James Wan’s filmography did not begin with the most idealistic debut: Saw, to date, is recipient to the larger sample in the collective dismissal against the modest filmmaker. However, none of this should imply that Wan’s inauspicious debut is plainly schlock—a plot(?) surrounding a mysterious killer that entraps the morally-fractured
Category: Theatrical Release
Dementia
Dementia is a thing of curious alchemy. There is a scene nearing its end that simultaneously affirms and overturns its ideological confusions: Heavily influenced by New Asian horror, Percival M. Intalan’s debut feature as director is not a story strictly about hateful ghouls, but it is about hurt and betrayal
The Babadook
Because it hides amorphous behind so many masks, no bogeyman is outgrown by its tormented. The Babadook, Jennifer Kent’s brilliant debut as director, appears latched to this idea of everyday phantoms which on every level is true. It opens with a sequence in which Amelia (Essie Davis, literally floating in
Maria Leonora Teresa
If the mechanics of terror are as superficial as placing drum-hits and cheat-scares, then the genre might as well be dismissed moot, at the easiest, as it is sometimes dismissed by the high-brow cinephile. And there is a reason why it is not. For one: the genre of horror — for
The Gifted
Besides the Blue Suede-sequence from Boy Golden, the epilogue in Chris Martinez’s Kimmy Dora: Ang Kyemeng Sequel is one of the cleverest things to grace last year’s Metro Manila Film Festival. The scene is subversive and (meta-textually) expositive of the festival it contends on. It is postmodern mind-fucking in an
Talk Back and You’re Dead
There is but a single thread stringing together the story of Talk Back and You’re Dead, thus far the latest amongst the Wattpad-imports currently most ubiquitous in Philippine theatres. The film, essentially a tween girl’s romantic reverie strung nervily after another, incidentally resonates how random teenage romances tend to become. But
Barber’s Tales
For most of Jun Lana’s new film Barber’s Tales (alternatively known as Mga Kwentong Barbero), the women who live in the small rural town fraught under Ferdinand Marcos’ regime, in their respective crises are either battered or deprived. If they are not fixtures, they are instruments; never truly people to
Overtime
There are a lot of things going for Overtime — Wincy Aquino Ong’s ‘big pharma is bad’-commentary slapstick-actioner — although a lot of things also aren’t. Firstly, it is genre-bending; rarely is it that we see an awkward tech-whiz (whom we meet no earlier than halfway through the film) not only
Dagitab
There is not much to do but surrender to Giancarlo Abrahan’s Dagitab (alternatively titled The Sparks), a film that holds captive its audience. It radiates in visual and textual opulence that only the deftest of hands can achieve. One scene in particular makes a perfect summation of the film as a fine work
1st Ko Si 3rd
In Real S. Florido’s 1st Ko si 3rd time plays two roles: one that creates a void and another that fills it. The case of Cory, an ageing woman compelled to rekindling an old flame, is curious and endearing, yet touches something deep and true: time is an eternal debt
Children’s Show
Only a few frames from completely wallowing in its relentless, almost-stifling realism, director Roderick Cabrido’s debut feature Children’s Show swivels to the truly weird and beams us out of the film, where it is most necessary. Knowing when to retreat back a step shows calculation in his film’s ultra-violent madness;
#Y (Hashtag Y)
Gino M. Santos’s follow-up to his exuberant if shrouded debut The Animals is set once again within a circle of upper-class, party-‘till-drop youth (here, a quartet of twenty-somethings) frequenting night bars as if they were their sacred intersections, flush in neon lights and pumped with skittering beats and booming synths. The
Mariquina
Jerrold Tarog’s ingenious work in last year’s Cinemalaya-entry Sana Dati distinguishes him as a man of fine, filmic talent: his film, closing the famed Camera Trilogy (sided with Confessional and Mangatyanan), is about acceptance and closure; yet it goes in all sorts of direction, transforming a simple romantic tale into
K’na, the Dreamweaver
“When Kana, a young T’boli woman, becomes a dreamweaver, she has the chance to weave together her village’s warring clans. But, will she give up true love to do so?”
Asintado
“In the middle of the preparation for Taong Putik Festival, a young man penniless and in love, takes on a drug courier job that goes terribly wrong. To save him, his mother now makes the most difficult decision of her life.”
Guardians of the Galaxy
Our fifteen-year-old selves, as I am confident is the same for most, live in an era in which we are most willing to plunge and spike into the nerdiest depths and heights of cinematic exploration in our lifetime. By close and objective inspection, this is the most awesome! The 80’s
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Thrilling in every way but one, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” is the technically virtuous, wildly entertaining film that is to redeem its enduring franchise from its ostensible death marked by Brett Ratner’s butchered third film, “The Last Stand.” If this so-redemption hasn’t been done already in Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 prequel
Maleficent
Meant as a redemptive ticket for the iconic villainess (which, in all Disney-goodness, can mean Immediate Character Humanization, and this is), Robert Stromberg’s revisionist take on “Maleficent” is a curious retelling, though not exactly as great and just of the beastly wicked faery. Stromberg and writer Linda Woolverton’s logic here is
22 Jump Street
Unless Vietnamese Jesus is not enough indication, one must be able to predict that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s overtly self-knowing sequel “22 Jump Street” is about, first of all, taking things up a notch. Hopping from twenty-one to the next is not entirely a convincing prefiguration (it is our
