Tag: PITB Reviews

PITB Reviews, pop culture, TV shows March 14, 2023

PITB Reviews: Shadow And Bone Is Netflix’s Best Epic Fantasy

Title: Shadow and Bone (season 1, 2021, season 2 March 16, 2023)
Genre: Fantasy
Medium: Netflix

Shadow and Bone begins with a well-worn YA premise: A young girl lives a drab existence, dreaming of a better life, when she unexpectedly discovers via extraordinary circumstances that she’s Special.

Jealous rivals don’t like the fact that she’s Special and try to tear her down as she leads a revolution in a society ruled by idiotic adults, who Just Don’t Understand the complicated lives of teenagers.

Normally that would be enough for me to steer well clear of a movie or TV show, but a teaser for Shadow and Bone tickled my interest: It shows the protagonist, Alina, on a boat that’s about to cross the Fold, also called the Unsea — a pitch-black, swirling mass of cloudy mist smudged right across the middle of her country, dividing it in two.

As the ship approaches, Alina and the other passengers can hear the shrieks of the unseen nightmares that populate the Fold. The bow of the boat penetrates the Unsea, Alina closes her eyes, holds her breath, and the preview ends.

That short scene was enough to convince me to give the series a shot. At the very least I wanted to know what The Fold was, how it came into being, and what kind of creatures stalk its gloom.

While Shadow & Bone uses YA tropes as its jumping off point, it quickly sheds them in favor of clever world-building, affable characters and a well-established mythology that sets up the overarching heroic journey of its protagonist. It also ages its cast so they’re mostly in their twenties and thirties, and while Netflix may have played up the YA template while marketing the series to appeal to younger views, the show itself is geared toward adults of all ages.

The action is centered on a country called Ravka, which is modeled on Czarist Russia and has been split in two by the Fold. Ravka’s capital, Os Alta, is located to the east of the Fold while its major port cities and trading centers, Os Kervo and Novokribirsk, are situated to the west of the dangerous no-man’s land.

As a result, and despite the dangers, Ravka’s economy and unity depends on ships that regularly cross the Fold to move food from the breadbasket to the east and trading goods from the port cities to the west. Losing ships is the cost of doing business, not unlike crossing the Atlantic was during the days of colonial America, and it has a human toll as well: Alina, her best friend, Mal, and all the other children at the orphanage where they grew up lost their parents to the Fold’s horrors.

But Ravka has its blessings as well: A class of conjurors called Grisha who have the ability to manipulate elements. Grisha Tidemakers can control and shape water, Squallers can control wind, Healers can repair human bodies in ways normal medicine cannot, and Heartrenders can sense and manipulate hearts. They can sooth a person’s anxieties or ease them into a restful sleep, but they can also stop a person’s heart or tell if someone is lying by feeling the subtle shifts in their heartbeats.

The Grisha can mitigate the chances of a ship being lost to The Fold but they’re not immune to its dangers, and many of their number have been lost to its hazards as well. Making the crossing is a grim prospect for anyone aboard one of many ships that regularly journey across the so-called Unsea.

The Grisha are led by General Kirigan (Ben Barnes of Westworld and Narnia fame), who has the unique ability to manipulate shadows and destructive energy. It was Kirigan’s ancestor, the Black Heretic, who created the Fold, and Kirigan has vowed to redeem his family by destroying it.

Prophecy foretold a new kind of Grisha — the Sun Summoner, who has the power to call on the sun’s energies and manipulate light. It’s said the Sun Summoner will be the one to finally destroy the Fold and emancipate Ravka from the terrible toll it takes. In addition to protecting Ravka against her many enemies as its general, finding the Sun Summoner has been Kirigan’s life’s work.

Alina is the Sun Summoner, but you already knew that because Shadow & Bone is based on a YA series of books. But she doesn’t know it until she’s forced to cross the fold and one of its nightmarish creatures is about to kill her beloved Mal, drawing out her latent powers in a moment of desperation. The sudden burst of energy and light as she intercedes is so powerful that it’s spotted for miles outside the Fold, and soon survivors of the ill-fated ship arrive at the docks, telling of a woman who can call upon the power of the sun.

alinastarkov — Alina Starkov, an orphan who occupies a lowly position as an assistant cartographer in the Ravkan army, learns she has the ability to summon the power of the sun.

