Author: csabavarga

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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.

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Ela Minus – Día

This woman has been keeping me mesmerized for about a month now. I stumbled upon Upwards randomly and can’t not listen to this album all the time.

Her music has a strong kinship with electropop classics that have this eerie vocal nature to them, like The Knife. However, her personal character, creativity, and connection to the hardware aspect of electronic music production gives me strong Björk vibes, too. And yet, she’s definitely her own thing: it’s not like I get reminded of these other performers and I get back to listen to those, but I stick with Ela’s album and keep listening this.

Beyond the fantastic music her lyrics are also so smart and interesting and artistic. There’s message to be told, layers of ideas to unfold. I don’t even know when was the last time I was looking up and reading lyrics for an electronic music record to understand properly all it has to say.

I do believe this is an album to mark and remember. I’d love to have it on vinyl and put it on display as one of the milestones of this year.

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Strange Darling (2023)

Right at the beginning I thought the non-linear structure either makes sense for the movie or it’s just a cheap gimmick. And it did make a lot of sense, served the whole tension and narrative amazingly well. It’s great writing and directing. There are a few cheesy elements that emit something like a Tarantino homage feeling, and it would be a better film without those, however, I don’t think those define this movie.

Those few extended shots with Fitzgerald keeping posture and acting out a long slow scene are just as hard to watch as they are wonderfully acted.

It took a while to see the twist coming. The greatest thing is that for a long period of time I was just not sure. I know there was something going on but didn’t quite know how it will play out exactly. And how that non-linearity converges me closer and closer to that solution is why this structure works wonders for this movie.