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
Tag: Reviews
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
#TWD 5.2: ‘Strangers’
The Walking Dead tends to grow laborious at times and it often does when its principal characters are gathered in a group. So it is rather delightful to see the show picking up pace and going on-point with its tense second episode ‘Strangers.’ The whole lot is compact (if talky), bringing
#TWD 5.1: ‘No Sanctuary’
The human race commit atrocities it eventually forgets. For whatever reason the thought lingers as I watch the fifth season premiere of The Walking Dead which plays as if it is set to lure its audience back. The episode is the hell of red, riddled with maimed Walkers, gnawed faces
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 Boxtrolls
Like its titular tinkerers, The Boxtrolls is drawn to a familiar patchwork of a story, collecting ‘scraps’ from other works of animation that are attuned to the subliminal works of its animation house, Laika Studios. Yet, this should not stand as discouragement for the viewer who seeks the political in
Annabelle
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
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
Tell-All
A plot surrounding narcissistic famed-personas and root beer-eyed scheming “specimens” poses a prominent caution sign, and superimposed, when it is written by Chuck Palahniuk. The author of Fight Club lets ode to the Old Hollywood with his novel Tell-All, one of his most exhaustive works thus far (sparing Rant; that was
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,
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
San Lazaro
In the occult film San Lazaro, the demons taking over its characters are only internal and untapped; one apparently does not need a soul-consuming entity in order to meet his fallout. Wincy Aquino Ong understands this much, yet as the film director he does not count on terror, than so much
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
Wolf Creek
The smaller moments in Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek inspire liberation from the conventions of grotesque cinema: a slight, giggly yet sincere wedding of the lips; the occasional jealous-driven tantrums; all the friendly bickering, among countless, all-treasured others. In close to an hour, our three backpackers — displaced in McLean’s at once
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
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
Final Exam
Echoing John Carpenter’s seminal slasher, Jimmy Huston’s almost-forgotten Halloween wannabe Final Exam (then an unconscious subversion of the slasher genre), is an audaciously soiled exercise yet comes to dissatisfying fruition. The film may also be viewed as a gesture to boycott what is to come upon the release of Friday the 13th, the
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
