There’s so much to tell in a single cup of coffee. All the love and effort made in preparing it, the trade, the hard work every coffee farmer puts in harvesting these dark, aromatic beans; and the time and effort our baristas put in whipping up the “perfect” coffee. But
Tag: Drama
The End Of Love
What is it that we know about love? This is the question that begs to be known in Hsu Li Da’s second feature film The End of Love. We follow the lives of four contemporary couples at the beginning and or at the brink of their love lives. The key
An Kubo sa Kawayanan
The new film from Alvin Yapan is introduced as a “small film with big ambitions.” Twice I have heard of this:the first time from his actress Agot Asidro presenting his 2013 film Mga Anino ng Kahapon; and again from him last night at the Gala Screening of his WPFF entry An
Ode to My Father
Every war has never found its absolution; its damages lifelong. We hear stories from the past generations of their harrowing experiences, and we can only vicariously grasp them. Ode to My Father also seeks to make its audiences understand what it was like in the perspective of an everyday man,
Lost River
The most evocative image in Ryan Gosling‘s Lost River is midway its hyper-saturated nightmare, when Billy (Christina Hendricks), to the sick delight of a sizable audience, slices off the skin of her face. She traces the outlines of skin the incision has left, touches the flesh irrevocably exposed, all to an almost grinning composure—like
Big Eyes
Bilateral macro-ophthalmia, a clinical condition for big eyes or specifically, larger eyeballs, is a rarity. It is often part of a systemic condition. A more common finding would be exophthalmos, defined by Dorland’s Medical Dictionary as the abnormal protrusion of the eyeball. It is the appearance of enlargement of the
Before Midnight
Time is a consistent fascination for Richard Linklater. Friend or foe, time in his films is always depicted for being the most humanizing aspect of life—which it is. Everyone seem lost in its evanescence, compelling transports away and back to the present, and daring to bend its ephemeral and often
The Taking of Deborah Logan
The collective torment in The Taking of Deborah Logan creeps back to an unenviable happenstance, one that does not enter Adam Robitel’s frames but reverberates to consequences just as sweeping, back in the rise of switchboard answering machines, when data and information are tantamount, and entrusted, with no legal bounds whatsoever,
Boyhood
When does fiction end and reality begin in Boyhood? Or are we the fictional ones instead? In this daunting film, auteur Richard Linklater documents a story close to our hearts, and close to our time. Much of the merit this feature has reaped is in its effort to capture its
Starry Eyes
Starry Eyes begins with a deceptively auspicious start—an obsessed starlet (played by Alex Essoe) stumbles to her first acting job—relying on studious atmospherics that evoke very much the work of David Cronenberg. There is a brooding sense of mystery in the film that is well-built up, and also almost Lynchian,
Grace of Monaco
According to the crimson text that opens it, Oliver Dahan’s Grace of Monaco is “a fictional tale inspired by real events,” and in sitting through what pompous catastrophe that it precedes, you finally arrive at the purpose that it serves. Dahan, who previously made La Vie en Rose, expressed his
Nightcrawler
It is interesting that when Rick (Riz Ahmed) nervily assesses his employer—“your problem is you don’t understand people,” he notes—Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the employer in question, would only feign him a bug-eyed sympathetic look while coating a condescending grin. Rick has not a lick of sense how Bloom, at
Hindi Sila Tatanda
Malay Javier’s Hindi Sila Tatanda is an indulgent play at sonic and visual euphoria. The film has earned that merit. It is technically subversive, too; beginning as an innocuous slice-of-life coming-of-age with scenes that are mistakably Sundance-mold, until it plunges to a more sci-fi/genre film vibe, and finally pulls back.
Red
There is no description for Jay Abello’s Red more apt than a ripple, making circles within circles and telling a story about stories. In the whole it is a well-meaning reminder of the true role of an audience to a story, of the unspoken symbiosis between the teller and the
The Babysitters
Being a film about a pair of swindlers, Paolo O’Hara’s The Babysitters begins with an auspicious prelude in which a caroller drones sarcastic lyrics to those who would not spare him loose change. The scene, whilst not the most striking starter, sets the film thematically well. In the world that
The Trial
Chino S. Roño’s The Trial is a welcome enlightenment to our native mainstream cinema—the kind that pushes boundaries and rediscovers for its audience elements other than what they have long since grown accustomed to; the kind that tries to push through somewhat fresher material; the kind that will not conform
Whiplash
Every frame of Whiplash is about rushing head-on past the fringe. It is about insanity. That is why the title could not be more apt. Whether it is the tragedy of mediocrity, the Great American Opium or one’s deceitful narcissism, filmmaker Damien Chazelle never settles by one conclusive end. And he
Gone Girl
Amy Elliott Dunne is many different things. The woman is of relentless nature whether in filling the epitomized role brought about by her parents’ well-meant perfectionism and their children quiz-books called ‘Amazing Amy;’ in relishing her dominion over personal relations when she has it and insisting on it when she has not;
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
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
Ang Katiwala
Meant — rather explicitly — as a propaganda for the late President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines Manuel L. Quezon, Aloy Adlawan’s Ang Katiwala (The Caretaker), makes for a convoluted debacle of an assortment of ideas that are never entirely developed. The scripting is weak. It finds an illiterate family
Les Revenants
In Les revenants (They Came Back, 2004) the threat posed by a vast river of bodies inexplicably risen from their recent deaths, is far more internal than losing jugulars and seeing outbreaks of mass contagion. The film — directed by Robin Campillos — relies on the primitive terrors of tragedy, pressed
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
