SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

Ivan Andrew Payawal's Table for Three (Vivamax, The IdeaFirst Company, 2024) follows successful couple Marlon (Topper Fabregas) and Paul (Arkin del Rosario) as they explore being a throuple with Jeremy (Jesse Guinto). There's little doubt that Table for Three bears few similarities to Payawal's Two and One (2022), as the film unfolds in a deliberate and surprisingly conventional manner that effectively prevents it from becoming anything more than a well-acted (and well-made) domestic drama. Payawal even seems to be going out of his way to prevent viewers from wholeheartedly embracing the spare narrative, as the director offers up a trio of underdeveloped protagonists that remain completely uninteresting virtually from start to finish. Not helping matters is Payawal's sporadic emphasis on oddball elements, as the film's tenuously authentic atmosphere is undoubtedly diminished significantly each and every time the filmmaker indulges his notorious sensibilities. Table for Three feigns interest in its characters as three-dimensional beings layering them with dilemmas and hang-ups, but rarely gets deep enough under their skin to make them seem like more than devices in a socio-political thesis. That’s especially true of Jeremy, who receives the least attention and thus comes across as the most paper-thin of the film’s three protagonists and his featurelessness ultimately sabotages the increasingly tense threesome dynamic at play, since none of these people’s attractions to each other are ever fleshed-out or potently felt.

Simplistic as its core may be, though, Payawal manages the not-inconsiderable feat of habitually distracting attention away from his material’s underlying didacticism through aesthetic dexterity providing the material with far more urgency than does its let’s-all-get-together plotting. Give credit to Payawal for trying to dissect a relationship and then build it up again. But despite its fascinating moments, one can't help but be frustrated when at times it switches away to pretentiousness. All the aesthetic tangents the director throws at us play as just that, tangents. To what is actually a slightly enervated drama of not-so-complicated romantic geometry. That the film is frequently ravishing in its visual construction makes the drama go down easy, but for all its complicating intrusions, Table of Three can’t help but register as somewhat less than the sum of its disparate parts. As Payawal frames them threading the waves in symmetrical compositions, he captures all the mystery and romance of a new relationship that isn’t necessarily communicated in the film’s less stylized sequences. For a while, Payawal gets by on his talent for conjuring up interesting exchanges. But no matter how hard he tries to make his characters distinctive, no matter how much he attempts to flesh them out through elucidating their interests, the drama they enact ultimately feels flat, the hermetic actions of hermetic conceptions of character. In a few tender moments, Payawal conjures up the feeling of necessity, but for most of the rest, it’s just eye-filling, soul-starving emptiness that no amount of intermittent assaults on the sensorium can paper over.

Directed By: Ivan Andrew Payawal

Written By: Ash M. Malanum

Cinematographer: Juan Miguel Marasigan

Production Designer: Jaylo Conanan

Editor: Kristian Marc Palma

Music: Emerzon Texon

Sound Designer: Nicole Rosacay

For filmmaker Lawrence Fajardo, social interaction with the audience is far more important than sexual interaction on the screen. Some of the men solicit attention, others determined to avoid it. But all are in search of human connection however short or sordid. Cinema Parausan, one of Erotica Manila’s (Vivamax, 2023) four episodes functions best in its voyeuristic, sociological mode, offering fragmentary glimpses of complicated lives and the complicated social rituals that shape them. Lorna (Azi Acosta) and Gab (Alex Medina) are acting out an elaborate choreography of desire and denial. There is no need for secondhand moralizing in the presence of such rich and varied human material. Girl 11 is predicated on the power of loneliness and longing, an inarticulate desire to connect to life and this desire delivers the dramatic thrust. Each emotional misfire provides a new layer of meaning. Girl 11 is governed by a narrator, in this case Manila Daily journalist Steven (Joseph Elizalde) whose world folds into and out of itself. Fajardo demonstrates with the execution of the last line of dialogue, one of devastating, succinct finality and all that leads up to it, a mastery of dialogue as sound and sound as delivered through the cinema-specific device of voiceover narration. The MILF and the OJT, mixes an existential study in anomie with comedy in the person of haughty actress Beatrice (Mercedes Cabral). Her attitude gives a predatory (even proto-cougar) quality. Less interested in the fluidic facts that dominate teen sex comedies, The MILF and the OJT examines varieties of discomfort. Fajardo specializes in extruding just enough of the vulnerability underlying Beatrice’s facade, never better than in the scene where she lays out her expectations.

Fajardo takes a character whose actions and vacillations veer to the contrived and makes us believe her charm as well as her capricious whims. Jico (Vince Rillon) is ethical that we are forced to act pretty much as he does, even in his most extreme moments. His acute honesty is accurately drawn that we hardly know whether to laugh or look inside ourselves. Sex is a disruptive force in Death by O that it succeeded in reducing screen sex to a fashion accessory. Its purpose is to embellish a story with enough discrete fillips of titillation and soft core fantasy to quicken the pulse without causing palpitations. It crashes through the mold by acknowledging that sex can have catastrophic consequences. Brix (Felix Roco) and his wife Elya (Alona Navarro) are so besotted that when the urge overtakes them, they have sex and their frantic rutting, instead of satiety leaves them raw and aching for more. Death by O has a taut script that digs into the characters' domestic life without wasting a word. It helps ground the film whose visual imagination hovers somewhere between soap opera and pop surrealism. Fajardo knows exactly the type of effect he wants to achieve and gets it. He builds a complex relationship between his characters and the viewer. Fajardo wants us to see sex as a cocoon, so he genuinely tries to show what attracts his characters to each other. His earnest objectification of actors’ bodies is often compelling. We look at bodies in motion and see them as body parts first and then people trying to get lost in each other, giving each other pleasure and to remain lost in sensations that will always remain mysterious to anyone who isn’t experiencing them first-hand.

Sound Designer: Dale Martin

Music By: Emerzon Texon

Editors: Lawrence Fajardo, Jobin Ballesteros

Production Designer: Jed Sicangco

Director of Photography: Nor Domingo, LPS

Screenplay: Jim Flores, Miguel Legaspi

Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

While movies such as Paluwagan (Vivamax, Pelikula Indiopendent, 2024) don't exactly depend upon a wealth of logic, such an obvious gap is all too common in a film that survives solely upon the strength of its talented cast. Director Roman Perez Jr. has chosen his actors well. A trio of performers each at the top of their game playing shrewdly on their respective strengths to create three compelling characters. Victor Relosa, in a role he can sink his teeth into really nails the vulnerability caused by Hector’s predicament. There are moments when I was watching his eyes and body language thinking to myself that this is as impactful as Relosa’s devastating performance in Jerry Lopez Sineneng's Rita (2024). Micaella Raz has become quite adept in roles that suggest a certain physical frailty and vulnerability, especially when it can be stoked into wounded fury and ferocity. She evokes the viewer’s total sympathies as Julia. Perez uses Shiena Yu to excellent effect. Even at her most centered, Yu grants Marites a perpetual internal desperation. It is entirely possible that you will find yourself surprised by exactly what unfolds in Paluwagan, while Perez does his best to keep us guessing, he hits a home run by casting Relosa, Raz and Yu, actors able to portray parts with the same steady presence. The result is that even as you've decided exactly what's going on, the three principals convincingly plant continued doubts.

Julia's narrative voice has Perez keeping the plot brisk, taut and focused. It’s a work of wonderful manipulation because the story remains firmly about Hector. Perez effectively ratchets up the tension with cinematic devices such as closeups and noisy startles from, say, a helicopter crash overhead. It's a tried-and-true device, but one that's justifiable here as a reflection of the characters’ state of mind. To say more would spoil the surprises. Perez steers the story toward its inevitable revelations with an old-fashioned sense of tension. The viewer, meanwhile, is a little more patient. Thanks to the director's steady pacing and unsettling atmosphere. Every gesture makes sense and is consistent with the truth as revealed. Relosa, in particular, takes honors for his smart, unshowy work. Perez does a good job at giving his actors a playground that adheres strongly to genre conventions, but with a bit more mature leeway. Amnesia has driven plots throughout a broad spread of genres. The biggest difference is, however, that Hector isn't pursuing his own past so much as he’s having it thrust upon him. Perez has a nicely tuned eye, and the careful look of the film (shot by Albert Banzon of Adan and Salakab) may be its best attribute. Paluwagan is small-scale, but it succeeds in telling a story.

Musical Scorer: Dek Margaja

Sound Designer: Alex Tomboc, Lamberto Casas Jr.

Editor: Aaron Alegre

Production Designer: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Albert Banzon

Screenplay: Ronald Perez

A Film By: Roman Perez Jr.

Although Lino Brocka’s Bona (NV Productions, 1980) might seem like an unlikely place from which to launch a discussion of the craft of one the great Filipino actors, it illuminates several threads that run through Nora Aunor’s body of work. Foremost is her adaptability and range as a performer, which are unparalleled. Bona also demonstrates the centrality of collaboration to Aunor’s practice and the rigorous preparation that facilitates her singular spontaneity and openness to chance in the moment of performance. Her almost otherworldly range has generated certain tropes in reviews of her work: she is said to disappear into the character. But this take, which suggests an innate and natural ability for imitation or even an erasure of the self, doesn’t capture the careful calibrations of Aunor’s craft. Rather than disappearing into her characters, she deconstructs the performance process on screen. Aunor achieves layers of reflexivity, performing the character’s own fleeting performance of the self. Her ability to highlight the incongruities within a character without resolving them is one of her greatest strengths as a performer. Aunor’s face has a striking ability to embody that luminous star power while also cracking it open like brittle armor. As Bona, Aunor draws the camera to herself, seducing us like her mark, even as she tilts her face to give in to Gardo’s (Phillip Salvador) sexual advances. That same face sours when she claims her bitter revenge. Indeed, across a range of characters, Aunor’s carefully tempered expressions bring to the surface an array of subtle revelations and momentary ruptures. Across many projects, Aunor has embraced different facets of her characters, resisting the temptation to explain them. One is left with the impression that for her, anything is possible, a prospect that is at once thrilling and a bit terrifying.