In the series, Alina and her friends are aged up and appear as young adults. Mercifully, Shadow & Bone doesn’t mirror its genre’s traditional portrayal of adults as idiots, and unlike other big-time YA franchises, like Veronica Roth’s incoherent Divergent series, it doesn’t ask its audience to buy into an absurd society. Novelist Leigh Bardugo has clearly put a lot of thought and research into crafting her fictional universe. There’s rich lore, varied nations with their own distinct customs, prejudices and beliefs, a believable economy and conflict perpetuated by very human motivations and circumstances. Most of the characters we meet are just trying to get on with their lives and are caught up in the central drama.

Alina, played by 26-year-old British actress Jessie Mei Li, is mixed race, part Ravkan and part Shu. Shu Han, a nation based loosely on dynastic China and the Middle East, is in a perpetual state of conflict with Ravka, and Alina’s Shu appearance makes her the object of disdain, ridicule and ignorance even among her countrymen.

“I was told she was Shu,” the queen says in a later scene, when Alina is presented to the royal family and the court of Ravka for the first time. “I guess she’s Shu enough. Tell her… Oh, I don’t know, ‘Good morning.'”

Alina speaks up before a man by the queen’s side can translate.

“I don’t actually speak Shu, your highness,” she says.

“Then what are you?” the queen asks.

There’s a long pause, with Alina clearly unsure how to answer, before General Kirigin steps in.

“She is Alina Starkov, the Sun Summoner, moya tsaritsa,” Kirigin says. “She will change the future. Starting now.”

And with that, Kirigin claps his hands, enveloping the throne room in unnatural gloom with his shadow-manipulating ability. He turns to Alina, takes her hand, and there’s an eruption of ethereal light so powerful that the assembled aristocrats, guards and Grisha gasp and shield their eyes. The light solidifies into a bubble around Alina and Kirigin, its elements twinkling and orbiting them like stars, and the overjoyed king is convinced his nation has indeed finally found the prophesied Sun Summoner.

Becoming the Sun Summoner isn’t all flowers and rainbows. Alina feels the weight of expectations upon her. The king of Ravka is impatient for her to learn to control her newfound powers so she can tear down The Fold. Ravka’s aristocrats, as well as ambassadors and powerful figures from other countries, initially suspect she’s a fraud. Regular people, who have suffered the most from The Fold’s impact on Ravka, begin to venerate her as a living saint. And there are plenty of people who don’t want her to succeed or see her existence as a way to profit.

Shadow and Bone also has a parallel narrative following three lovable rogues from Ketterdam, an island nation west of Ravka. It’s clear early on that their journey will intersect with Alina’s at some point, but the series never feels predictable in the way the characters approach that point.

The Ketterdam trio, who call themselves the Crows, are led by Kaz, the owner of a tavern-slash-gambling den called the Crow Club. Kaz is practical, calculating and focused on making money, legitimately or not. Inej is another orphan of the Fold who was sold to a brothel in her early teens. She was bought out by Kaz, who recognized her intelligence, her light step and her talent for spying. Last but not least is Jesper, a wise-cracking, life-loving and fiercely loyal friend with uncanny sharpshooting abilities.

The Crows are the source of much of the series’ humor, despite being criminals and despite all of them having painful pasts. Jesper in particular is known for his wisecracks and his relentless, single-minded obsession with hiring “a demo man” — an explosives expert — for every job they do, regardless of whether the gig calls for it.

“Boss, I think we need a demo man for this one,” he tells Kaz at one point.

Kaz points out that the nature of their job is stealth, and the whole purpose is to get in and out without being heard or seen. You can almost see the gears moving in Jesper’s head as he thinks up reasons why they do, in fact, need someone to blow things up.

