Fresh and Exciting

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's 1958 Havana, Cuba. Fico Fellove (Andy Garcia) is a prominent nightclub owner. His father is a respected university professor. The successful Fellove family struggles to agree on the political change blowing in the winds. His revolutionary brother Ricardo gets arrested and he gets an old friend Captain Castel to help. Ricardo is released and runs off with Che Guevara. Meyer Lansky (Dustin Hoffman) comes to him to turn his establishment into a casino. When he turns Lansky down, a bomb explodes killing his girlfriend. His other brother Luis gets in a plot to overthrow Batista and restore democracy. Luis is killed and he falls for Luis' widow Aurora. Bill Murray plays his constant writer friend.The filming locations in Santo Domingo are beautiful. The story is a vast family drama which Andy Garcia wants to be more like Godfather. However it never gets beyond the early promise. Garcia is mostly doing a solo gig and he's not putting enough energy into it. I don't get the Bill Murray character. The sunny Caribbean feel of the movie takes away the inherit gritty dirty feel of the story. It's too long with too much side trips. Andy Garcia's directions lack the urgency. He needs help to bring intensity into the film.

This movie is about a high middle class family struggling with a new revolutionary regime.The acting was impeccable and Andy Garcia, once again, shows us that he indeed knows how to pick his roles. I relate myself to this movie very much because I too, have escaped, with my family, a corrupted country regime that has ripped us from all the materialistic and patriotic feelings we had for our land.The Lost City is a must see movie for those who try to understand what it is to slowly lose your country and being powerless against opposing forces of change.Within such regime, Andy Garcia, who states in the movie that living in Havanna may be ''Dangerous for his soul'' expresses his undeniable desire to utter himself freely, for he has a free spirited mind, but unfortunately cannot with the arrival of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro. The mass incarcerations, of intellectuals, writers, homosexuals.This movie is a must see.-Nick

Certainly I understand the passion (and the political statement) of this movie. If you voted for McCain, thought Elian Gonzales should have stayed apart from his father, and have not been to Cuba in the last 30 years you will love the movie. If on the other hand you did not grow up in Miami, and use the internet to discover the true history you might not. If like me you take both the US (Republican) spin AND the Cuban Government spin then ignore those and look at the international perspective you discover the movie lacks balance.It is from the hard line approach of the Cuban expatriate community and no doubt they are thrilled and shed tears at its mention. But if we really look at the plausibility of the plot it borders on absurdity. Here is a very rich Cuban, from a very rich family fleeing his country penniless. Nah, the nature of Cuba in 1959 and 1960 1) provided ample opportunity to see the writing on the wall 2) Every rich Cuban I know had big money in the US. They did not arrive and work washing dishes. Furthermore, Cubans (unlike my forefathers) were given loans for housing, loans for education, and loans for businesses. A well connected Club owner with a tobacco background would certainly be well connected. Thus we see the political statement.I do like Mr. Garcia (how can you not?) I do understand how he feels and why this film was so important to him. I think some of the readers will understand the lack of balance if they either look at the spin less international mainstream view or visit Cuba when Obama lifts the travel ban. We are the only country in the world that views Cuba as part of the axis of evil (a terrorist sponsor)....Why is that?

As a moderately interesting melodrama, this has enough defects—it's overlong, slow, diluted, it truly lacks a style and some brio. It's very unsubtle and pedestrian, it uses a tourist almanac 'beauty' as from the travel commercials—something radically phony and displeasing. The content is minimal. Yet I somewhat enjoyed it—Murray's role, Hoffman's cameo, the political decency, the women's charm, the nice wardrobes.As a director, Garcia is certainly not very inspired. He falls in the worst clichés and has a rather poor notion of cinema.Hoffman has two small scenes, as Mayer Lansky, the controversial, if you wish, character.For Murray, they had a routine: Murray's usual character.Murray does the bitterness of the sad clown, vaguely affable ,vaguely blasé. His irony is fundamentally despising. In fact, he's only asked to simply recycle this routine. His intelligence is an earthly and sarcastic, offensive, unsparing one.Murray's irony is malicious and uncharitable. It's cynical, unfriendly and rather insulting. It's irresistibly funny. Maybe some these particularities partly explain his sinuous career. Murray, already quite old looking, does a very funny supporting role as an anonymous prankster and wisecracker. It's perhaps the finest thing in the movie. Otherwise, the story is, as I said, quite thin and underdeveloped, and the movie evolves like a falsely beautiful shape, truly empty. It's not atmospheric, nor lyrical, nor whatever Garcia fancied it should be. It's not the poem of a city, and it's conspicuously ineffective at giving a taste of the city. It's drowned in conventionalism and cheap sentimentality—though, of course, better than the exotic—politic rubbish Hollywood is usually churning out—stuff like CONSTANT GARDNER or LAST KING OF Scotland …--THE LOST CITY is not that stupid, not that boring. Otherwise, the movie has little to say about anything. It's a merely decorative product. Both Murray and Hoffman (who only passes by) deserved better.Watch it, fellows, at least for Murray's supporting role!