From its opening moments onward, Carlotta Films, Kani Releasing and Cité de Mémoire's new 4K restoration of Bona is a sight to behold, one that leaves a very strong first impression. Far and away, the biggest upgrade here is in the area of mid-ranges and shadow detail and in some cases, clearly boosted contrast levels reveal a more finely-detailed picture, one where many new background elements and small details can be easily picked out. Textures are also granted new life, especially in cinematographer Conrado Baltazar’s tight close-ups and elements of Joey Luna’s art direction. Black levels remain consistently deep with no perceivable crush or posterization, while the tasteful enhancement revitalizes light sources and background signage without compromising any of its darker sections. Film grain is also finely resolved and consistently present, but never intruding. Likewise, the audio mix benefits from its new restoration. Bona’s overall sonic aesthetic still apply here and the soundtrack has been refreshed and tightened, with much of the persistent hiss either reduced or eliminated. Dialogue remains crystal clear - even Aunor’s vocal tones - with suitable balance levels leaves more than enough room for Max Jocson’s original score. It's a fine effort overall and similar to the excellent presentation, there's really not all that much room for improvement here.

Screenplay: Cenen Ramones

Director of Photography: Conrado Baltazar, F.S.C.

Music: Max Jocson

Film Editing: Augusto Salvador

Art Direction: Joey Luna

Sound Engineer: Levi Prenupe

A Film By: Lino Brocka

Nominally Filipino cinema’s most psychologically fascinating love triangle, Ishmael Bernal's landmark is a hard film to resurrect in a contemporary era that favors logic and emotional literalness over the director’s dreamy sense of the inevitability of disappointment and the invisibility of personal morality. Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon (LEA Productions, 1977) stands alongside Ikaw ay Akin (1978) as one of the definitive films of the 1970s, its impact on countless scores of subsequent films impossible to gauge. If its guilelessness seems a bit dated, a viewing today reads like a well-observed lesson that countless filmmakers incorporated into their work over the following two decades, leaving it not just cogent but an essential piece of cinema history. With an almost insurmountable liberty in his use of the cinematic form, Bernal embraces contradiction to create meaning—Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon is sad yet humorous, breathless yet contemplative, universal yet hermetic. It knows of life’s folly so intimately that it is impossibly naïve and its selfless love of the cinema borders on narcissistic. What confirms Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon to the status of a flawed gem is Bernal’s inability to reconcile his core of almost surreal melancholy with a more psychologically acute perception of character, something perfected throughout his later efforts like Relasyon (1982) that bears more than a few similarities to this film. The timeline of his plot is impenetrable and his sense of incident is suitably hazy (it only fails him at the hastily staged denouement), but he too easily lets Roy (Romeo Vasquez) and Mel (Mat Ranillo III) as characters, coast by on vague descriptions and archetypes rather than example. Mel is too easily reduced to his lack of action and is occasionally forgotten, while there is repeated discussion of his proclivities as a ladies’ man without discernment as to what drives his appetites or makes him so appealing to the opposite sex. Roy and Mel instinctively intellectualize themselves to the point where it is possible they exist only within the reality of their own minds and thus neither actor is able to give a performance that captures the imagination.

Terry (Vilma Santos) whose own frivolity may be her way of dealing with an underlying and serious sense of dissatisfaction. She is easy to fall in love with — the character is beautiful, charming and intelligent. The very things that mark her as a mesmerizing woman – her daring and self-determination, her refusal to play by patriarchal rules – also, in some ways, stoke her discontent. It’s inevitable, then, that her attention will eventually turn to Roy. Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon is really Terry’s film. This is Vilma Santos’s first great performance, all the greater because of the art with which she presents Terry’s resentment. A lesser actress might have made Terry mad or hysterical, but although madness and hysteria are uncoiling beneath the surface, Terry depends mostly on unpredictability — on a fundamental unwillingness to behave as expected. She shocks her parents as a way of testing them. Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon is about love in its many faces and disguises. It isn't just about the love of Roy and Mel for Terry or about the variations of her feelings for the two of them, separately and together. In spite of his understanding and images of tenderness, joy, fun, cosiness, idyllic feelings of all kinds in Dalawamg Pugad... Isang Ibon, Bernal keeps himself, to just the right degree, out of it. He never makes the mistake of confounding himself, as creator, so that you never get his own attitude towards Terry, or any comment on her spirit and behavior. Bernal is inarguably the star of the film and his presence alone justifies Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon’s almost immediate introduction into the canon of greatness as well as its enduring appeal. His generosity in creating fleeting throwaway moments that teem with detail and emotional resonance is unparalleled and the autonomy of his camerawork is galvanizing. Dalawang Pugad... Isang Ibon, as a whole, is as singular as its director. The berth of his sensitivity is so wide that the film seems less a creation of artifice than a pipeline straight into his emotional being. If the finale feels a bit sudden, perhaps that’s because we’re only viewing it within the context of a romantic triangle. Widened out, it’s the story of love – in all sorts of forms.

Art Director: Bobby Bautista

Director of Cinematography: Nonong Rasca

Sound Supervisor: Luis S. Reyes

Film Editor: Nonoy Santillan

Music: The Vanishing Tribe

Screenplay: Ishmael Bernal

Direction: Ishmael Bernal

There are so many good things in Halikan Mo at Magpaalam sa Kahapon (Luis Enriquez Films, 1977), but they’re side by side instead of one after the other. They exist in the same film, but the result don't add up. Actually, it has no result–just an ending, leaving us with all of those fine pieces, still waiting to come together. If this were a screenplay and not the final product, you could see how with one more rewrite, it might all fall into place. There are subplots in the movie, but the emotional themes are more intriguing. Maybe the fundamental problem is the point of view. The interesting characters here are the women, but the star is Eddie Rodriguez and so the film is told from his point of view. Watching Halikan Mo at Magpaalam sa Kahapon, it’s easy to linger on issues since the movie itself sputters and sprawls, breathtakingly unaware of how ponderous it is. It’s about the enigma of adultery, which is that people — normal, decent people do it for no reason at all, except that they crave something. Romance. Renewal. A second chance at love. Rodriguez succeeds, but I’m not sure that this is an acting triumph viewers will respond to. In his gloomy, introspective mode, Rodriguez steamrolls every scene with the heaviness of his emotions. He becomes a thick-witted, broodingly stylized hero. The thing is, we’re supposed to be watching Rafael fall in love. Sometimes the movie takes its time and feels real and at other times it makes huge leaps, leaving behind emotional realism and logic.

Pilar Pilapil has no trouble showing the emotional range needed in a challenging role. She is a wonderful actress, her elegant femininity contrasts perfectly with Rodriguez. Natalie and Rafael make an intriguing romantic couple. It should be no surprise that Pilapil teams well with Rodriguez. Hilda Koronel plays a stronger character who considers her options and maintains control of the situation. Marina painfully begins to uncover her husband’s affair, she concludes that she must find out everything about his secret life. Marina is not about to let it go and pursues the matter with quiet determination. As tension begins to increase, perhaps more in anticipation than by the inevitable romance. At first, Natalie decides to tell Rafael the truth about her daughter Nanette (Virnadeth). Then the two of them are drawn together in ways not even the movie can explain. Here is a good story sadly marred by undisciplined dramatic direction, heavy footed staging and lack of attention to detail. Although betrayal is filled with dramatic potential, the filmmakers haven't mined the subject of its many riches. But Halikan Mo at Magpaalam sa Kahapon is the kind of movie that won't fit into a nutshell. Director Luis C. Enriquez's films have always refused to work that way. They have managed to be linear while also drifting thoughtfully through the nuances of their characters' behavior with stylistic polish. To be sure, the liability of a certain sogginess accompanies Enriquez's brand of thinking-man's romanticism. Halikan Mo at Magpaalam sa Kahapon incorporates a full reserve of hard-won wisdom about the perils that can befall a marriage.

Supervising Film Editor: Albert Joseph Sr.

Director of Photography: Hermo U. Santos

Story By: Beybs Pizarro-Gulfin

Screenplay: Toto Belano & Ric M. Torres

Musical Director: Rudy Arevalo

Directed By: Luis C. Emriquez

Much has already been written about the bravery of Ang Duyan ng Magiting (Cinemalaya, Sine Metu, 2023). I wish the movie had been even brave enough to risk a clear, unequivocal, uncompromised statement of its beliefs, instead of losing itself in a cluttered mishmash of stylistic excesses. Ang Duyan ng Magiting might have really been powerful, if it could have gotten out of its own way. The best scenes, the ones that make this movie worth seeing despite its shortcomings are the ones in which Jill Sebastian's (Dolly de Leon) tired government functionary hacks her way through a bureaucratic jungle in an attempt to get someone to make a simple statement of fact, those scenes are masterful. If Ang Duyan ng Magiting had started with Jose Santos's (Miggy Jimenez) disappearance, and followed his mother, Helen (Agot Isidro) and Professor Victor Angeles (Jojit Lorenzo) in a straightforward narrative, this film might have generated overwhelming tension and anger. But the movie never develops the power it should have had, because writer/director Dustin Celestino lacked confidence in the strength of his story. He has achieved the unhappy feat of upstaging his own film losing it in a thicket of visual and editing stunts. We get to know Jose a little while in prison with his friend Simon Manuel (Dylan Ray Talon). In something of a mild panic, the two loses it only to calm down when Jill enters the picture. Ang Duyan ng Magiting truly excels in the scenes where Jill and Police Chief Gabriel Ventura (Paolo O'Hara) try to work out what really happened. All of his views that she despises such as a condemnatory questioning of the system and disbelief of the officer standing in front of her, so brazen. Ignorance is bliss and Jill's world has been covered in a shroud of darkness.

