alfonso-desas

It's hard to categorize a film like this. Part myth, part war, part gore, part Kill Bill in the tundra. The Koshei character defies logic but that is part of his appeal. Medically unbelievable, you have to forget about reality to enjoy the comic angle and treatment. The soundtrack and the narrative in chapters point shamelessly to the Californian genius, and the scene where the women walk towards the tank officer comes straight from Leone, so you see the connexion. The music might be Morricone with touches of nordic atmosphere, but the photography is up to date. A strange movie, appealing in it's originality and realization, but a good movie in general if you take it for what it is.

In 2016 I fulfilled one of my life's dreams and I stayed 2 nights in Yosemite park, at the Ahwahnee Lodge. From this point of view the series is a true reward. The plot is a different thing. At the end you can't help but ask yourself what was the core story to begin with: the Caleb story, the Lucy story, the drug subplot... The problem with convoluted plots is that they get too twisty for their own good, and as a screenwriter and novelist myself I know what I'm talking about. The main character, a federal agent in charge of crime investigations in national parks, never connects with the viewer, or with other characters for that matter; not once he allows himself to even grin, never. His detachment from everything, except from his obsession to solve Lucy's death, puts us off from his emotional core as a human being. We care more about Vasquez, a normal person, or even Jill, his ex wife. Main characters don't need to be too complex or traumatized to be interesting, especially if they have to solve complex crimes. What about just doing their job in a professional and efficient way without spending too much time brooding? Direction is functional, acting won't earn them any awards, writing wants to be clever sometimes, and there are even some magic realism touches. All in all is a quite pleasant series to watch, but 4 episodes might have done it just as well. 7/10.

I don't agree with some of the critics saying that it is slow and there are too many characters. The pace is Australian, not made in Hollywood, and every character is perfectly defined and memorable. It is moving, very well acted and directed, the landscapes are beautiful and whoever has lived in a community of less than 2000 inhabitants knows that every person is intertwined with everybody else one way or other,and the simplest of dramas get magnified precisely because of that closeness. The plot is tight, the twists and turns are plausible because there are no "plot intruders" planted in the story just for the sake of it. When the show is over, beautifully closed, by the way, you realize that, when all is said and done, there weren't so many characters after all. One of the best series I've seen on Netflix.