Reviews

A warm heartfelt short movie exploring the coming of age of a man as he navigates his life experimenting tragedy, loss, love, fatherhood, and the chaotic world struck by random events, but that end up governing our lives.

The main character is great, as he calmly, even in a Buddhist-like stance, confronts whatever life throws at him with his faithful dog by his side.

Well worth a watch.

Up to episode 8 / season 1

I absolutely loved the premise, and I just didn't know who to stand for at the very beginning. But as the show went on, it just transformed into a family drama on an alien planet.

Don't get me wrong, I love family dramas. But here it was an excuse to support the action, because there was s lot of it.

The ongoing religion theme and discussion also feels a bit too American with Atheist against Believer, fiercefully hating each other. At one point, one of the characters just praises the 'intelligent design' of an artifact, in a clear allusion to the ongoing debate. And if we are smart enough to be over this, I don't see much the point of its mentioning.

Alas, some parts of the show don't have much production going into it, and it shows. The uniforms of the Mithraic, for one, they could have been less bombastic, like dark rags imitating nomads of the desert.

Some more writing expanding the universe and explaining more would have been appreciated too.

Characters are a bit shallow, one-sided, and as pointed in other reviews, they seem to change their feelings and wants pretty quickly without much side story to it.

So I gave it a 7, because for all its flaws, it still managed to keep me hooked.

Appearance has become the new normal, no matter your ill-intentions behind it... Until someone hurts or steals all your money.

The superficiality of some of the characters is quite striking. The insights into rich people mindset and their drive to own more can feel strange and alien to the rest of us. This is where a swindler in the middle of the rich, behaving like them, acting like them, thinking like them, to swindle their money can seem quite a feat.

But greed always entails greed, and with a man always wanting more, eventually comes his downfall. Only by limiting partially their greed can the rich remain rich and get a chance at survival.

Some people don't understand that the cinematography of this movie is based on German Expressionism. Just for this, this movie is already worth a watch. You'll see triangular shapes standing for mountains, cubes for buildings, with neons lights and triangular shaped windows. A visual phantasmagoria.

The satire of Canadian politics depicts a much wider and darker world that is to come. Idealisms in the form of evolutionary humanism (Nazism) and egalitarian humanism (Communism), would rise to nearly to dominate the world and fall.

Characters might be extravagant, and at some points you might find them disgusting, but don't let that ruin the experience of a neon filled expressionist decorum à la Fritz Lang with some Monthy Pythonesque references and its eclectic soundtrack of a world that was about to experiment all of this. Can you imagine the excitement if you would have been living back then (1899) and the terror and disappointment of knowing what was to come?

An experiment in fusion of ideas with a quite unique outcome.