Edgy and belligerent, De Leon is constrained but fully believable. She can slay you with a look and complements her co-star in truthful ways. O'Hara's character perhaps goes on the longest journey in the movie. Testy and judgmental, Officer Ventura has to deal with the sharpest and most toxic human emotion, the one that eventually kills you; hope. Jose, played with modest simplicity by Jimenez is a dedicated, somewhat guilt-ridden young man whose optimism is unshakable. Isidro perfectly captures Helen's internal strife as her world comes tumbling down. She holds truth to be at the heart of faith. Lorenzo is superior as a man facing up to issues he never wanted to confront personally. Ang Duyan ng Magiting has no room for revenge plots or of any other kind of simple gratification. Helen and Victor learn that their own instincts were right and they overcome imposing obstacles to learn what they need to learn, but it's hard to imagine any scenario where such validation could taste more sour. Uneven and a little pre-packaged, Ang Duyan ng Magiting is still a haunting film and it ignites a sharp desire for civic engagement, for public accountability, for knowledge that matters instead of knowledge that distracts. It earns your admiration, even as you wish it were a little better and that the world were much, much better. By following two individuals who learn to ask tough questions, to confront their fears, to insist on the highest standards, it's as good a movie as I can think of at demonstrating what you can do during a time of crisis. As a superbly acted political drama, Ang Duyan ng Magiting is also well worth your time.

Sound Engineers: Andrea Teresa T. Idioma, Nicole Rosacay

Musical Composer: Pao Protacio

Editor: Janel Gutierrez

Production Designer: Josiah Hiponia

Director of Photohraphy: Kara Moreno

Writer & Director: Dustin Celestino

Unlike the most memorable entries into the horror genre, Nokturno (Evolve Studios, Viva Films, 2024) offers only the most superficial of thrills. Director Mikhail Red's Deleter (2022) utilizes the genre’s framework to not only examine its characters in a unique way, but also to interrogate our relationship to the media we consume. Through the intense voyeurism and cinema in general, Red makes us unwitting culprits in the increasingly disturbing actions of its characters, adding an uncomfortable angle to what could’ve otherwise been a fairly conventional psychological horror story. Nokturno offers little in the way of fresh twists on the stale formula and even the well-established tropes are handled poorly. It all feels painfully familiar: vague folk religion, loud shrieks, slamming doors, flickering lights — it’s basically a non-stop barrage of tired genre clichés. It even has that shot of a character violently banging his head against the wall that has inexplicably become so popular with horror films of this kind. While the relationship between Lilet (Eula Valdez) and her daughter, Jamie (Nadine Lustre) does provide rooting interest and emotional resonance, Red struggles to bridge the protagonist’s past to her present. Admittedly, Nokturno handles some of its family drama better than a lot of films of its ilk, but even that eventually devolves into cheap sentimentalism. The film’s horror elements are primarily derivative and reliant on shock, rather than nuanced or subtle sense of dread that would have ultimately made it scarier.

Other characters, such as Manu (Wilbert Ross), Jamie's sister Jo's (Bea Binene) boyfriend and Tito Jun (Ku Aquino), are undeveloped. As such, the viewer is given few reasons to emotionally invest in any of them, before they are caught up in a series of supernatural events beyond their control. Some sections can be tedious as Red keeps secrets about the curse for a long time instead of revealing them early on as an inciting incident. The use of Filipino religion and folklore lends a sense of authenticity. Nokturno explores something old and folkloric by exploiting the technology of cinema, making it immediate and visceral. Lustre is a compelling presence capable of displaying vulnerability without ever seeming naive, a derivative screenplay that can’t stick the landing doesn’t so much fail her gifts, she outshines it. The way this story unfolds and how it unpeels its protagonist is too predictable to be scary, despite a striking tableaux involving Jamie in moments of terror. It would be wrong to say that Red squandered any potentially intriguing ideas because there is nothing here that would indicate this rote and painfully unoriginal exercise could’ve ever been more than it is. Nokturno might offer some surprises for non-horror fans looking for a quick and simple scare, but everyone else is likely to be profoundly underwhelmed.

Directed By: Mikhail Red

Sound Designers: Emilio Bien Sparks, Michaela Docena, Michael Keanu Cruz

Scorer: Paul Sigua, Myka Magsaysay-Sigua

Editor: Nikolas Red

Co-Editor: Timothy Axibal

Production Designer: Ana Lou Sanchez

Director of Photography: Ian Alexander Guevara, LPS

Screenplay: Rae Red, Nikolas Red

In Joel C. Lamangan's Walker (New Sunrise Films, 2022), the spectator is lured into the lives of women who, for various reasons, have been forced into prostitution. Strangely, the single-take sequences and the richness of detail in the mise-en-scène are all in place, but the only movement in Walker is cyclical and back-and-forth, like the lives of its characters, perpetually leaving and returning to their profession. Discursive sequences in which the characters discuss the social causes and effects of prostitution suddenly give way to the conduct of the business itself where prostitutes are literally dragged by their patrons. Through his own obscure passageways, Lamangan charts the various fates of his protagonists as they struggle under the social and economic burdens of their occupation. Most abhor their work and more than one schemes, usually unsuccessfully, to leave it. Lamangan and screenwriter Troy Espiritu creates a diverse range of characters who have varying back-stories but are selling their bodies in one way or another, because of men. Lamangan is anchored by its cast of characters, making Walker a true ensemble effort. Unlike more conventional dramas of the time, which had one or two protagonists and then a larger supporting cast, Lamangan employs a group of performers and gives them equal weight. These women vary in age, possessing different outlooks in life. Lamangan works extremely well with his cast, making sure to never portray them as anything other than unflinchingly human. These women being in a profession that requires them to sell their bodies doesn’t negate their humanity, the film becomes less about their line of work and more about their inner qualities, which drives both the injustice and the necessity of prostitution, but never stops short of portraying it as tragedy allowing glimmers of possibility and even agency for the characters.

Lamangan gives his heroines love and sympathy, pointing his finger at the repressive patriarchal society for allowing the exploitation of women and for reflecting society’s hypocritical attitude towards them. It’s a polished, poignant and unsentimental account of the women who resiliently live in the streets awaiting a better future. There is no doubt whose side Lamangan is on. One by one, in interwoven detail, he shows us how each of the women live. His attention to the trials of womanhood is sustained over his career and yet its meaning is less obvious—and perhaps less laudable —than many would like to believe. The psycho-biographical interpretation of Lamangan—rhymes nicely with the Western conception of a feminist filmmaker. But his attitude toward women is more of an aestheticizer of female suffering, extolling and reveling in the strength and resilience of women, than one who fights against the causes of their hardship. But in watching Walker, there is little doubt where Lamangan's sympathies lie. The film is at once politically engaged and emotionally subtle. Although it puts forth a particularly complex understanding of gender politics, it never seems to relate to any immediate context. The film closes on a note of hope and heartbreak. The brief final scene in which a man takes his first step into a life that has ruined him, evoking a heartbreaking vision of hell is a mark of Lamangan’s genius. Walker is inscribed with a rare urgency that is nonetheless balanced by humanist understanding, an understanding that is remarkable even for him.

Screenplay: Troy Espiritu

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editing: Gilbert Obispo

Production Designer: Jay Custodio

Music: Von de Guzman

Sound: Christopher Mendoza

Direction: Joel C. Lamangan

A film driven by atmosphere and a sense of foreboding dread, Pasahero (Viva Films, JPHILX, 2024) proves that even though you may think you are done with the past, the past isn’t always necessarily done with you. There’s very little surprise to the movie, as Juvy Galamiton’s screenplay pretty much lays out just who is stalking the six passengers on the last trip of an MMR train and what the apparition’s ultimate intent is rather early on. Instead, director Roman Perez Jr. makes this an affair that’s a bit more about creating a palpable mood filled with tension and dreamlike uncertainty, where viewers are never quite sure just what is fantasy and what is reality. The film’s ensemble of actors all do a wondrous job bringing a sense of gravitas to the picture. Bea Binene (Angel) and Louise delos Reyes (Michelle) give intriguing performances, especially the former, who plays her role with an indescribable, transcendental quality. The mystery driving the haunting is so cold-blooded and practical that you won’t even think twice about its motivation. The movie is told with style. It goes without saying that style is the most important single element in every ghost story, since without it even the most ominous events disintegrate into silliness. And Pasahero, is aware that if characters talk too much they disperse the tension, adopting a very economical story-telling approach. Dialogue comes in straightforward sentences. Background is provided without distracting from the story. Characters are established with quick, subtle strokes.