When word of the Sun Summoner’s appearance spreads to every corner of Shadow and Bone’s universe, the Crows catch wind of a contract offering a fortune to anyone who can abduct the Sun Summoner and bring her to Ketterdam.

Kaz believes the Sun Summoner is a hoax and views the job as a simple transaction, while Inej holds out hope that she’s the real deal, and if she is, the prospect of kidnapping a living saint weighs heavily on her conscience. Jesper is just content to go wherever there’s alcohol and explosions.

A great strength of the series is that it begins from a familiar place and manages to regularly subvert expectations.

The production values are exceptional, and it appears Netflix spared no expense bringing Bardugo’s world to life. Ravka, Ketterdam and Novokribirsk feel like real places inhabited by real people, with authentic differences in culture, manner of speaking, dress and even the way they count money.

From imperial courts to military camps to the seedy underbellies of Ketterdam drinking clubs, the world feels like it continues to exist long after we turn our televisions off.

The first season takes several wild turns, which I won’t detail here because it’s very much worth watching, especially now: The long-awaited second season comes to Netflix on March 16, promising to expand on a series already bursting with lovable characters, thrilling adventures and political intrigue.

Of course all epic TV series will eventually be compared to the juggernaut that started it all. Shadow and Bone never tries to be Game of Thrones, and it doesn’t need to be — the first season carved out the show’s unique identity, and season two promises to make the world even bigger and more adventurous.

Buddy’s rating: 5/5 paws

PITB Reviews, pop culture, technology, TV December 9, 2022

PITB Reviews: ‘The Peripheral’ Is A Refreshingly Original Science Fiction Thriller

Amazon’s newest big-budget prestige drama, The Peripheral, imagines a near future when technology has become even more deeply embedded in every day life.

Flynne Fisher (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a young woman who lives in North Carolina’s rural Blue Ridge Mountains, works in a 3D print shop by day and plays virtual reality games by night.

The story is set a decade from now in 2032, and while Flynne’s brother, Burton (Jack Reynor), plays startlingly realistic VR games for fun, Flynne plays them for money. Although Burton is a former United States Marine Corps infantryman and war veteran, his sister is the superior player when it comes to video games, and she’s so good that well-heeled players across the world pay her to carry them through high-difficulty levels.

If that seems fanciful, consider that it already happens in real life: some people fork over big bucks to highly skilled players who can help them win in multiplayer video games like Fortnite, or run them through the most challenging missions in online role playing games to get coveted in-game gear.

Flynne’s side hustle allows her to afford expensive medication for her sickly mother. Apparently in 2032, Democrats and Republicans are still squabbling over how to pass meaningful prescription drug reforms while remaining in the good graces of the corporate behemoths who finance their campaigns. Some things never change.

When a Colombian company called Milagros Coldiron offers Flynne a hefty chunk of change to beta test their newest game — and the incredibly immersive new headset it comes with — Flynne thinks she’s just taking a lucrative but routine job, one that will help pay for her mom’s meds for at least a few weeks.

What she doesn’t know is that her life is going to change drastically the moment she steps into the newest form of virtual reality, revealing things about her world and herself that she never imagined.

There’s so much more to the story, and in fact we’ve barely scratched the surface, but The Peripheral is the kind of show best appreciated by knowing as little as possible going in.

The ambitious new series is based on a 2014 novel by technoprophet William Gibson of Neuromancer fame. Gibson envisioned the concept of cyberspace in 1981, more than a decade before the first mass market commercial dial-up services were available.

At the time, the idea of exploring almost photorealistic worlds in virtual reality was a radical new idea, and it took more than 35 years for technology to catch up by making it feasible. (We’re still not quite there yet. VR tech has improved by leaps and bounds, and we’re beginning to see the first deeply immersive VR games, but Mark Zuckerberg’s much-hyped version of the metaverse, for example, has fallen flat and been pilloried by press and players alike.)

By choosing to adapt Gibson’s work, Amazon has dipped into the largely untouched world of literary science fiction.

