Sadly Over-hyped

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I have viewed this film a few times now and continue to be amazed at the locations that were used for this film. It gives it such an apocalyptic feel through the entire movie. It enhances the believability that the wayfaring strangers, Leif and Emri, find each other among the solitude and choose to travel as partners. The characters are alone and searching. Zack and Glenn's very well done performances allow the viewer to feel for their internal struggles as well as external. Michael Williams, the director and writer of the film is so talented. After watching the film with others it was extremely interesting to hear what thought provoking dialogue it brought up as a discussion among the viewers. Not only were we critiquing the film, but discussing beliefs and feelings that the film generated.

A beautiful tale of people dealing with a dark and barren wasteland in post apocalyptic Earth. When a book about Oz is found one of them uses it to dream and hope for better things. The older of the the two looks at life through jaundiced eyes and hunts for the woman he wants to find and share his life. They see the same things but one through the emerald colored glasses of Oz with strange and exciting creatures and the other through eyes that can find nothing but fear and loss. The cinematography is beautiful with shots that show how very lovely and yet bleak their world is. I'll give nothing away but leave you to enjoy this film with fresh eyes and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

I got this on the strength of the IMDb rating and then realised that it was simply yet another Australian film with paid reviewers slamming in the tens for it. I'm actually not sure any of the other reviewers who rated it so highly have actually even seen it.But there you are. You make an independent film in Australia and part of the budget has to go to pay reviewers so that other unsuspecting people will watch it. That money would have been so much better used if it had actually been put into the production.A tip: the more the reviewer mentions who directed it, starred in it, did the effects in it, or any other name in it, the more you know it's a put-up job. Tired of these people and will make sure not to watch anything else from Australia that doesn't appear in my local cinema.

The idea of this movie is in a way an interesting one since it basically puts this book "The Wizard of OZ" as a religion believed in so passionately by Lief that he believes that Ozland (a children's story) is an actual place and defends this belief throughout the movie; even when his friend and companion keeps trying to be the voice of reason to this kid .who isn't a kid in age but his mentality is that of a child.It's a very good idea; I mean even believable in theory. Take a post apocalyptic setting and with no trace of other Humans except for our two main characters. I mean it's not hard to see that the idea of something like a book like that could be such a huge influence for certain people who just need a break from the very harsh reality that is their life. Survival is the only things that these two exist for; one day after the other, surviving. Not much silver lining going on and both of the characters have some way of coping; both use their imagination as an escape. However, one goes a bit further and starts to have some moments where every chapter he goes through there are things that he believes to be some sort of similarity between the book and his life. I'm sure this can also in some ways be viewed differently depending on if you are a "glass half full" or "half empty" type of person. For the dreamers that view this movie; the directors intent is to have them lean in favor for Lief's ideas. For those of us that see the more realistic viewpoint we will see things through Emril's viewpoint. (think that's how you spell his name)Now in theory this is a very great concept and the story itself isn't horrible although towards the ending it gets a bit predictable. The problems here however, are the actors abilities along with the story taking much too long to get to worthy events that capture the viewers attention. I can look past the slower pacing and even the actors being sub-par (that is being generous). However the pretentious nature of the directing and script is what kills this movie. The director/writer is trying SO hard to show how talented they are that they make drastically over-simplistic settings appear to be over- exaggerated. I have never seen a movie like this where it's set in the future, you get extremely rustic settings (think 1890 farmland) and then somehow trying to sell that visually you are making this to be a visual beauty when every setting is the same. The pacing is god awful, I don't find that many people will finish this movie unless they are just movie critics watching it to tell everyone else to stay away from it.This is why it's not recommended for 1 person to do so much with the filming of a movie. This is like if Birdman's Michael Keaton character was REAL and actually made a movie trying to show off his skills to everyone else. The pretentious-ness is so dripping off of every frame. The acting itself, well; it's bad, it's SO bad that it almost makes this movies director/writer/producer look GOOD, that's how bad this movie is and I almost think that they were cast specifically to NOT take away from this person trying to be a triple threat behind the camera. Idea is good, solid original idea which is what caught my attentionEverything else however is either sub par or well below par or over done /over produced, under-directed actors but over directed settings. I wrote this because whatever that review is on the page that has like 9/10 stars and PRAISES this movie, it has got to be someone on the cast of that film or the writer/director/producer themselves trying to talk up the movie. Stay away from this movie, even if the idea sounds neat; it's not worth the nearly 2 hour run time, the horrible acting and directing and i didn't talk about the ending but WOW dripping with bull crap like the guy couldn't find a way to end the damn movie (nearly 2 hrs of nothing) and then just said OK and gave the most cheesy ugly anti-everything climatic ending in the history of film!