Pasahero adds an extra layer through it’s sense of melancholy. Angel’s personal grief gives a stronger emotional link between her and the spirit - she sympathizes with the dead by trying to help solve their issues so they can be at peace. In lesser films, the heroine simply gets frightened and wants to stop the ghost in order to save her own skin. There’s a sense of wrongness throughout Perez’s film. It feels like a race against time as Angel tries to expose the crime before becoming the next victim. While real life violence provides the aura of dread that pervades the movie, the restraint shown by Perez is just as responsible for the effectiveness of the tale. Instead of inundating us with over-the-top hijinks, he bides his time before introducing the ghostly happenings - a weird noise here, a horrifying vision there - which provides a satisfyingly ominous atmosphere. Perez shot Pasahero in a manner that puts the viewer constantly on edge, with lots of odd angles, perspectives and sound design. Extremely stylish in execution, it’s convincing in a way that few ghost stories are — not in the least because the crime at the bottom of the haunting is particularly nasty. The images we create in our heads to explain bumps in the night as well as everything else horrifying are far more frightening than anything a director can put on screen. Even stripped of the ethereal elements, Pasahero would have made for a compelling murder-mystery, but the supernatural sheen only adds to its power and unexpected poignancy.

Sound Designer: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Musical Director: Dek Margaja

Editor: Aaron Alegre

Production Design: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Neil Bion

Screenplay: Juvy Galamiton

Directed By: Roman Perez, Jr.

Everybody hustles, but in Monti Puno Parungao's The Escort (Lexuality Entertainment, Treemount Pictures, 2011) hustling (in the hard core sense of selling your body for sex) is a way of life. For all its depiction of lurid subject matter, The Escort also balances its heavy drama with a strong dose of romance. It's a precarious and potentially disastrous juggling act and one that The Escort pulls off with genuine flair. There was a time when most people didn't know men sold sex and didn't want to know. The Escort dramatizes the lifestyle at the same time it tells a cautionary tale. The viewer gets to meet the escorts while keeping a safe distance. The world of The Escort seems terribly real, it even smells that way. Parungao does a good job of capturing the unsprung rhythm of the street. The characters form a loose-knit community at the mercy of strangers. They may spend hours together and not see one another for a week. Parungao shows Karlo’s encounters, one is an old man with peculiar tastes. Miko Pasamonte finds the right note for Karlo. He has plans and dreams, but vague ones and he's often sort of detached, maybe because his life is on hold in between tricks. Karlo has fallen into a lifestyle that offers him up during every waking moment for any stranger. He does it for money, but it pays so badly, he can't save up enough to pay his rent.

The basic thing that happens to Karlo is that he meets Yuri (Danniel Derramyo), a person entirely outside his experience. Yuri has a measure of humanity, so does Karlo. They come together because there is no other way to turn. Karlo and Yuri are castaways. The two young men have obvious affinities, but their banter also establishes some important differences. They go their own way, live their own lives, become two of the permanent inhabitants of our imagination. They exist apart from the movie, outside of it. The Escort is about their mutual self-discovery, about the process that took place as they learned to know each other. Karlo's journey toward actual love—tenderness, encouragement—gives the film its wrenching climax. Parungao's work with his cast is matched by an assured visual sense benefiting enormously from the richly textured images achieved on a low-budget, location-heavy shoot. The Escort largely builds from its personality and atmosphere to effectively establish characters through the portrayal of emotion and the human condition, which are physically reflected in their settings. Colliding hope with despair as the intersecting crossroads of Karlo and Yuri coexist in a contemporary world of excess and absurdity normalized amidst the chaos of it all while dismantling social boundaries. Luring the viewer with its seductive mixture of ambiguity, realism and gritty subtext while rendering a deeply sympathetic view of wayward lives, the film delivers a lingering perspective on the impact of meaningful relationships in the ever-alienating experience of human existence.

Production Designer: Vicente Mendoza

Cinematography: Ruel Galero, Moni Puno Parungao

Edited By: Monti Puno Parungao

Musical Scoring: Monti Puno Parungao

Screenplay: Lex Bonife

Directed By: Monti Puno Parungao

The concept of Boy Kaldag (VMX, BLVK Films, Pelikula Indiopendent, 2024) is undeniably clever. Size is both the film's hook and flaw, an amiable but ambling comedy that collapses under extended exposure. Thankfully, there is more to Boy Kaldag than just its one-dirty-joke premise. A prodigiously endowed young man builds a reputation around his singular natural talent. People will always want sex and a man with a giant penis might not think it’s that crazy to try and make some money with it. Benz Sangalang is well-cast and interesting as Dax. He has an easy-going, casual style that fits the material. If Boy Kaldag is more often touching than salacious, it's because Sangalang imbues his character with such a palpable sense of yearning and regret, you end up rooting for him. Dax, in a voice-over explains what didn’t need to be explained. As he talks about the way things used to be, the tediousness of Dax’s interior monologue becomes funny. He winks at his failure to recognize how good he actually has it, making the viewer respond more tenderly toward him. The secondary characters include Jayner Santos as Gorgeous in a lovely comic performance filled with world-weariness that I found refreshing and largely believable. A farce with sensibility both mordant and whimsical, Boy Kaldag delights in its phallic symbols. So exuberant as to be unafraid of looking juvenile, it revels in illustrating the pathetic circumstances of Dax, whose only solace is being well endowed.

In fact, Boy Kaldag is less interested in its conceit than it is with what drove Dax to prostitution, the emotional baggage and the questions of morality that accompany the profession, which makes it far more interesting than one about a guy with a tripod plowing his way through lonely and horny women. Dax, faintly reminiscent of Dirk Diggler, Mark Wahlberg's porn star from Boogie Nights (1997), a big, slightly confused man without the slightest trace of self-doubt on board, a temperament that not coincidentally, is absolutely imperative in the man-whore trade. Because, let's face it, most regular, thoughtful men, men of ideas, men with flaws, would have more than a little trouble getting it up and keeping it up. Boy Kaldag gets a lot of elements right, including the baby steps it takes into Dax's new side. It's rather a rueful look at the lengths to which one guy will go to capture a life that has gradually slipped away from him. Director Roman Perez Jr.'s interplay, his willingness to let the story gradually unfold and its disarming sensitivity helps elevate Boy Kaldag well above its gimmicky title.That something, unsurprisingly and as unsubtle as you might expect from Boy Kaldag, is sex. Dax is the meat and potatoes and it’s fascinating to watch him deal with different women. And that’s exactly where Boy Kaldag succeeds; when it stops pretending to be something more than it is, it gets back to guiltlessly pleasuring its audience.

Sound Design: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Music: Derek Margaja

Editor: Mai Calapardo

Production Designer: Mikey Red

Director of Photography: Rommel Sales, LPS

Screenplay: Ronald Perez

Directed By: Roman Perez Jr.

Nympha (Regal Films, Inc., 1980) is a silly, classy, enjoyable erotic film that was an all-time box-office success. It’s not remotely significant enough to deserve that honor, but in terms of its genre, it’s very well done, filled with attractive and intriguing people, and scored with brittle, teasing music. It’s a relief to see a movie that returns to a certain amount of sexy sophistication. This tale of a young woman discovering herself was a headline-grabbing sensation when sex in films had gone mainstream. Its characters inhabit a world of wicker furniture, soft pastels, vaguely Victorian lingerie, backlighting, forests of potted plants and lots of diaphanous draperies shifting in the breeze. It’s a world totally devoid of any real content, of course and Nympha (Alma Moreno) is right at home in it. She’s the eldest daughter of Don Bernardo Monteverde (Johnny Wilson), a shipping magnate allegedly raped by one hundred young men. This experience propels her into a dizzying series of sexual encounters that range from the merely kinky to the truly bizarre. The screenplay from Toto Belano brought some class to the continuous bumping and grinding while Joey Gosiengfiao's direction shone the spotlight on the female star that gave the film much of its success. Nympha is executed with a patina of respectability. The cinematography takes advantage of the scenery, the dialogue is polished to the point of pretentiousness and there’s tact to the film’s atmosphere that definitely sets it apart from crasser approaches. This being said, much of the material feels ridiculous, offensive or hopelessly naïve by today’s standards, lending the film a veneer of sophistication, which if you looked a little closer doesn't ring true. If we were to be grown up about sex, then we must be as liberated as Nympha.

Gosiengfiao correctly understands that gymnastics and heavy breathing do not an erotic movie make. Carefully deployed clothing can, indeed, be more erotic than plain nudity. Gosiengfiao is a master of establishing situations. Nympha's rape, for example, is all the more effective because of its forbidden nature. And her encounter with Albert (Ricky Belmonte) is given a rather startling voyeuristic touch. The movie’s first hour or so is largely given over to the erotic awakening plot, but then Nympha comes under Marcial's (Alfie Anido) influence. She is intrigued at first, but with assurance comes experience and does it ever. Marcial delivers himself of several profoundly meaningless generalizations about finding oneself and attaining true freedom and then he introduces her to a series of photogenic situations. Marcial’s philosophy is frankly foolish, but Anido delivers it with obsessed conviction that the scenes become a parody and Nympha‘s comic undertones are preserved. What also makes the film work is Moreno's performance as Nympha. She projects a certain vulnerability that makes several of the scenes work. The performers in most skin flicks seem so impervious to ordinary mortal failings, so blasé in the face of the most outrageous sexual invention, that finally they just become cartoon characters. Moreno actually seems to be present in the film and as absorbed in its revelations as we are. She carries the film and at times almost seems like a visitor from another planet. Moreno is always shot with soft light and soft focus giving her a very tender appearance and it's not difficult at all to see why everyone in the film longs for her. It’s a relief, during a time of cynicism in which sex is supposed to sell anything, to find a skin flick that’s a lot better than it probably had to be.