While the science fiction of movies and TV has been treading the same worn ground and returning to the same tired concepts for decades, SF novels are a rich source of astonishingly inventive big ideas, from the existential stories of Liu Cixin (The Three Body Problem) to the galaxy-spanning space opera of the late, great Iain M. Banks, to the gothic horror-tinged, wildly imaginative universe of Revelation Space by Welsh astrophysicist Alastair Reynolds.

Indeed, Netflix is developing a series based on The Three Body Problem, with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss taking the helm. Amazon has acquired the rights to Banks’ first Culture novel, and Netflix’s highly-praised anthology series Love, Death + Robots adapted two of Reynolds’ short stories as episodes.

Finally we’ve moved beyond the Alien clones, Star Wars sequels, prequels, spinoffs and crossovers, as well as the unfulfilling JJ Abrams mystery box offerings that have made up the bulk of live action science fiction on the big and small screens.

There are no candy-colored light swords in The Peripheral, nor are there spandex-clad superheroes or franchise installments designed with merchandise sales in mind. Instead, we get a story for adults, one that gives the audience a lot to think about while also holding a mirror up to our own world, as the best science fiction always does.

After all, technology changes but people don’t. Human nature is a constant. What we do with our shiny new toys says a lot about us as a species and civilization.

Reynor’s Burton connects to a VR world from his Airstream camper in The Peripheral, which is set primarily in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains and London, UK.

Gary Carr as Wilf Netherton and Chloe Grace Moretz as Flynne Fisher in The Peripheral.

Although The Peripheral begins with the comparatively low-stakes world of virtual reality, its scope rapidly expands until, by the end of the first episode, it becomes clear the show is asking its audience to grapple with existential questions about humanity and our future.

The Peripheral demands its audience’s full attention as it introduces concepts like the parallel universes of M-theory, nanotechnology and the idea that even if matter can’t be shifted between time and space, information in the form of photons can.

Gibson uses these heady concepts in his narrative sandbox, forcing his characters to consider wild concepts like the possibility that there may be infinite versions of themselves existing in infinite branching realities.

How would you react knowing there’s a version of yourself who chose to study classical literature and move to Athens, or a version who became a software programmer, authored a lucrative app and lives in a Manhattan penthouse? Can you imagine having a different wife or husband, or a different child? (Are there realities in which I am not the loyal and loving servant of Buddy? In that case, who is feeding him snacks, and are they doing it promptly?)

T’Nia Miller radiates malice as Cherise Nuland.

Of course, none of this stuff would matter without interesting characters and a compelling narrative. Moretz and Reynor have the chemistry of a real brother and sister in the way they regularly bicker but ultimately love each other. Eli Goree’s Connor is a man of wonderful paradoxes, and T’Nia Miller steals every scene she’s in as the delightfully malicious Cherise Nuland, an antagonist who loves making her enemies squirm while dispensing witticisms in cut glass RP.

For longtime SF fans, there’s another compelling reason to give the series a shot: Canadian writer-director Vincenzo Natali, best known for his mind-bending 1997 indie film Cube, is an executive producer and directs four of the season’s episodes. Natali is a pro at incorporating heady ideas in ways that enhance his narratives instead of weighing them down.

The first season just concluded, and you can stream all eight episodes on Amazon Prime. Bud and I are already looking forward to The Peripheral’s return.

cube-pic-6 — Cube writer-director Vincenzo Natali is behind the lens for half of The Peripheral’s episodes.

PITB Reviews, pop culture, TV shows January 25, 2022

PITB Reviews: Archive 81

Title: Archive 81
Showrunner: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Genre: Drama, horror
Medium: Netflix streaming

Archive 81 arrived just in time to help us through a content dead zone.

The Witcher’s excellent second season helped tide us over last month alongside Amazon’s not-so-great adaptation of The Wheel of Time, and critically-lauded The Expanse ended its six-year run on Jan. 14. Meanwhile, if network TV is your thing, the last few weeks of January through early February are filled with nothing but reruns as networks are loath to put any original content up against the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl.

Enter Archive 81: A story that promises mystery, Lovecraftian horror and a heavy dose of 90s nostalgia.

