Quick takes on 5 films

The Lost City of Z is a biographical film about the explorer Percy Fawcett. I don’t know how accurate the movie is, but it showcases Charlie Hunnam brilliantly. Though he is still playing the same kind of “tough guy” as seen in his Sons of Anarchy days, Percy is a dynamic character and Hunnam is fantastic here. The movie tells of Percy’s several forays into the Amazonian jungle, first as a cartographer and surveyor for England, and later on his own explorations, searching for a fabled “lost city”, or his version of El Dorado. The film has an almost old-timey “journey to the center of the earth” kind of feel, with Percy finding clues here and there but never finding his goal, though it is more of a drama-driven movie than an action flick. The movie ends just as Percy’s real life did, shrowded in mystery. A good film.

As You Are is a very low budget, independent film, written and directed by young filmmaker Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. The title references the famous Nirvana song, and the film is a look at a group of 3 teenage friends trying to survive the early 90’s. Jack and Mark are forced together when their single parents start dating each other. They two young men become close quickly. Jack hides his homosexuality from everyone, as many high-schoolers were doing in the early 90’s, but he opens up to Mark, who responds in kind. However, they drift apart a bit when their parents break up, and each end up dating the same girl, fellow friend Sarah. This film has a nice premise, but ultimately the shifts in dialogue and choppy editing take away from overall performance. The two leads are very good for young actors. Fellow children of the 90’s like myself might fight enough to wax nostalgic about.

A United Kingdom is another biographical drama, this one telling the story of Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth, a black man and heir to the throne of the kingdom in southern Africa, and a white woman from England. Seretse has been in England getting a proper education before claiming his thrown, where he falls in love with Ruth. This union stirs opposition on both sides. The British are eager to keep that African area as a territory of theirs, and with Apartheid developing just south of them, the black inhabitants want their rulers to be of the same background. There is very strong acting from the leads of David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, but the story felt bland for me, and didn’t reach the heights that similar movies in the last couple years have.

There are slow movies (which I don’t necessarily mind), there are bad movies (which can be entertaining in their own way), and then their are just slow, dull movies, which are maybe the worst kind. Their Finest isn’t really a bad movie. The acting by the lead (Gemma Aterton) is actually really great, but the movie is just boring. Taking place during World War II, Catrin is brought on board to lend a female voice to a propaganda film team in England, a team that is trying to help boost morale. The movie shows a microcosm of gender relations at home and in the work environment at this time. Should be fairly interesting to history nerds like myself, but after the first hour I found myself browsing my phone while half-heartedly watching the rest of the film. Unfortunately a movie behind the backdrop of a major wear really should be more exciting.

The Zookeeper’s Wife is just OK, and that’s coming from someone that generally likes historical dramas. About the hiding of jews in the Warsaw Zoo by its owners during World War II, this film is fronted by lauded actor Jessica Chastain, who seems to have a knack for finding these kinds of roles. She and her husband take progressively riskier steps in saving more than 300 Jews from Warsaw ghetto. However, the film doesn’t get as engrossing as it probably should have, and I never felt the “edge of the knife” so to speak, as I did for similar story The Book Thief from a couple years ago, though that one is fiction while Zookeeper is based on fact. A good film from the perspective of learning a historical tidbit, but otherwise fairly forgettable unfortunately.