Screenplay: Toto Belano

Director of Photography: Caloy Jacinto

Film Editor: Rogelio Salvador

Music: Jun Latonio

Production Designer: Danny Evangelista

Sound Supervision: Luis Reyes, Ramon Reyes

Directed By: Joey Gosiengfiao

Most movies succeed or fail because of the way they tell their stories and develop their characters. Balota (Cinemalaya, GMA Pictures, GMA Entertainment Group, 2024) does introduce remarkably three-dimensional characters, but it tells their story in an awfully off-hand sort of way. People who view movies only on this level and ask questions, are cutting themselves off from the unique experience offered by Balota. Loose ends in the plot would be important if the film depended on telling a story. It does not. The new experimental films and several of the unconventional, recent feature films don’t always make their points this simply. Instead, they draw the audience into a series of seemingly unrelated events and make their point by the way these events butt up against one another. The thread running through is that they’re events happening at the same time as the events in the plot. They establish a climate for the story. Emmy's (Marian Rivera) acts do not take place simply because they are invented. Writer/Director Kip F. Oebanda makes it clear they take place because they’re the sort of acts that are in the air. Almost all movies could take place anytime and nearly anywhere. A series of faceless heroes and heroines have their crisis, solve it, move on. There is a vague romantic subplot that surrounds Balota, but Oebanda leaves the details of the relationship up to interpretation. He isn’t concerned with plot mechanics, other than the central theme of Emmy's social conscience. He saw her as a human being manipulated and influenced by events.

Oebanda's camera ended up getting caught in the maelstrom of violence and what’s surprising is that his approach is so rare. Perhaps all directors secretly enjoy playing God, controlling events, dipping down into the screenplay. They don’t like their movies to give the impression they’re not running things. Oebanda's directorial posture in Balota is, however, frankly that of an observer. He is as surprised by the events in it as we are and he’s at pains to make them seem as random. He doesn’t immediately supply us with connections, but rather makes us work to piece them together and it isn’t until more than half an hour into the film that we realize how these characters’ lives will begin to intersect and create a narrative we can follow. Instead, he uses his opening scenes to establish a climate within which the movie will take place. This sort of direction requires more work from the audience and can offer greater rewards. In the conventional story framework of most movies, the audience can be completely passive, allowing events to unfold as if they made sense. Oebanda's film is one of several movies that knows these things about the movie audience. To understand the way Balota is put together is to understand something about the way events get transferred onto film. Conventional movie plots telegraph themselves because we know all the basic genres and typical characters. Rivera, maintaining her character, rushes through the chaos of the actual conflict, delivering a natural and phenomenal performance as Emmy. The violence becomes part of the story, yet it exists outside of it, as well. That’s Balota's message on the level of story. It can also be seen as Oebanda’s message on the level of technique. Balota is important and absorbing because of the way Oebanda weaves all the elements together.

Sound Engineer: Albert Michael M. Idioma, Nicole Rosacay

Musical Composer: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Chuck Gutierrez

Production Designer: Eero Yves S. Francisco, PDCP

Director of Photography: Tey Clamor, LPS

Written and Directed By: Kip F. Oebanda

It’s devastating, the way director Maryo J. delos Reyes depicted how the domino-effect destruction of 1995’s Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig (Regal Films, Inc.) came within milliseconds of never happening. Spanky (Christopher de Leon) could pick up and perish the idea of sleeping with exotic, enticing Donna (Alma Concepcion) — returning home determined to reawaken his wife’s passion. Likewise, Mae (Lorna Tolentino), could reduce the rage at discovering his infidelity — resolving to attempt reconciliation and not avenge a fling that blossomed into full-fledged intimacy. Delos Reyes has never been much for subtlety, but when is true sexual passion not abandoned inhibitions and wild expression? He understands, though, that the psychology of erotic fantasy has as much potential to obliterate as to titillate. Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig never arouses, judges or mounts a morality play. It’s a dark, delusional piece of sultry fantasia that doesn’t condemn or condone Spanky or Mae’s choices. It simply presents people surprised by the ease with which they transgress and allow little white lies to fester into gigantic, tumorous deceptions. Delos Reyes has always been a stylish filmmaker, but he gives Sa Ngalan Pag-ibig much more than surface elegance. His choice of angles and colors, his use of shadows and especially his mastery of editing all work to create a unified psychological texture. He's aided by an unusually honest and perceptive screenplay by Raquel Villavicencio and Wali Ching, and by Christopher de Leon and Lorna Tolentino whose performances go to a place of complete emotional nakedness. There's a remarkable sequence in which Mae goes to Donna's apartment. Her emotional state is one anybody could recognize, though it's hard to put a name to it. She's trembling and we can feel it. Not every filmmaker can convey that physical sense. Delos Reyes takes us inside it, so that we understand what it would be like to be her, to inhabit a body electric with nonstop longing. It's not an enviable state. It's more like a fever. Tolentino is asked to run the full spectrum of emotions, from unexpected joy to emptiness to heartbreak and her every step is a flawless grace note. As Mae becomes more and more aware of her husband's deceitfulness, the anger, hatred and insecurities that come with it are palpably felt by Tolentino's powerhouse turn. Delos Reyes contemplates newer models when he first lingers on Tolentino's sex appeal but, in the end, the actress fights back with evocative blood-splatter.

A word should also be said for De Leon, here eschewing all his usual tics. Spanky knows Mae too well and the big confrontation scene is affecting because it turns on the heart of the dilemma. A man who loves his wife so much versus a man who exists entirely in the present. While Concepcion has no problem making any man vulnerable, in Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig, she easily captures her character giving Donna the demeanor of a free, uncomplicated but somewhat mysterious woman who enjoys the games she plays. Perhaps the most humanistically genuine motion picture Delos Reyes has yet put to celluloid, Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig takes an unflinching and emotionally rattling look at the recklessness of infidelity and how it can destroy the lives of all three parties involved, leaving no one satisfied. While thriller elements are introduced into the story over an hour into the proceedings,Delos Reyes resists the temptation of resorting to horror movie cliches. Here, his intentions are set on a notably higher and more thought-provoking wrung. Sex is not just a passing fancy, but profoundly disruptive, not life enhancing but life shattering and what's broken cannot be remade. The fling cannot be unflung. A skipping record is Delos Reyes' transitional element between Mae’s comfort and fear, a Model of the Year trophy, the haunting reminder of nature bringing and tearing lovers apart. Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig represents the best of both worlds. It excites the emotions in the way a good melodrama should, but it also stirs the quieter feelings of pity and helplessness we associate with tragedy. It's the rare kind of movie that comes along only a handful of times-- gut-level entertainment that's oddly profound. It is not often that viewers are gifted with a rare adult film that presents a serious view of sex, love and relationships. As a showcase for marvelous actors at the top of their game and a poignant portrait of a family in the midst of unraveling, Sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig gets it just right.

Sound Engineer: Joe Climaco

Production Designer: Benjie de Guzman

Director of Photography: Charlie Peralta, FSC

Film Editor: George Jarlego, FEGMP

Musical Director: Jimmy Fabregas

Screenplay: Raquel Villavicencio, Wali Ching

Directed By: Maryo J. delos Reyes

Ginhawa (Cinemalaya, Black Toro Productions, 2022) is a captivating underdog story charting familiar ground, but in a way that feels organic, for the most part. The screenplay by writer/director Christian Paolo Lat and co-writers Mia Salisbury, Lester Caacbay and Anju de Vera works best when it focuses on the burgeoning relationship between Anton (Andrew Ramsay) and Jepoy (Shun Andrei Bacalla) as they embark on their journey. Their relationship evolves and gets put to the test. It's fortunate, then, that Anton and Jepoy remain compelling characters and most importantly, palpably human, except for an injury that Jepoy sustains later in the film and unrealistically survives. Characters arrive to make their lives difficult at the start while others stay hidden until it’s their turn to do the same. So Anton and Jepoy are more or less sandwiched by oblivion. Forwards and backwards hold no solace. The only place where they’re seemingly safe is on the boxing ring itself. And they do have some fun, trying to make the best of it. But you can’t ignore your fate forever. Eventually you have to face the demons and pick a direction. They’ve each led a life that was never built with an escape hatch. It won’t therefore be difficult to figure out any narrative progressions. Has Anton given all he has just to sacrifice his soul for nothing more than a chance at happiness? Or will he find the courage to stand-up to the world that’s done everything in its power to keep him down? Just because you won’t find any profound revelations doesn’t mean the experience is without merit.

One could argue that the script’s shortcomings are the actors’ gain since they’re each asked to render the emotional beats authentic despite their convenience. It helps that they all know their failings internally no matter how vehemently they argue against them. Ramsay has the juiciest role. He’s the really dangerous one, when push comes to shove brought home by an inevitable violent climax that features a superb supporting performance by Dido de la Paz as the dreaded Coach Jun. Bacalla is a quiet authentic presence, weighted down with pain and it is touching to watch him loosen up as Jepoy’s bond with Anton deepens. Duane Lucas Pascua gives a fascinating performance as Anton's older brother, Saul. The anxiety is always flickering deep in Pacsua’s eyes, even at his most brash and loud. And though his role is brief, Rolando Inocencio’s Tiyo Noel deftly conveys righteous indignation. Lat's direction is intimate and lived-in, he seems at home in the grungy rooms and streets. He doesn’t glamorize the bloody results of boxing, either. He has a way of showing tenderness and brutality in alternate scenes, with music layered into the basest of scenes. There’s little doubt that Ginhawa improves substantially as it progresses, as the movie’s effectiveness is, in its early stages, undercut by an emphasis on overly familiar plot elements and character types. It has a nice, low-key vibe to it. By the time it reaches its somewhat spellbinding third act and downright powerful finale, Ginhawa has cemented its place as an erratic yet completely rewarding little drama that’s ultimately much better than it has any right to be.

