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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.

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Music by John Williams (2024)

Beautiful documentary, it warmed my heart to see the friendship between Williams and Spielberg. We were humming every single tune, it’s such a nice trip. And it’s not just a journey through cinema history but also my soundtracks of my life, as I grew up with all this.

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Dark Star (1974)

This movie was hilarious, I loved it. It’s old and shitty, well, it’s a university project that made it into a flick, but every second is just gold. All of its ideas and jokes are ones that I want to tell people about while remembering the scenes.

The more I learned about the background of this, the more it solidified for me that this is a movie history gem: first film by Carpenter (not a horror but a comedy), first writing by Dan O’Bannon (who then turned it into a serious tone and wrote Alien).

It is also a perfect film club flick: there’s a lot to talk about and must be a blast to watch with an interested crowd or a group of friends.

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25th Hour (2002)

This move conveys feelings in an amazing way, it makes me feel stuff. I am so sorry for the guy, but then there’s the “actions and consequences” aspect, but somehow I’m still rooting for him so that maybe there’s some kind of hope… At the end, coming back from that fantasy of “what if” I so felt his pain and fear of what’s coming next. Fantastic direction by Spike Lee.

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Dear Omen – The S Tapes

I went to see a science lecture and there was a band playing before, that was Dear Omens. It’s hard to describe the experience when a bunch of science nerds are waiting for a speech about brain functions and what they get is a stage lit with candles, faces painted white, and loud full-on goth rock in their faces.

Besides being extremely surprising, it was also an amazing performance and absolutely impressive music. Listening to the record brings back the memories and it’s a great album, even if a short one. I’m happy that I can remember Fay Ruza’s absolutely commanding stage presence while listening to the songs, that definitely gives the experience an extra edge.