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Messa – The Spin

It’s dark like gothic but not black metal or post-punk goth, it’s well-crafted musically but not over the top progressive metal, it’s slow in tempo but not at all doom or sludge. I was a bit confused when they listed things like jazz and dark ambient in their influences, and then, the track The Dress goes into a full-on jazz depart before jumping into a cinematic transition and ending up with a fantastic solo and then the crystal clear vocals arrive… They really have it all. Still, it’s not a mish-mash of things but a perfect amalgamation and genre-bending.

Overall, Messa is just one of those most eclectic dark rock bands that put the sweetest sorrow in my throat. And The Spin is a beautiful album, gives me shivers over and over again. I can easily listen to this on repeat.

Update: I’ve just listened to the previous albums of Messa and now it’s clear why they mention stuff like drone, dark ambient, doom, or stoner as references for their music. There are actual full tracks with these aesthetics on earlier records. However, I think The Spin is a lot more evolved and cleaner version of their sound. It’s not so much all these styles living side-by-side anymore but having a great blend of these sources into one coherent voice.

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Flow (2024)

It was a rather unique and nice journey. Coming out of the cinema we had somewhat different ideas about the setting, but that’s exactly what makes this feel fresh: it’s up for interpretations and metaphors, and it’s interesting to discuss the different ideas.

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Marie Davidson – City Of Clowns

It’s this fringe kind of electronic music, with an electro aesthetic, electroclash perhaps. It’s exciting and interesting and has things to say, feels fresh and different. It has become my third big thing that I’ve stumbled upon in 2025 (after Heartworms and Ela Minus).

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Z for Zachariah (2015)

I find it fascinating when I find such random movies that I’ve never heard of and there are actual A-list lead actors in it. Although it’s a pretty narrowly scoped setting, pretty much like a chamber drama but in an open world setting, so they didn’t have to spend on a whole lot more.

In any case, this is an absolutely fine little film. It has a post-apocalyptic backdrop but it’s a super simple love triangle flick, so any sci-fi setting is just flavor that doesn’t really have an impact on what happens. And as simple as it is, it gave me just enough ambiguity to look up thread on Reddit and find that there are different views on how the whole thing ends even. I like these kind of tightly focused movies that give a lot more than what they seem to offer.

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

I remember my father having this on VHS when I was a kid but I’ve never rewatched it since then as an adult. Having seen this now in 2025, my definition is: it’s Red Dead Redemption – The Movie. It’s a fantastic, entertaining, and light-hearted western flick. Robert Redford is at peak here.

Random fun fact to realize that this received an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head. I would have never guessed that song was written for a movie.

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My Old Ass (2024)

This was so much better than what I had expected. I expected a Friday night semi-dumb rom-com, and what I got was an entertaining and kind coming of age movie. It’s a solid 7/10.

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Adolescence (2025)

This is a masterpiece in storytelling, and I don’t mean the one-shot setup (that’s another master-of-craft aspect though) but how my understanding got built up during the episodes. First the police’s actions seem unrealistically harsh, I couldn’t quite figure out the investigators’ take (are they angry, do they have a personal angle, should they have those things), but then as the backstory develops and more shades of colors get added things fall more in place. By the end it’s just the shock and the question marks remain.

My overall take is that it’s not one person to be blamed for all that happened. It’s not the boy had issues or the parents were shitty. It’s the amalgamation of all those parts: the boy being somewhat troubled, the parents being distanced, communication in the family not happening, social media putting petty mocking under a magnifying glass, children being mean and cruel to each other, education on the use and handling of internet being non-existent, consequences of actions not being understood, and a lot more.

It’s gotta be tough like rock to be a parent these days, that’s for sure.

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The Whale (2022)

I mostly read that people think it’s a okay movie with an amazing lead actor. My take is the opposite: I think this is great acting directed amazingly well. I’m a fan of Aronofsky anyway, so there’s that, but it was his choices for the vision of this film that made it stand out for me. By the end I settled on a 6/10 “okay” score overall, which climbed to a 7 because of how beautifully he portrayed the very last scene specifically.