Directed By: Christian Paolo Lat

Written By: Christian Paolo Lat, Mia Salisbury, Lester Caacbay, Anju de Vera

Director of Photography: Dominic Lat

Production Design: Melvin Lacerna

Editor: Alec Figuracion

Musical Director: Pau Protacio

Sound Design: Jannina Mikaela Minglanilla, Garem Rosales

Nothing in director Lawrence Fajardo's features approaches the power and skill of The Hearing (Cinemalaya, Pelikulaw, Center Stage Productions, 2024) which represents a major leap forward in all departments. Proving himself an astonishingly accomplished director as well as a measured storyteller. While this is unquestionably an issue film, it tackles its subject with intelligence and heart. Fajardo uses a trial to structure the film, though this isn’t a courtroom drama and those scenes are wisely kept to a minimum. He does a superb job through a mixture of shrewd editing and a multitude of sounds, generally keeping the camera just below or above twelve-year-old Lucas' (Enzo Osorio) head. In following his young protagonist and his mother Madonna (Mylene Dizon), Fajardo articulates the impossibility of the lives bestowed upon them. It’s a deeply assured piece of direction and though it only plays a few emotional notes, they are ones that won’t soon leave your memory. The Hearing gives us course after course of heart-wrenching scenarios tied to the POV of its child protagonist that it’s hard to get a sense of any course of action than the one chosen. This is not an easy movie by any stretch of the imagination. Lucas' situation goes from dire to almost unwatchable. The director allows us to enter into the boy’s mind. We watch this movie not as concerned adults but as complicit secret-sharers and that makes all the difference. But the polemical is never as powerful as the personal and Fr. Mejor's (Rom Factolerin) part of the story illuminates the whole with nauseating clarity. They welcomed him because he was their conduit to the church on which they counted for solace and support. By the time it's told, his unnerving air of detachment has been shown to be emblematic of an indifference endemic in the church itself. Fajardo isn’t interested in giving the audience the kind of relief so absent from the children Lucas represents.

The most abiding image is the face of Lucas himself. He has lost the ability to smile and has effectively bottled up his tears, except when at the point of despair or suffused by the memory of his abuse. This cut uses POV to present the young boy's journey, evoking his limited hearing frequently via unflashy manipulations of the film’s soundtrack and careful placement of the camera. Thankfully, Fajardo provides moments of tenderness and finds ways to inject small bits of humor when he can. Most of all, it helps that the film is built around an incredible, singular performance from Osorio as Lucas. In scenes of quiet desperation, Fajardo’s camera focuses on Osorio’s eyes and his defeated body posture to get a sense of the internal fight going on in his head. There’s a melancholy tone throughout the film, even in its most innocent moments. The young actor is an unforgettable, charismatic presence. His is a performance I can easily see coming up in future discussions about all-time great work by child actors. There is a naturalistic quality to the movie on the fact that Osorio acted spontaneously. He brought an undeniable truth to every moment used in the film, which was cut down to a running time of 1 hour and 35 minutes. Fajardo set about rebuilding the film allowing him to completely redefine the feature. During this process, he was able to paste over the cracks, build upon the film’s core concepts to create the kind of narrative and thematic tension the original cut had been sorely missing. In a handful of drone shots, Fajardo extends his lens beyond the suffering of his characters. There’s no doubt that he is a filmmaker of extreme empathy, with real intuition on how to capture the dynamics between parents and their children in particular. There is passion and compassion here and Fajardo's film brings home the meaning of desperation and, conversely what love and humanity mean.

Screenplay: Lawrence Fajardo, Honeylyn Joy Alipio

Director of Photography: Roberto "Boy" Yñiguez

Editors: Lawrence Fajardo, Ysabelle Denoga

Production Designers: Ian Traifalgar, Endi "Hai" Balbuena

Musical Scorer: Peter Legaste, Joaquin Santos

Sound Design: Jannina Mikaela Minglanilla, Michaela Docena

Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

Though the title teases at religious allegory, Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.'s Pieta (Alternative Vision Cinema, Noble Wolf, 2023) is far from your average scripture. With no room for hackneyed preaching or politics, the film's faith system is wrapped in a verité-style drama, in which sacrifice and persecution are indistinguishable. Characters find redemption through punishment and seek truth through manipulation. Alix prefers his characters to speak more through deed than word. Often delving into deeply transgressive corners of the human psyche, Pieta never goes where we expect it to. And it has some important things to say about revenge and sacrifice. Alfred Vargas as Isaac is a marvel to watch. His transformation is almost impossible to tear away from. Isaac's problems turn out to be of a more internal and existential origin than in any outward pressures weighing him down. Vargas’ intensity is well matched by Nora Aunor, bringing a sense of disturbing mystery to Rebecca whose relationship with her son takes a surprise twist as Isaac suddenly remembers an incident from his youth. Every so often, bursts of affectionate spontaneity erupt between Rebecca and Isaac, demonstrating the genuine love and bond that they share – and yet, the connection remains fragile, derailed so quickly whenever either one of them slips through the emotional cracks that ennui has eroded into their core personalities.

Aunor says so much with silence, creating a cinematic language from the emotions on her face alone; mysterious but complex. Rebecca proves to be something else entirely. Isaac's attempts to get back into some semblance of the life he almost permanently left behind prove to be much more difficult than anyone might have imagined. And the escalating enmeshment with his son Jonil (Tommy Alejandrino) add new layers of confusion to the mess he’s trying to make sense of. Further retreats into isolation don’t necessarily offer comfort, but the withdrawal does reduce much of the friction, a welcome relief in its own terms. It’s a detour, a reliable means to an ambiguous end. Powerful changes come with a price paid in the devastating final frames. Much to Alix’s credit as a filmmaker, he resists the temptation to amplify Isaac’s turmoil or make him an object of pity. There’s a humane core to Pieta that saves it from despair. Rather than making everyone other than Isaac a fool, Alix extends enormous sympathy to a fascinating cast of supporting characters, all of them outcasts in their own way, including Gina Alajar, beautifully understated as Beth. Her subtle performance does much to take the edge off the film’s twists and turns. Long after we have its destination in plain sight, Pieta still penetrates our assumptions. It starts out dry and minimalist, with widescreen compositions that suggest its mode will be naturalistic, then the ironies multiply. Alix crafts a quietly powerful, character-driven tale that even amid its melodrama and violence, Pieta's emotional complexities remain haunting.

Directed By; Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.

Screenplay: Jerry B. Gracio

Director of Photography: Nelson Macababat, Jr., LFS

Production Designer: Jhon Paul Sapitula

Editing: Xila Ofloda

Music: Mikoy Morales

Sound Design: Immanuel Verona

In a movie about someone with cancer, a delicate balancing act takes place and determines if the production falls into intolerably melodramatic territory or emerges as something that connects with viewers on a deeper level. Go too broad and you’ll fall into a series of clichés, but put the material in the hands of strong characters developed by even stronger actors and you have something like Lemuel C. Lorca's Paquil (Resiko Entertainment Productions, 2025). Former actress Cristina (Beauty Gonzalez) discovers she has cancer — an affliction that changes her relationship with overbearing mother, Bing (Lilet Esteban) and musician Paolo (JM de Guzman), who wants to help her in the only way he really knows how. Gonzalez delivers a largely genuine, layered performance. Her character rides the emotional roller coaster one might expect from her situation — shock, depression, isolation and most glaringly, anger. Cristina has trouble expressing emotions and the cancer forces her to lash out about what she’s feeling. Clearly the flip side to De Guzman’s strengths, Gonzalez at times seems to be playing catchup to De Guzman’s free-flowing interplay whether she likes it or not. He further demonstrates his superb ability to find the comedy in individuals programmed for deadpan objectivity. Their scenes together are particularly brilliant in how they push beyond the first joke. When Paolo’s attempt to kiss Cristina comfortingly falls flat, De Guzman is splendid in his discomfort, betraying Paolo’s growing affection for her. Somehow all of those involved have managed to avoid the temptation to inflate their experience.This is not an easy story to tell by any means.

Both Archie del Mundo’s screenplay and Lorca’s direction struggle with aim and avoiding cliche, a pitfall Paquil falls into repeatedly. There are the sappy, predictable moments with Cristina looking stoic and of course, revelations and pontifications on the meaning and fragility of life. Lorca aims high and comes close to his mark on occasion, but the often cringe-inducing near-misses outweigh the hits. The story raises some practical problems. Cristina’s cancer functions primarily as a plot device. Details of her progress and continued treatment are postponed and in general, she seems in good health for a terminal cancer patient. Cristina and Paolo’s time together depends on illness to elevate an ordinary romance into transcendence. Paquil incorporates an ambitious set of events and by the end, some work better than others - while a few are overtly ham-fisted and jammed into the story. However, Del Mundo’s script also evinces touches of real grace by confronting its conflict head-on, often painfully so. Paquil emphasizes to heartbreaking effect the soul-crushing loneliness any cancer sufferer has to deal with. Filled with a cast of such talented players, entertaining moments are sprinkled throughout and you get the feeling that, with a push or a prod in one direction or another and a clearer aim, it might just have hit its mark more often than it does. It’s easy to reinforce the film’s message that having cancer makes you realize how important it is to define and redefine your connections and who means what to you. Paquil is a rare movie—one that is honest. It’s a truly moving story that, despite a tendency toward the facile, never relies on tricks to make us feel something.

