What does it mean to live in the 21st Century? This is perhaps the thought bubble that Antoinette Jadaone’s Alone/Together stars Enrique Gil and Liza Soberano ponders as they position themselves as Tin and Raf, sitting on an infamous bench in UP Diliman, under those history-rich trees, looking over the
Category: Reviews
Bad Times at the El Royale, Hell is Other People
“Hell is other people.” Often quoted, frequently misrepresented, the phrase which originated from philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit—a play about three people trapped in a single room for all eternity—has been a favorite way to describe the inherent toxicity of relationships. Sarte though has long clarified that what he meant by
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
There’s no stopping J.K. Rowling’s ever-expanding Wizarding World. It can’t be denied that her world-building talents are magical, so much so that whenever I hear “Hedwigs’s Theme”, I feel a surge of nostalgia, like I have been to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry myself. To some degree, I consider
Review: EXES BAGGAGE (2018), A Man and A Woman Walk into a Bar…
Warning: Full spoilers follow. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A man and a woman walk into a bar They loved each other once. Each had baggage they couldn’t get over. Like a cigarette half-smoked and a song half-played, their relationship — like so many others —
GOYO: ANG BATANG HENERAL, Reversing the Hero’s Journey
Warning: Full spoilers…but come on, it’s a biopic! Are spoilers even possible?!? In the Philippines, we are taught to worship heroes from a young age. In primary school, we are made to memorize single-line descriptions of what to remember our national heroes by — highlights, monickers, basically their greatest traits.
Review: SALVAGE, a Genre Exercise in Subversion
Warning: Full spoilers ahead. “Te, kailangan ba kitang isama sa frame?” [“Sister, do I have to include you in the frame?”] Barbie (Barbie Capacio), the make-up artist, asks between screams, as she struggles to operate a camera while running for dear life. Out of context, this sentence feels innocuous, dormant. But writer-director Sherad Anthony Sanchez uses
“DEADPOOL 2” Raises a Middle Finger to a Supersaturated Genre
It is a marvel how 20th Century Fox, despite (or because of) its limited ownership, have recently conjured a more well-realized oeuvre, raging against its saturated but more financially successful counterpart, Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beginning with 2011’s X-Men: First Class, the production company brought in year after year
“READY PLAYER ONE,” submitting yourself to The Matrix has never been this fun
Upon exiting the theater after Ready Player One, my immediate takeaway was that “they don’t make films like this anymore.” Based on the 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One takes place in the near-future of 2045, a dystopian landscape where the earth has become ridden by global warming,
“CITIZEN JAKE” is a wake-up call for both the asleep and woke
Often a trope in movies is when a hermitic, wise — often, cranky — veteran is brought out of retirement to school the youth when the times have turned most trying (especially when the villains they once faced in the past have re-emerged from the ether). Obi-Wan did it with
“SI CHEDENG AT SI APPLE” is that ‘tita’ who calls you fat in reunions
Chedeng (Gloria Diaz) finds her true love and Apple (Elizabeth Oropesa) gets away with murder. This is the premise of Si Chedeng at si Apple, a road trip comedy film from the writers of Patay na si Hesus (Fatrick Tabada) and Birdshot (Rae Red). Both women in their 60’s have
The messy, mundane, and other #BuhayElbi things
Submitted by Cidee Despi Each year, Pelikultura: the CALABARZON Film Festival attempts to showcase the diverse cultures of Los Baños, Laguna through the #BuhayElbi category. The category is open only to residents of LB. The premise of the competition gives the filmmakers, often students of the University of the Philippines Los
“RED SPARROW” like its protagonist is calculated, brutal, and frustrating
By the end of its 2 hours and 20 minutes runtime, I was quite confused what to make of Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow. In terms of quality, just like the world of spycraft, it dwells in the gray in-betweens of good and bad. And like its titular sparrow, it’s calculated, violent,
“THE POST” is a film of the present that happens to be set in the past
Let me be as transparent as possible here. I kind of have a hard time distancing myself enough to give an unbiased (well, all reviews have a bit of bias, so I guess a more “less-unbiased”) review of The Post. See, two months back, I quit my old corporate job to
“DARKEST HOUR” inspires but exists only in the moment
Full disclosure, I had a ton of apprehensions before going into Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. For one, this Oscars season, it seemed to be the film that most obviously fit the tired “Oscar bait” formula (come on, it’s a prestige drama-biopic with a respected character actor fully inhabiting one of
“THE GREATEST SHOWMAN”, how can something so wrong feel so right
As Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum starts selling the idea that using exaggerations, myths, and tall-tales as thinly-disguised truths are admirable, truth be damned, I couldn’t help but think about the “meta-ness” of it all. It’s as if Barnum was directly addressing the audience, telling us to indulge in the spectacle,
Sundance Review: “SWEET COUNTRY”, A powerful slowburn on australia’s not-so-sweet history
Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country opens with Sam Neill’s preacher Fred Smith sharing a meal with his Aboriginal farmhands Sam and Lizzie Kelly (exceptional newcomers Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber). “We’re all equal in the eyes of the Lord,” the preacher sermonizes as he says grace with the couple. This scene serves as a
Ferdinand
Warning: Mild spoilers follow. Based on the classic children’s book by Munro Leaf “The Story of Ferdinand,” Ferdinand follows a bull who favors flowers and friendship over fighting—unusual for an animal traditionally seen as a pawn and symbol for aggression and hostility. Funny, sweet and relatable, the story relays powerful
Siargao
From the hovering drone shots that capture how the lush greenery of the island converges with its unrealistically clear blue seas to the immersive surfing montages which alternate from above and below the deep, it’s undeniable that Director Paul Soriano’s Siargao has no trouble conveying the allure of the titular
Ang Larawan
There are projects that beyond their flaws you’ve got to praise for brazenness, the amount of love put into their creation. There’s this air of faith, of passion, that permeates all aspects, smoothening out whatever rough patches the material may have. Ang Larawan is this sort of project. Ang Larawan,
Smaller and Smaller Circles
Serial, Making a Murderer, The Keepers, deep dives that have sprung forth from the recent death of Charles Manson; a jarring insight commonly seen in this renaissance of the true crime genre is that it adds another layer to how we look at crime and the so-called monsters that commit
Call Me By Your Name
In “The Heptaméron”, Marguerite of Navarre asks the question: is it better to speak or to die? It’s a question that cradles us back to that thrilling, self-destructive, sweat-leaking-out-of-our-palms moment of professing our yearning for someone. Nevermind that it was merely a “special friendship”, which means everything and nothing at the same time.
Changing Partners
In the first minutes of Changing Partners, Agot Isidro’s Alex (don’t be confused, there’ll be two Alex’s here — that’s kind of the concept of the whole film) expresses her excitement over watching the new season of her favorite prime-time musical soap opera. Her much younger boyfriend Cris (Sandino Martin, one
Nervous Translation
People often say “see the world through the eyes of a child,” acting as if these words are the remedy to cynicism. Somehow this phrase is charged with what we imagine childhood to be: innocence, authenticity, joy and tears (somehow our emotions back then feel purer), wonder, etc. And yet
Paki
About two-thirds into Giancarlo Abrahan’s sophomore feature Paki, almost the whole of its ensemble start to gather around a table for a meal. This is the first time the family’s matriarch Alejandra (acted to a tee by Dexter Doria) will face once again her then not yet present and newly estranged
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
In social psychology, there’s this concept known as moral self-licensing. Moral self-licensing is what we call the tendency of man to succeed an act of goodness with something we can, in simple terms, label as “bad.” In an episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s satiating podcast Revisionist History (which I strongly urge
