It’s the weekend again, and that means Film Focus. Here’s Mike Laidman with what’s new in local theaters.

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Two dramas this week, one a touching comedy, the other an action/adventure in the truest sense of the word.

In addition to this summer’s poorly-received King Arthur adaptation, Charlie Hunnam also starred in a much better movie - The Lost City of Z.

And taking his own adventure in the modern world is Ben Stiller, in Brad’s Status.

Let’s jump straight in this week. So here we go...

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Mike Laidman

Welcome to another edition of Film Focus. I’m Mike Laidman.

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The Lost City of Z (2017, James Gray)
A true-life drama about British explorer Percival Fawcett.

The Lost City of Z tells the incredible true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region. Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment who regard indigenous populations as "savages," the determined Fawcett - supported by his devoted wife , son, and aide-de-camp - returns time and again to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, culminating in his mysterious disappearance in 1925. An epically scaled tale of courage and passion, The Lost City of Z is a stirring tribute to the exploratory spirit and a conflicted adventurer driven to the verge of obsession.

It’s an epic with a stately pace, sweeping vistas, and a top-notch performance by Hunnam, who portrays Fawcett’s bravery, spirit, and sometimes reckless behaviour to a T.

This large-scale adventure yarn contains everything you’d expect a jungle adventure movie to, but it does it with visual splendour, a riveting narrative, and real heart.

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Brad’s Status (2017, Mike White)
A father meets an old friend and debates his life's choices.

When Brad Sloan accompanies his college bound son to the East Coast, the visit triggers a crisis of confidence. Brad has a satisfying career and a comfortable life, but it's not quite what he imagined during his college glory days. Showing his son around Boston, he can't help comparing his life with those of his four best college friends. As he imagines their wealthy, glamorous lives, he wonders if this is all he will ever amount to. But when circumstances force him to reconnect with his former friends, Brad begins to question whether he has really failed or is, in some ways at least, the most successful of them all.

Brad’s Status manages to find insightful observations to transcend its familiar premise, and stars Ben Stiller and Austin Abrams have excellent interplay. Stiller is a master of playing the self-conscious neurotic, but here it’s more subtle than ever, achieving a nuance that’s something of a first.

It’s the father-son relationship that we explore as we move through the college tropes that really brings the meat to the story, and the movie as a whole stays like its two main characters - gently, human, and unresolved.