Music: Paulo Almaden

Editing: Lemuel Lorca

Sound Design: Immanuel Verona, Fatima Nerikka Salim

Production Design:Carmela Danao

Director of Photography: Marvin Reyes

Screenplay: Archie del Mundo

Directed By: Lemuel C. Lorca

Maning Borlaza's Stolen Moments (Regal Films Inc., 1987) is melodramatic in the traditional sense, not in the modern pejorative sense, in that it concerns issues of class division and sexual yearning. Alex Bernabe (Miguel Rodriguez) wants a good job, lots of money and a pretty wife on his arm. And he could have it if not for his embarrassing lower-class impulses. His identity is the very thing that prevents him from attaining what he desires. The story crescendos as Alex comes closer to realizing his ambitions. And just as an opportunity presents itself, his past mistakes threaten to derail his progress, resulting in a dramatic downturn. Stolen Moments is a tribute to deft dramatization that the young principals are projected as fully as the maelstrom of life in which they are trapped and with which they are unable to cope. Borlaza composes shots that magnify Alex’s status in an unsympathetic world he nevertheless desperately wants to get inside. This lets us understand Alex’s attraction to plain Marietta (Rio Locsin), but also his desire for the pampered Carol (Alma Moreno) and why it consumes him to the point of destruction. Despite a prohibition against male suitors by Marietta's Aunt Saling (Perla Bautista), an encounter lands Alex in her room and the two spend the night together. It is here where the stained hand of movie fate intervenes on Stolen Moments, aligning to give Alex what he momentarily wants, only to hold that against him later. When he is with Carol, Borlaza bathes him in light. These sequences are overwhelmingly sensual and intimate, Rodriguez showing us just how significantly he was remaking not only screen acting, but also definitions of masculinity. His men were not afraid to expose their vulnerability to the point of emotional ruin.

On Carol’s arm, Alex is soft and tender, takes shape and comes to life. The heightened romance of their love scene is shot tight and up close. Carol, we are encouraged to believe, sees something in Alex no-one else can. Lust in all of its beautiful and gruesome detail plague the film and the expressionist imagery find a deft balance of heightened representation. The camera lingers on Rodriguez’s and Moreno's faces every time they enter a scene. They swim, swept away in abandon and love. Alex and Carol's romance is sincere and it hurts. Since his basic upbringing—a composite background of slums from which he chose to escape—does not permit him to callously desert Marietta. The film undercuts the central couple with moments of selfishness that compound with little regard for the woman caught in their path. Rodriguez's portrayal, often terse and hesitating is generally credible. For Moreno, at least, the histrionics are of a quality so far beyond anything she has done previously. Borlaza must be credited with a minor miracle. Locsin has never been seen to better advantage as Marietta, beset by burgeoning anxieties but clinging to a love she hopes can be rekindled. Rey P.J. Abellana at times seems overly-laconic, but the more serious defect in the screenplay is the difficulty in believing that Fredo, Marietta’s lover could ever get to an emotional pitch leading to some confusion of sympathies on the part of the viewer. Most of the supporting players contribute fitting bits to an impressive mosaic. By making us intuitively understand the attraction of high life and using Marietta’s needy overtures to prick the viewers’s conscience, Borlaza has created a film about the decision between a rich life and a moral life, and the vast confusing grey area in between. Stolen Moments favors the beautiful moment over the sensible story or the moral road taken, it is a tale told with fervor of the pitfalls of falling into ones' emotion.

Sound Supervisor: Joe Climaco

Production Design: Cesar Jose

Director of Photography: Sergio Lobo

Editor: George Jarlego

Screenplay: Jose Javier Reyes

Music: Jaime B. Fabregas

Direction: Maning Borlaza

Lawrence Fajardo emphasizes the gleaming, soulless surfaces in Walker (VMX, 2025), a film accurate and attentive enough to convey the appalling emptiness of streetwalker Alex's (Robb Guinto) world. Walker is attractive to look at, shot in a fluid, semi-poetic style. The story is told in fragments out of chronological sequence. The spectator is obliged to work at piecing them together. As criticism, however, if criticism this be, Walker is ultimately timid and evasive. It relies far too much on its self-consciously oblique approach, which tends to take center stage and far too little on genuine insight into the world it represents. This is a self-conscious film from a gifted director who has often been prepared to go where the mainstream doesn't flow. Successful in both, Fajardo has balanced his ability to make commercial hits with his desire to do more personal and innovative films. This one offers an interesting idea but falters in the casting. Once the novelty of the casting wears off, the performance offers nothing to hold onto, no meaningful insight into either the character, Alex or Guinto herself. There are layers upon layers here, Guinto taking on a serious acting role in which she plays a woman whose job is to make herself an object of male fantasy. Alex (and one can’t help but imagine, Guinto) are indistinguishable: blank, dull, prone to choosing her words carefully and choosing the most banal ones imaginable. On the rare occasions when the conversation shifts to alternative topics, it is seldom enhanced.

In what is either a commendably honest internal critique or more likely, an attempt to head off inevitable complaints about the performance, the film practically assures us, she’s playing someone who’s completely affectless. Either way, we’re left with little more than the pretty surfaces, which those inclined could presumably see at greater expanse in Guinto’s work. It would have been possible, I suppose, for Fajardo to work his way around the collapsed star at the center of his film if the characters in her orbit brought something to the encounters, if she were a mirror held up to their desires and disappointments. But the rest of the cast spends most of their time, like us, marveling at how closed off she is. The movie is short on information about the actual business of being a walker. The filmmakers seems to be supposing that the awfulness of most of these people means there is no high drama to be extracted from their lives. Does Mara's (Stephanie Raz) murder, for example or the fate of the innocent and not-so-innocent individuals, offer no material for tragedy? Is there something fundamentally different about the whoring that Guinto’s character does versus the whoring that everybody else in the film does? Bringing bits and pieces of this unpleasant, narcissistic life in Walker, for example, is not a satisfying substitute for explaining why such a social existence came into being and why it fell apart. No perspective at all, in this instance, means ignoring certain larger realities. Walker proves that a visually striking film can be made on the fly. But grab-and-run is a more fruitful strategy for images than scripts.

Sound Design: Nicole Rosacay

Musical Scorer: Mbella SineScore

Production Design: Ian Traifalgar, Endi "Hai" Balbuena

Editor: Ysabelle Denoga

Cinematographer: Albert Banzon

Screenplay: Jim Flores

Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

We have seen many directors deliver great pieces of work through modernized folk horror, however, many more have gone under the radar. All of these capture a wide variety of tales about isolation, religion and the essence of nature by using elements of folklore to invoke dread, fear or a sheer sense of unease in their audience. Going through a similar route comes Adolfo B. Alix, Jr.’s Mananambal (BC Entertainment Production, 2025), creating an atmospheric sensation that immerses you in the story more than the viewer initially anticipated. It might get under the audience’s skin, however, both in frustration because of its slow-burn approach and narrative repetition. Some montages take more time than they need to. The film is at its best when it embraces its environment that fills the screen with unease–the sensory experience that the story brings. Alix builds tension not necessarily slowly, but calmly and cautiously. He waits and lets the film’s ideas gradually carry the story and its characters, only to then raise the hairs on your neck when you least expect it. Mananambal focuses on the repercussions of hiding from danger instead of recognizing its existence. Alix has a unique directing style and it translates here. And the film has this drama that is sorely missing in most modern horror. Lucia (Nora Aunor), conceals her daughter, Alma (Bianca Umali) in the forest, devoid of contact with other people. This is not a story I can relate in any detail without giving away the twists that occur when Alma is pushed into a corner. Mananambal has less gratuitous violence than the average horror movie. Every bloody episode advances the story. There’s a cold beauty in the way the film has been shot, allowing us to experience the rawness and wonder of nature through Alma’s eyes. Alix has created a brand of horror film that poses lots of imponderable questions about the relationship between mothers and daughters. It asks if there is an inviolable core of goodness or badness within people that can survive the most bitter, violent experiences.

Lucia has an instinct striving towards the good while Alma has been permanently scarred, both physically and mentally. When Lucia is first recognized for instance, nobody spells out for the viewer what her significance is. Her presence alone and the reaction to it says everything. Much later, we do learn more in a situation where such knowledge would naturally come to the surface. Alma benefits from social change in a way Lucia either cannot or will not. Alix highlights why forgiveness and reconciliation is often a responsibility foisted upon the next generation, while it’s perhaps obviously easier to forgive someone who didn’t try to burn you alive, even if they did it to someone else, Alma explores the world with a cleaner slate than her mother, at least for a while. Aunor's remarkable performance as Lucia reminds us once more of how completely devoted she is to every role. She can do more with a glance, a simple shift in her eyes, than most actors can in an entire film's worth of screen time. She is capable of slowly revealing her vulnerability - another trait that sets her apart from other actors. Umali shines in a convincingly distressing performance, one that hopefully gets her many more offers for other dramatic roles. From the intimate cinematography to the score reminiscent of a creeping, hooded danger following us on a lonely road at night, Mananambal excels at providing a very different level of fright. It’s through this dynamic that Alix examines the reverse perspective as children learn to forgive their parents, be it for beliefs they attempt to pass on. Alix and his editors don’t hold your hand as they guide you through the trickier, stream-of-consciousness final passages of the movie, whose scares are punctuated by moments of transcendent visual poetry. Eventually, Alix miraculously finds a way to make you feel pity and tenderness for Alma, as she rues her life and what she’s destroyed and lost. A harrowing story for Alma emerges that brings us closer to understanding her own trauma and why she’s resigned herself to a life of ritualistic destruction. Mananambal is a decidedly unorthodox type of horror, one that won’t work for those seeking superficial jump scares. But taken on a metaphysical level in tandem with the film’s motifs and themes, it all works together to create a symphony of dread, right up until the moment when it all comes to a head and real blood is shed.

Sound Design: Jannina Mikaela Minglanilla

Editing: Xila Ofloda, Mark Sucgang, Mark llona

Music: Mikoy Morales

Production Designer: Jhon Paul Sapitula

Director of Photography: Nelson Macababat Jr., LPS

Written and Directed By; Adolfo B. Alix, Jr.

