Reviewed by Matt Burkett

Is there anything we can learn from Andres De La Hoz? Reading through pages of his reviews or manifestos or random threads about random things until our eyes bleed may lead to an answer--or a monster migraine.

Though as more people have come to see some meaning to his bitching and page long rants, it’s just plain easier to watch his work and realize that not all 3DMMing things must come in the form of Gorosaurian animation. But it doesn’t mean the quality of the film must suffer either. Instead, what Andres brings forward is a non-revolutionary, yet quite well crafted movie making style that, with a little effort, could be attained by just about anyone.

De La Hoz’ style is the style he’s been bitching the rest of the community to catch up on for the past few years.

With his newest (and possibly last) short film, Cycles, Andres continues to practice what he preaches, creating something like a groovy drug dream dipped in the style of PC game Black & White that is as svelte as Sniper @ Andres De La Hoz HQ and the upcoming Satanik.

Cycles is a story about a story; a fable about how a fantasy world was conceived by a god, Zorn (voiced by James Burgon) who puked his worshippers into existence and randomly squashed and zapped them for fun. Upon one of his zapping sprees, Zorn comes across Klux [sorry if I botched that name] (again voiced by Burgon) who stands up to the deity, rightfully complaining that Zorn is neither fair or just in his random spiting. The god takes offense and covers the world in darkness as punishment for Klux’s apparent “ungratefulness.”

Klux has no alternative but to swallow his pride and politely ask Zorn to quit tormenting his people. Zorn agrees to only if Klux can beat him in a foot race in a celestial realm. If Klux wins, Zorn will leave but a loss will cause Zorn to torture Klux and his people for the better part of an eternity.

The film is short and to the point with no excess baggage in its 68 scene runtime of pastel pinks and greens. Never a dull scene to look at or voice acting to listen to, it only suffers from being vaguely simple, though, considering that the narrative model is that of a fable, it is to be expected. Comments that this is somehow a religious satire are somewhat overstated. While the seeds are there, Cycles never exploits or even really attempts to dive into mockery of religion.

It’s interesting to note Cycles originally was a much longer “epic” entitled In Zorn’s Image. Speculation can only determine how that would have fared, but it’s plausible to consider that if it received the same De La Hoz treatment as Cycles, it would have turned out as amusing and interesting as this.

80 out of 100