Our protagonist is Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie), an analog enthusiast who makes a living restoring vintage media (VHS, cassette, Betamax and anything else pre-DVD), and spends his off hours crate-digging for rare recordings.

We meet Dan as he’s looking through recently-acquired VHS tapes at a street vendor’s stall in Manhattan.

“You know last month you sold me 16 hours’ worth of a T-ball tournament, yeah?” Dan asks.

“Yeah. But also, I sold you an uncut version of Phantasmagoria off channel 7,” his street vendor friend says. “That’s unreleased and very rare.”

When Dan balks at buying a box of random tapes, his vendor friend appeals to the hobbyist in him.”Look,” he says, “I know you love the hunt.”

“The hunt” he’s referring to is the obsessive drive that prompts collectors of all types to sift through yard sales, estate auctions and abandoned storage units. It’s the thrill of opening the unknown with the knowledge that most of it will be junk, but every once in a while a nondescript box will hold a rare gem.

It’s the thrill of the hunt that leads Dan to accept an archiving gig from a secretive company despite concerning red flags.

The job is to restore an archive of video cassettes scavenged from the charred ruins of a Manhattan apartment building called the Visser that burned to the ground in 1994. No one survived the building-consuming fire, and Dan’s employers believe the tapes could shed light on how the fire started as well as the people who lost their lives.

51830126744_58e4390572_o — Dan finds himself increasingly invested in the story of Melody Pendras, who lived on the Visser’s fourth floor before the building was destroyed by fire. Credit: Netflix

Archive-81-tapes-e1642861568554 — Dan is hired by a company to restore fire-damaged cassettes that could contain important clues about a 1994 fire that destroyed an apartment building in Manhattan. Credit: Netflix

The company offers Dan a particularly generous fee for restoring and digitizing the footage, with the caveat that for the duration of the project he has to work out of a company-owned compound in the Catskills, a few hours’ drive north of New York City.

Dan accepts and it doesn’t take long for him to become engrossed in the content of the tapes he’s restoring. The collection of cassettes was shot by a young woman named Melody Pendras who moves into the historic and creepy Visser Building, ostensibly to interview its residents for a dissertation she’s doing on the strange history of the high rise.

With each cassette Dan restores and digitizes, a new chapter of Melody’s time at the Visser is revealed, and it becomes increasingly apparent that something is very wrong with the building and the people who inhabit it.

Think Ghostbusters and 55 Central Park West, also known as “Spook Central.” In the 1984 hit, 55 Central Park West’s bizarre design choices came courtesy of an architect who was heavily into the occult, and he built the high rise to serve as some sort of supernatural antenna for spirits from another dimension. The Visser has similar origins, although the details are best left unspoiled.

Archive 81 — There’s something creepy going on in the Visser’s basement community room. Credit: Netflix

As Dan becomes increasingly invested in Melody’s story he begins to feel the effects of isolation, living in the brutalist compound that houses the repair studio and a cavernous living space. He’s not allowed visitors, as the content of the tapes are supposed to be confidential, he doesn’t get cell service and he begins to suspect the landline is tapped.

With a history of mental illness, Dan isn’t sure if he’s imagining things when he realizes someone else may be in the compound, and his paranoia is stoked by the discovery of journals that indicate he wasn’t the first archivist to work in the isolated building.

To make matters worse, he begins to experience vivid dreams in which he’s speaking directly to Melody — and she’s clearly in trouble, calling for help across almost three decades.

Archive 81 is guilty of the so-called “mystery box” narrative format popularized by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof with Lost. The pair provided a template to string viewers along by unraveling just enough of the central mystery in each episode to keep viewers hooked, but as Lost proved, the mystery box form only succeeds in pissing the audience off if there’s not a solid pay-off at the end.