If the broad, life-affirming outlines of In His Mother's Eyes (7K Entertainment, 2023) are familiar to the point of banality, in the hands of actors as gifted as Maricel Soriano, Roderick Paulate and LA Santos, this tale of sacrifice and sibling rivalry achieves moments of real poignancy and power. There are few things as hard to play as genuine selflessness, but Paulate, without a trace of sanctimony, makes Bibs' goodness utterly natural. You can see why Santos's Tim would find comfort in his Uncle Bibs. He's rooted in the present and open to experience in ways his mother will never know. Soriano, all edges and nervous, guilty motion, makes us believe in Lucy's transformation without going soft. She's tough and abrasive, and she'll stay one. It's rare to see a film with such honest, transparent emotion and to spend time with actors who don't feel the need to cloak intimate feelings in irony. Paulate is especially moving, perhaps in part because we know him primarily as a comedian and forget all the tender emotional values he brings to drama. Soriano's ability to transform herself is remarkable. She manages to portray a quiet strengthIn without ever letting you doubt that her character is very ill. In point of fact, Tim's autism isn't really the story's main concern. Writers Jerry Gracio and Gina Marissa Tagasa are more interested in the relationship between Lucy and Bibs, and Tim's relationship with the world in general. Director FM Reyes overworks the close-ups, hits too many notes on the head, but he knows enough not to get in the way of his three superb stars, who put on a display of emotional fireworks that is lovely to behold.

In His Mother's Eyes has a child whose behavior is unpredictable. With a rich vein of bleak humor, the film is about the healing power of sacrifice. In His Mother’s Eyes has so much star power. The famous faces make it difficult, at first to sink into the story, but eventually we do. The characters become so convincing that even if we’re aware of Soriano and Paulate, it’s as if these events are happening to them. Once Lucy and Bibs are reunited, the material boils down into a series of probing conversations. There is a lot to say and Reyes lets them say it. How do families fall apart? Why do many have one sibling who takes on the responsibilities of maintaining the family home, while others get away as far as they can? Is one the martyr and the other taking advantage? Or does everyone get the role they really desire? What In His Mother's Eyes argues is that Lucy by fleeing the home, may have shortchanged herself and that Bibs might have benefitted. Or perhaps not, perhaps Lucy was better off keeping out of the way. There is a point in the film where such questions inspired parallel questions in my own mind. All families have illness and death, and therefore all families generate such questions. The true depth of In His Mother's Eyes is revealed in the fact that the story is not about these questions. They are incidental. The film focuses instead on the ways Lucy and Bibs deal with their relationship–which they both desperately need to do–and the way Tim learns something, however haphazardly, about the difference between true unhappiness and the complaints of childhood. This emotionally affecting drama makes the point that the love we give to others is the only thing that makes life worth living. In His Mother's Eyes is full of complex, well-observed emotion and gives us the rare satisfaction of respecting its characters, forgiving their flaws and contradictions and celebrating their capacity to love.

A Film By: FM Reyes

Screenplay: Jerry Gracio, Gina Marissa Tagasa

Directors of Photography: Neil Daza, LPS, Rap Ramirez

Production Design: Marxie Maolen F. Fadul

Editor: Vanessa Ubas de Leon

Music Composed By: Carmina Robles-Cuya

Sound Design: Albert Michael M. Idioma, Garem Roi B. Rosales

Lino Brocka finds the right tone in Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister (PLG Films, 1981) and it’s not always very easy because he wants to make his film both true and funny, not sacrificing laughs for the truth. But what was the right tone? Armed with Jose Dalisay Jr.'s screenplay, Brocka delivers an exceedingly (and sometimes excessively) subdued endeavor that benefits from its assortment of first-class performances and there’s little doubt, certainly, that Christopher de Leon handles his character, Dick Navarro quite gracefully, wearing an impenetrable, guarded expression and playing everything very close to the vest. Nora Aunor’s completely captivating work as Dick’s ex standing as a continuing highlight within the proceedings. She is undoubtedly responsible for the picture’s most indelible, show stopping moment, as Doria attempts to win her husband back. The oddest thing about Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister is how many small things about it are needlessly thoughtful and complex, even though the film is mainly a very simple if well-made example of what adult entertainment looked like in the 80s. The entire film is spent showing how Doria and Dick navigate both their mixed emotions and strong attraction to one another. Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister manages to be fast and funny while it breaks new ground. There's a kernel of truth here. There are a lot of good laughs, too. And there is also an important problem, but it doesn't manifest itself until the story is well under way. It gives us the release we need and sets Aunor’s personality for the movie’s second act with scenes of loneliness and the beginning of emotional recovery. Brocka isn’t afraid to pull out all the romantic stops at the right moment. He wants to record the exact textures and ways of speech and emotional complexities of his characters.

Carmi Martin delivers a particularly sharp characterization during the first part of the story and unconvincing in the second, through no fault of her own. Nervous, demanding, high-strung and nevertheless charming, her Laila is all wrong for Dick — that's what makes their affair so unexpectedly touching and gives the story so much life. When the movie begins to insist that these two were made for each other, it gives the lie to all that has gone before. This feeling is intensified by the fact that neither character changes much during the course of the story. It doesn't help that the only amorous interludes occur very early on. Aunor takes chances here, never concerned about protecting herself and reveals as much in a character as anyone ever has. Doria is out on an emotional limb. New lovers dreading ex-wives must invariably summon someone like Aunor to mind. She is letting us see and experience things that many actresses simply couldn’t reveal. It’s a lesson for critics on the dangers of assessing performance in a movie, a medium in which the actors may be more at the mercy of the other craftspersons than we can readily realize. Rather than solely embodying the strength and confidence of a single protagonist, Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister mobilizes Doria’s arc as a signifier of feminist freedom without becoming didactic or trite. De Leon's performance begins very well and very seriously — all the laughs are built around him and he reacts calmly and cannily with an eye toward self-preservation. When Doria and Laila finally turn up in the same place, though, it's time for Dick to show the strain or to show the conflict, or to show something, De Leon lies low. Brocka perfects the ending by de-centering his perspective and the audience-centric satisfaction of a nihilistic open-ended conclusion, allowing the protagonist the final say regarding her personal satisfaction.

Screenplay: Jose Dalisay Jr.

Based on a Story By: Efren Abueg (Serialized in Liwayway Magazine)

Director of Cinematography: Conrado C. Baltazar, F.S.C.

Music: Rey Valera

Film Editor: Efren Jarlego

Production Design: Joey Luna (P.D.G.P)

Sound Supervision: Rolly Ruta

Directed By: Lino Brocka

There was a time when you couldn’t see classics such as Himala, Oro, Plata, Mata and Manila by Night. Now, these films are just a click away. But will a cinephilic culture continue to surround them? Does it matter if that culture continues to shrink as long as it’s enthusiastic? In the realm of film history appreciation, the reverse seems to be true, more films are being saved and restored than ever before. It remains an open question how many people will continue to watch them over time. Cinephiles get excited about the ability to access a range of classic movies that they often forget who gets alienated in the process. But if you were to drop the average layperson looking to learn more about film history into its offerings, let alone the classic film titles available they might get lost in the sheer amount of choices available. As the history of film expands, there will be a flattening of values. Some films continue to live on because of previous critical momentum. But as more people become less conversant in the language of classic Filipino films, the qualities that make them exceptional will most likely become increasingly obscure. Streaming sites need content that can serve the function of keeping users glued to their screens. Dwell time means engagement and revenue. The goal is to keep you occupied for hours and to keep you coming back.

These days, if there are enough celluloid assets of a movie, there is no excuse for them to ever become lost. The technology just didn’t exist to digitize them. The time required and cost of these restorations keeps coming down. Before, it could take up to a year to restore a film, now they can be done much, much faster. There’s no reason to think that trending direction is going to change. We’re in a golden age of film restoration, because now we’re able to see these films look better than they ever have. They’re scanning original negatives, if they can be found, at 4K resolution making us see all the little details. Now, it is an incredible time to be discovering older cinema. And that’s actually part of the reason these titles will remain accessible. Studios with major libraries have preservation budgets, but this new impulse toward volume means those budgets aren’t going away as long as the current streaming model exists. Viva Films and FPJ Productions are preserving their entire library. Every title may not get a full restoration, but they are digitally enhanced with a new high definition master. ABS-CBN Film Restoration package archive titles and remaster them while creating new artwork and extras. Today’s drive toward film preservation and restoration has been catalyzed by filmmakers singing the praises of movies that influenced them. And rising filmmakers need to know about the classics to fuel their own visions. There’s a certain amount of rules that come with the craft of filmmaking. Filmmakers won’t know whether or not something has been done before, unless they study Philippine cinema history.

SOUL STARVING EMPTINESS

BODIES IN MOTION

BRISK, TAUT AND FOCUSED

BITTER REVENGE

LOVE'S MANY FACES AND DISGUISES

ENIGMA OF ADULTERY

UNEVEN AND PRE-PACKAGED

A QUICK AND SIMPLE SCARE

STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE

FOREBODING DREAD

EVERYBODY HUSTLES

HOOK AND FLAW

SILLY, CLASSY, ENJOYABLE

IMPORTANT AND ABSORBING

MORE THAN SURFACE ELEGANCE

COMPLETELY REWARDING

PASSION AND COMPASSION

REVENGE AND SACRIFICE

SOUL-CRUSHING

SENSUAL AND INTIMATE

GRAB-AND-RUN

SYMPHONY OF DREAD

EMOTIONALLY AFFECTING

THOUGHTFUL AND COMPLEX

DISCOVERING OLDER CINEMA