Memory keeper. Mostly music, some movies, series, video games. Obscure darkness meets pop culture glow.
Such a great premise, it’s hilarious and fun. The lead-up about how the tapes get wiped is so unnecessarily over the top, but already sets the tone for what level of ridiculous one should expect. It’s also funny and full of heart. This is a new entry on my favorites list.
It was interesting how old school, physical-looking, slow-moving kaiju met top-notch, realistic, modern visual effects. Also, great angle to look at the post-war Japan’s life as drama weaved into a monster movie.
I loved to see Aubrey Plaza in a drama role, and both her and Theo Rossi killed it in terms of performance. The movie wasn’t an extremely deep ride but rather a “moment in life” thing, but it’s a really good one for what it is.
There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.
What’s going for it:
What felt hmm:
I’ve been planning to watch this for a long-long time, finally did, and it was exactly everything I expected and wanted it to be. Beautiful and atmospheric sci-fi chamber drama with a very specific and narrow focus, which it executed and delivered brilliantly. Acting, music, direction, cinematography were all spot-on.
I read the book last year and I know exactly how much of that is in here and what the movie misses, and I have no problem with that. I don’t think this movie misses the science part of the fiction for the sake of delivering a space love drama. I think all the science aspect is in there but portrayed differently, focusing on the protagonist’s journey. The same is in the book too, but with a different focus, so this part is not spelled out that much. I loved both takes on the story: the book is great and fascinating, and the movie is captivating and beautiful.
I have another case of Moon on my hands when I listen to the soundtrack album a million times before seeing the movie. This is the best original score by Reznor and Ross since The Social Network, by far. The mixed version is also a blast.
What I realized thinking back and looking at Last.fm stats is that I relisten albums extremely rarely in the past few years. I keep pouring new music to my “listening todo list”, and it’s like a never ending chore trying to chew threw it. So if I came across something great, I was happy that I did, but still I rushed onwards to the next one. I picked the most listened albums from the past year below that I had some standout memories of, but I’m sure there were at least a hundred that I loved but don’t even remember.
I want to change this next year, and consciously keep some great albums on repeat for longer. Perhaps take more walks or bike rides with just music playing, instead of this year’s podcast and audiobook craze that overtook my on the go listens. I was also toying with the idea of getting a MiniDisc player so that I can have some great albums as physical discs and stick to them like I did in the old days. Btw, I absolutely love the idea of an MD player, I’ve always regarded that as the single best disc format and never had the device itself. Just needs a bluetooth adapter for convenience, but otherwise it would be perfect.
Back to albums, the absolutely clear winner of the year is Strength by Unto Others. This one album got the replay treatment heavily. It spoke to me this year like nothing else.
I didn’t use the Last.fm export for the albums because I had a cyberpunk atmosphere music playlist that I played on repeat a lot and trashed my stats for the year. The playlist was partly playing during some Cyberpunk Red RPG sessions, but I also kept it running a lot on travels, especially when flying (that’s one I always have synced offline). I don’t think it’s representative of album plays, but for artists it makes sense—these were artists I loved to hear all year long.
It wasn’t an extremely packed year for live music, but the standout moments were strong.
When seeing Weval in Paradiso we climbed up to the second level balcony, which was pretty much completely empty at the beginning of the concert. We found a small bench and moved it right to the middle of the stage two stories high, sat down, and this is how we enjoyed the most amazing electronic music live act and visual show from the recent years. It was like some absolute royal treatment, we were literally laughing at how lucky we were. The music was a rollercoaster of genres and moods, building from idm through uptempo electro to breakcore. And the visuals were building with the show, it started from some extremely simple lights, and ended up with a full stage wide, intense animation. It was perfection.
This was the year when I first met Dr Rubinstein, during ADE, at the He.She.They party in Shelter, and it was love at first contact. That level of energy, impeccable taste in selection, perfection in dj technique, and complete control over the audience. It was a benchmark of a dj set on a level that I haven’t heard in years. Funny thing, I originally went there as a fanboy for Ellen Allien, and Rubinstein stole my heart.
I set out for this year with the determination that I want to watch more movies, and I did. I watched 97 movies, which comes down to about one movie every four days on average. All that while watching a couple of series, too, like binging through the entire catalogue of Bosch, and keeping up with some of the currently running shows. So yeah, this was an intense year for film. Now, as for what all those movies were… I wanted to take it easy, took on lots of lighthearted comedies, and went all in for adventure flicks. I guess it was all about compensating and keeping afloat while other parts of life were shit on occasion. Anyways, what it all comes down to is having seen lots of movies, checking off a bunch of Watchlist items, and getting positive energy, so I’m fine with what I had, even if my yearly average rating is not setting records.