While Abrams and Lindelof dragged out Lost’s narrative and winged its conclusion to much derision, Archive 81’s Rebecca Sonnenshine clearly mapped out her story from start to finish. Momentum builds over eight roughly hour-long episodes until things escalate quickly toward the end. While I’m still not sure how I feel about the way things concluded, Sonnenshine’s story provides answers to most of the burning questions that pop up over the season’s run, and leaves just enough of a cliffhanger for a potential sequel. (And judging by the show’s several-week run atop Netflix’s charts, we probably will see at least another season.)

You could argue that mystery is baked into the genre: Archive 81 is a drama with elements of horror, but it doesn’t rely on jump scares. It avoids many of the latter genre’s most worn-out tropes while embracing others, layering the narrative with an ever-increasing sense of dread. It’s a clear attempt at high-concept horror.

There’s not much in the show to dissuade the squeamish and the writers are more concerned with exploring their characters than trying to freak viewers out. All the same, whether you enjoy the series or not probably depends heavily on how you feel about the genre. If you’re game for something a little dark, Archive 81 isn’t a bad way to spend a week’s worth of frigid January or February nights.

Buddy’s Verdict: 3 1/2 Paws Out Of Five:

Big Buddy’s Verdict: Recommended

pop culture, Review, TV shows January 13, 2022

PITB Reviews: Lost In Space (Netflix)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Netflix’s reboot of Lost In Space.

Would it hew closely to the brightly-colored 1960s original in all its cheesy glory? Would it aim for a darker tone, as so many television series do these days? Would it be a low-effort nostalgia cash-in like so many ill-advised reboots of the past decade? And would the series, which was slated to keep things PG, have enough going on to appeal to adults as well as kids?

With Netflix delivering the third and final season last month, my verdict is in: Lost In Space is the rare worthy reboot, a visually spectacular retelling of the original that tweaks and modernizes the details in all the right places. There’s a generous amount of adventure, quiet character moments, and an overarching theme about the importance of family. Over the course of the story, the latter group that widens to include not only the Robinsons but also their closest friends who brave the cosmic dangers alongside them.

Speaking of danger, the original show’s most-used catchphrase — the robot’s “Danger, Will Robinson!” — will be familiar to almost anyone, even those of us who were born in the decades after the show went off the air. It’s become part of the pop cultural fabric.

In the original Lost In Space the Robot is a human-engineered tin can, a 1960s retrofuturistic vision of what sentient machines might look like that was dreamed up at a time when servers occupied entire rooms and a computer’s output came in the form of punch cards.

In the reboot, the Robot is an alien intelligence: a towering, six-limbed, digitigrade machine with an inscrutable face and serrated claws. Where the 1960s Robot was risible, the reboot Robot is terrifying in its default form — until a brave Will Robinson, who encounters it after crash landing on an unnamed planet, helps the dying machine repair itself.

He does so as a raging fire engulfs the forest around them, reasoning that he can’t escape, but perhaps the robot can.

The curious Robot, awash with gratitude, immediately rescues Will and, on safe ground, studies the boy for a moment before rearranging itself into an androform shape to mirror Will. From that point on, boy and Robot become inseparable.

Lost In Space: Will Robinson and the Robot — The Robot and Will Robinson form a mysterious bond, with the machine becoming fiercely protective of the boy.

It’s Robot who gets the Robinson family out of trouble in the first episode and many times over subsequent installments, earning the trust and eventually the love of the Robinson family, their friend, mechanic Don West (Ignacio Serricchio), and the mercurial Dr. Smith (Parker Posey).

It’s a credit to the writers and visual effects team that the series appeals to kids as well as adults. I watched the first episode with my eight-year-old niece, who’s younger than the target audience. She was absorbed in the story, her attention beginning to wane only during moments of expository dialogue.

The series is probably better suited for kids at 11 or 12 years old, as there are some relatively heady science fiction concepts and subsequent episodes range from PG to PG-13ish.

There’s no sex, the relatively little violence happens off camera, and the narrative regularly stresses the importance of family. Will, his sisters Penny and Judy, and the Robinson parents all rely on each other to meet challenges. There are, however, adult themes like divorce and near-death experiences, and occasional bad language which never gets more profane than Dr. Smith derisively calling Don West out on his “bullshit” in one episode.

penny — Judy (Taylor Russell) and Penny (Mina Sundwall) play important parts in the narrative and bring different skills to the table.

