Women” and “power” rarely form a sentence that doesn’t draw prejudice. Yet, in Joyce Bernal’s latest Everything About Her, these two words become the foundation of a rather unconventional statement. The film opens with a montage of Vilma Santos’ magnate delivering a speech that’s stereotypical of women in power—irascible, frigid,
Tag: Filipino film
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
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
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
Siquijor: Mystic Island
In horror, sincerity stands as the most welcoming and, simultaneously, repelling factor for a genre filmmaker. Terror is forthright; this fundamental directness of the genre both introduces to and restricts itself from countless possibilities. Explaining then how few sincerely understand the business of fear; how few of them succeed. Then what,
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
Diary ng Panget
The general observation for Andoy Ranay’s Diary ng Panget is that it can be viewed as a substandard Cinderella byproduct — and it is — where the youth revolt for reasons no greater than excess pimples and earlier Mac book generations. Though one particular scene gleams in utter radiance and nags of biting reality: in a student council
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
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
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
