bumbling dork played by Channing Tatum (quite possibly his best role ever). He hires Navy Seals Tracker Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), who deserves his own movie, an unreal badass who has one of the best action scenes of the entire film (surprisingly solid fights!). Plot-wise it's a bit cliched and predictable, but it doesn't really matter that much as the chemistry between Bullock and Tatum works great (their banter is very entertaining, classy, intelligent and never descends into profanity). The whole film has a nice pace with fine action and a decent amount of humour. The jungle setting could have been used better (there are no animals or danger there, unfortunately), and the finale is weaker than the beginning and middle, but I still had a great time and will happily repeat the film. Story 3/5, Action 4/5, Humor 4/5, Violence 1/5, Fun 4/5 Music 3/5, Visuals 4/5, Atmosphere 3/5, Suspense35/5, Emotion 3/5, Actors 4/5. 7.5/10. (04/01/2022)

An inoffensive Valentine's romance. The passage with Brad Pitt is actually excellent. Daniel Radcliffe was also a surprise, playing the annoying bad guy with obvious gusto. (02/14/2023)

I love those concepts where a film first makes a huge joke out of genre tropes, then becomes one and gets carried away on the silliness of all the clichés, dialogue and characters. The Lost City goes all-in in this regard, and although the over-the-top self-aware 'I know I'm over-the-top' humour gets annoying after a while, it manages to keep its face. Whether it's because of the boundless adventurous naivety, where everything is a reference to something else in the service of a deliberately unrealistic plot twist, or because of all those A-list actors having so much fun. Bullock is naturally great like in the old days, Tatum enjoys the anti-heroic narcissist more than he did in 21 Jump Street, Radcliffe entertains every second and Pitt reigns supreme in a role that would kick Cliff Booth's ass (though he'd probably lose more than ten percent in the process – inside joke). It’s not something I’d want to see a second time, but I'd love a spin-off with Jack Trainer. 65 % (03/24/2022)

The Lost City is a well calculated and refined movie that is inoffensive from a commercial point of view and is also quite unexceptional. Sandra Bullock's stony stiff upper lip and perfectly smoothed cheeks distracted me from the plot, as did the utterly pointless villain played by Daniel Radcliffe. However, he does his best despite the bad casting choice. You would be better off watching the excellent Romancing the Stone again, as The Lost City is just polished commercial crap you can easily do without. (03/30/2022)

The Lost City seemed to play out the pages of Loretta Sage's novels on the screen (with a certain amount of exaggeration), you get both action and romance, all spiced up with adventure and a dose of humour, although they perhaps kept the comic level too low-key (the black-humour bit with the dead woman in the car, however, was very funny). In the end, this is a laid-back and predictable one-off with a likeable cast that woefully missed the potential of the characters Coach and Beth. (03/24/2022)

This one hurt. I really didn't think I'd still be fondly remembering last year's routine and sterile Jungle Cruise, because this was truly LOST on all fronts. I'm aware that Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe are deliberately overacting in their roles, but why on earth isn't it entertaining, even for a moment? If anyone is knocked on their ass over the filmmakers’ lack of invention with their reference to True Detective and Peaky Blinders (a "reference" in the form of the use of the opening title sequence), I sincerely feel sorry for them. At the same time, I don't rule out the possibility that someone might be genuinely taken with this by virtue of succeeding to decipher such sophisticated references. And it doesn't end there: there's an assload of such deeply "sophisticated" references, in the style of a young Jaroslav Slávik. An utterly awful cringefest in which Sandra Bullock wins once again the battle of her life against time and plastic surgery, Channing Tatum has leeches removed from his own ass (*SPOILER ALERT* NO, I'M JUST KIDDING!), and Daniel Radcliffe, with his fake-looking beard, tragicomically fires a revolver instead of the Avada Kedavra curse. And what was Brad Pitt supposed to do there? A funny interlude, a face for the poster, a continuation of the legacy of his Cliff Booth character? If this pays off in box receipts, them we're totally screwed as a society. A terrible streaming yawner with a foul stench in theaters that even the later "comedic" work of Adam Sandler to shame. The last time I walked out of a theater this pissed off was with Alien: Covenant. [20%] (03/28/2022)