The show takes off right away and delivers excitement and mystery, but it takes a little while to find its rhythm, with early episodes following a “crisis of the hour” format more suited to episodic television. The writers were clearly trying to convey the power of the united Robinson family, and how each member brings different skills and ways of thinking to the table, but the show is at its best when storylines work in service to the overarching narrative.

Mom Maureen is a brilliant engineer who designed the colony starship Resolute and its Jupiter landers. Dad John Robinson is a former Navy SEAL, a man of action who encourages his children to make bold choices. Eldest daughter Judy Robinson is a young medical doctor who, despite her obvious talent, often feels she has something to prove. Her younger sister, Penny, is the least scientifically-minded member of the family. Penny’s better with people, serving as a peacemaker and scribe who documents the Robinson family’s adventures.

Last but not least, young Will Robinson is a dreamer who marvels at alien worlds and distant stars, and takes after his mom in scientific aptitude. He becomes something of a legend among the colonists for his inexplicable bond with Robot, who is extremely protective of the boy.

Lost In Space: The Resolute — The Resolute is attacked en route to Alpha Centauri, forcing its passengers to flee to their Jupiter “lifeboats” and make emergency landings on a nearby planet.

Of course there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell if the Robinsons and the other colonists simply made it to the idyllic colony at Alpha Centauri without incident. It turns out the colonists fled the Resolute — and crash landed on an inhospitable planet — because Robot’s brethren attacked the ship.

Although the viewers are shown the act of kindness that sparks the bond between Will and Robot, the other colonists aren’t as trusting once they realize Will’s seven-foot-tall protector came from the same place as the murderous machines that attacked the Resolute. Dr. Smith also has her own designs on the mysterious Robot, and the Resolute’s crew has been hiding a secret from its passengers that will come back to haunt them.

Can the colonists survive on a dangerous world without the resources they need? Will they ever reach Alpha Centauri?

Why did the robots attack the colony ship? What do they want from humans? And who made them?

Those are the questions at the heart of the mystery, but the characters can’t hope to answer them if they’re stranded on a hostile alien world.

Netflix spared no expense with Lost In Space and the writers clearly had a complete vision for the story, wrapping it up in just three seasons over the course of 28 roughly hour-long episodes. (The first two seasons had 10 episodes each, while the final season had only eight.)

In a sea of Netflix content, Lost In Space stands out as one of the streaming giant’s best original shows, especially for fans of science fiction and parents looking for a show they can watch with their kids.

Buddy’s Verdict: Four Paws out of Five

Big Buddy’s Verdict: Recommended

Lost In Space: The Robinsons — Will Robinson, front, with Dr. Smith, Judy, Robot, Penny and Maureen Robinson.

Movies, PITB Reviews November 30, 2021November 30, 2021

PITB Reviews: The Platform

Movie: The Platform (2020)
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Genre: Horror, social commentary
Medium: Netflix

The premise of The Platform is simple: A man wakes up in a concrete prison cell. The center of the cell is dominated by rectangular gaps in the floor and ceiling, and when our protagonist warily steps closer he can see levels of identical cells above and below him. The cells extend as far as the eye can see in both directions, each populated by two prisoners.

Every day, a platform is lowered level-by-level, laden with a massive feast: Meats, wine, cheese, bread, cake, soup, pie, fish, escargot, paella, salads, grapes, apples and other fresh fruit, vegetables, juice. Every kind of food you can imagine, cooked and prepared to perfection by professional chefs.

Goreng, our protagonist, is greeted by his cell mate, a kindly old man named Trimagasi who sits down next to the edge of the hole in the floor in anticipation of the platform’s arrival. When it descends to their level he pigs out, shoveling as much food as he can into his mouth before a buzzer sounds and the platform descends another level.

Goreng looks on, digusted: The food is scattered all over the platform, much of it half-eaten. Clearly, these are someone’s disgusting leftovers.