Looking at the top list, it was mostly about random surprises. Again it got proven that my hunches work really well: seeing just a few shots from most of these movies I already knew I would love them, and I wasn’t disappointed. The colorful creativity of Three Thousand Years of Longing, the my kind of sci-fi atmosphere of Ad Astra, the nostalgia-infused hilarious entertainment of the Beastie Boys Story, the slowly building space horror of Life, the weirdo humor of They Cloned Tyrone, the jumpscareless gripping thrill of Talk To Me, the stunning art style of Entergalactic, the silent melancholy of The Midnight Sky were the most standing out. Interesting that none of these were well-advertised blockbusters, but they are far from being some kind of art house cinema, so what are these?
The Spidey animation is obviously the big screen one here, so that’s the line of demarcation, after which the complete randomness of my Watchlist kicks in.
Bosch had parked on my Watchlist for a few years now, and finally I took a stab at it, and one and a half months later I found myself done with seven seasons plus the Legacy series. I loved the flow of it and the stories, but in terms of art it couldn’t beat those other two.
Mrs Davis is like a spiritual successor to Dirk Gently—absolutely unhinged, every turn unexpected. I would love to say more, but I really can’t. It’s not an experience you describe. It’s something you show, if you want someone else to experience it.
Arcane killed my soul so that I literally had to build back. I actually had to take a pause of like two months at some point because it was just too much. It is an absolutely shockingly strong story that I am sure I have never seen in animation ever in my life (not to mention the surreal good art style), so I just had to finish it, but it literally took a toll. I was willing to pay, still. It’s like speeding to a chasm and you just cannot not be there for the ride if you know it exists.
I started taking walks during the day this year, to stand up from my desk more instead of working through eight hours straight just sitting still. This was when I realized audio dramas exist. These three were actually the first ones I listened to at full length, and I was shocked that this format exists on this level of quality. I also tried some others, but those didn’t stick.
Batman Unburied came out as the top one because it makes use of the format like no other. It is a piece of content specifically crafted for this medium, and since this was a new medium for me, it was extremely exciting to hear how it plays the notes of this format.
The Long Night on the other hand won me out with the atmosphere. It was like a new season of True Detective but audio.
Cyberpunk 2007 took me like three tries to get into it, and then suddenly 117 hours passed and I had a hard time getting out of it. I did all quests, side quests, gigs, every content and all endings of the original game. Great story, music, visuals, atmosphere, characters. Two things I loved most: the power fantasy and the open world.
A friend of mine said how much of a power fantasy this game is, and I realized how true that is. Sniping with a rifle, then running into action with parkour moves, dashing in air, splitting heads with a blade, quickhacking people and systems, and hearing your own cyberpsycho laugh, while industrial techno is pumping loud. It’s a mad cyberpunk fantasy dream.
And the world. What I loved most about the side quests and gigs was that they showed such corners of this city and what’s beyond it, that I would probably have never seen otherwise. I could discover depths, heights, entire sprawling micro-universes of their own, within, above, under, and outside the metropolis. The level of detail and the options to discover are insane.
Another one of those soundtracks that get me to watch a movie. Otherwise I’d probably pass on another film starring Barry Keoghan. But the music is another hit home by Benjamin John Power, he has never let me down so far. Tense, dark, full of stress, from ambient to pumping industrial electronics. I can hear those pictures of unease and emptiness, then running and fighting, I want to see that editing that’s based on these rhythms and sounds. I’d love to play it too, if this was a game soundtrack.
This movie has been on my radar and watch list for such a long time and randomly came across its soundtrack now, which just emphasized that I have to see this. Mysterious and eerie ambient, and also retro futuristic synthwave done right. Just listening to it visualizes the neon lights blinking through the mist in the thick forest at night. I love this atmosphere and aesthetic so very much.
The last time I listened to a soundtrack so many times before watching a movie was The Moon where I had already known all the cues by the time of actually connecting the sounds to visual images. But that was fun! Btw the other movie of Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) I have seen and it was hilarious and fascinating at the same time. So looking forward to Beyond The Black Rainbow, too.
Dark drone ambient. I wasn’t interested in this movie at all, but if this is the soundtrack (wtf?) I should really give it a shot.