I gotta give a hand to Amazon. They made, as in, fully produced the two best movies I've seen this month. Their formula seems to be to give an established filmmaker money and get out of their way, I'm cool with that.
The Wall is as Spartan as its title. Two soldiers (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and yes, that John Cena) in 2007 Iraq get injured, isolated, and pinned down by a sniper in an unknown location, and that's pretty much it. It has refreshingly little to say about the Iraq war, or even all that much about its characters (81 minutes long, I raise that as a selling point), its really only interested in being a performance piece and wringing as much suspense as possible from its scenario. In that respect its pretty successful. I'm a sucker for a well done, stripped down thriller, and The Wall is so near to the bone as to be anorexic.
Even better, and, well obviously much more ambitious is James Gray's very British The Lost City of Z. Its smart about how to make a movie about an exploring Englishman in still colonial times for a 2017 audience, also while making this avatar of imperialism a compelling and contradictory figure. Its about the real life Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett, but moreso its about a man's search for meaning, and obsessive quest for enlightenment while damning all consequences of its search. David Lean's ghost is probably digging it. Its a rich, sometimes thrilling, always deeply atmospheric film. Charlie Hunnam's career is probably going to take a major hit by the now but all assured failure of King Arthur. Hope he can bounce back because he's amazing here.
Seriously, go catch The Lost City of Z while you can. Theatrically (purrty jungles, natural lighting), its likely to be on my best of 2017 list when all is said and done.