Trimagasi urges Goreng to eat, and explains that they are very fortunate indeed: At level 48 there’s still enough food leftover from the prisoners on the 47 levels above that they won’t starve this month. At the end of every month, he says, each pair of cellmates are put to sleep with gas and wake up on a new level that is chosen at random by the people operating the cruel social experiment.

Trimagasi tells Goreng he once spent a month on level 132, where not a scrap of food is left by the time the platform descends. Goreng asks the old man how he survived, and Trimagasi demures.

We also learn that Goreng voluntarily entered in exchange for a real-world opportunity promised to him after he spends six months inside. Trimagasi was sent there as punishment: Infuriated by a TV commercial for a self-sharpening knife called the Samurai Plus after he’d just purchased a knife sharpening kit, Trimagasi threw his TV out of his window and unintentionally killed an illegal immigrant who was riding a bicycle below. He’s approaching the end of his two-year sentence in what the authorities call the VSC, short for Vertical Self-management Center.

Each prisoner is allowed to take one item with them inside: Goreng takes a copy of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, harboring romantic notions of finally reading the book with his time in the prison. Trimagasi, who loves to use the word “obviously,” told Goreng his choice of item was obvious: His prized Samurai Plus, which he cradles lovingly as he boasts about how it can cut concrete without dulling.

Goreng puts two and two together, realizing how Trimagasi survived on level 132.

The Platform is a blunt allegory for human civilization, specifically the enormous wealth disparities of modern societies. The occupants of level 1 are the Jeff Bezoses and Walton families of the world, people with unimaginable, multigenerational wealth pigging out on life’s resources without thinking of the starving street children of India, the homeless of cities like New York and San Francisco, the families in North Korea eating tree bark.

Some reviewers think it’s a critique of capitalism, but I think it’s more universal than that: The kleptocrats of countries like Mexico, Russia and Brazil, the monarchies and emirates of the Middle East, and the party bigwigs of communist countries like China pig out on their own respective first levels while the people 130 “levels” down starve just the same.

The rest of us? We’re in the 30s, 40s and 50s, happily scarfing down the scraps from above, the ad revenue the Zuckerbergs and Pichais allow us by their forbearance, the slightly comfortable salaries allowed by corporate shareholders, the house and garage we might enjoy if we’re fortunate enough to run a successful small business in an industry that hasn’t been pillaged by the multinationals yet.

Looking down at the levels below in The Platform.

A plan to preserve food for the lower levels by force.

Trimigasi with his beloved Samurai Plus.

A poster for the Japanese release of The Platform. Credit: Netflix

Some people might find the movie heavy-handed, but I don’t see it that way. As uncomfortable as it is to watch at times, reality is much, much worse. The fact that some of the movie’s scenes are difficult to watch is testament to how lucky we are to be born in circumstances where that kind of suffering isn’t part of our experience, let alone our daily lives. Show The Platform to one of the handful of people to ever escape a North Korean hard labor camp, for instance, and they probably won’t even blink.

It also shows how our betters divide and conquer to keep the rest of us distracted and themselves secure. The idea that most people who receive social services are lazy bums is a popular one in some quarters, encouraging people not to have empathy for the less well off, but to loathe them. Likewise, the people occupying the higher floors of The Platform’s prison don’t feel sorry for those beneath them. In one scene, two cellmates tell a man they’ll help him ascend to their floor, then literally shit on him as he’s just within reach, cackling with delight as he falls.

I didn’t take it as a call for socialism either. The movie makes it pretty clear that neither asking people to moderate their consumption, nor trying to enforce sharing works out for the people who try those methods. Indeed when socialism has worked in real world circumstances, it’s been part of a hybrid model that still uses capitalism as its economic engine.

Mostly, The Platform exists to make people think. While Jeff Bezos goes to sleep tonight in his $50 million compound estate, dreaming of his next vanity flight to low Earth orbit or the next hypercar he’s going to buy, there’s someone shivering on a park bench with 15 cents in their pocket, stomach grumbling, knowing the people who pass them by every day don’t even see them as human.