Let us praise the genius of Sandra Bullock’s gift for physical comedy. It makes even the small business of teetering on a stool in a fuchsia-sequined jumpsuit an epic of determination, embarrassment, grit, and uncertainty. It is in no small part that THE LOST CITY, on which she was also an executive producer, is such… Read More »
THE LOST CITY OF Z — James Gray Interview
James Gray had his work cut out for him with THE LOST CITY OF Z. He had to find a way to include World War I, upper-crust Edwardian Society, and the jungles of Bolivia, in his adaptation of David Grann’s book about Percy Fawcett’s obsession with finding a lost city in the wilds of Amazonia.… Read More »
THE LOST CITY OF Z
THE LOST CITY OF Z opens in the darkness of the jungle. Natives stand in silhouette outlined against fires burning in warning or in welcome. It’s a fitting start to James Gray’s suitably literate adaptation of David Grann’s book of the same name, telling the true story of the obsessions that drove British Major Percy… Read More »
SANCTUM
James Cameron neither wrote nor directed SANCTUM, but his fingerprints as the executive producer of same are all over it. Visually, it’s an exhilarating experience. As for the storytelling, the word lugubrious comes to mind. The writing is stiff and ridden with clichés, with cheese-ish motifs overwhelmed by swelling, overwrought music cues that forge straight… Read More »
BASIC
The first words we hear Tom Hardy say in BASIC is in a conversation this ex-Army and currently DEA agent in Panama is having with a colleague, the gist of which is that if he doesnt have the trust of those around him, he cant function. Those are words that will figure greatly in the… Read More »