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BROAD STROKES (In Memory of Jaclyn Jose 1963-2024)
For writers Ricky Lee and Shaira Mella-Salvador, May Nagmamahal sa Iyo (Star Cinema Productions, Inc., 1996) seems like an occasion to tweak familiar formulas, as they exhibit a compulsive need to...
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STRICTLY FOR THE LADIES
While Jose Abdel B. Langit's Mapanukso (Vivamax, LDG Production, 2024) maintains a light-hearted feel for the first 45 minutes or so, there comes a turning point near the end of the second act...
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WRITTEN IN STONE
Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan (V.H. Films, 1985) is one of those epic sagas that seem to have been made for television. The film by Maryo J. de los Reyes tells the rags-to-riches story of Doña...
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AUTHENTIC AND SATISFYING
Darryl Yap treats love and loss with a disarming tenderness and a refusal of sentimentality that make his fifteenth feature, something of an anomaly among male identity flicks. Para Kang Papa Mo...
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DOMINO EFFECT
It’s devastating the way director Jerry Lopez Sineneng depicted how the domino-effect destruction of Rita (Vivamax, 2024) came within milliseconds of never happening. Rita (Christine Bermas) could...
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BEYOND REDEMPTION
What Vilma Santos achieves in Maryo J. de los Reyes'Tagos ng Dugo (VH Films, 1987) isn't a performance but an embodiment. With courage, art and charity, she empathizes with Josefina Regala, a...
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UNBEARABLY TENSE
Dahas (MAQ Productions Inc., 1995) with Maricel Soriano, has two things that separate it from the pack of thrillers on the shelves: It's almost unbearably tense and it has the biggest visceral...
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GENIAL, CELEBRATORY
This genial, celebratory interview with Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka interspersed with movie clips hits a note of excitable cinephilia throughout. Christian Blackwood examines the hows and whys...
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SPECTACLE OVER SUBSTANCE
Overly simplified and curiously uninvolving, Pula (Fire & Ice, CCM Film Productions, Centerstage Productions, 2023) is an example of how this sort of ruminative storytelling isn’t meant at...
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BETWEEN MATERNAL AND CARNAL LOVE
Overused and much misused, the word provocative has become a double-edged sword, especially when swung in the direction of independent cinema. At its best, the genuinely provocative film — off the...
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IMPROVISATORY BRILLIANCE
Working Girls (Viva Films, 1984) represents Ishmael Bernal at an all-time personal peak and it came at just the right time in his career. For anyone who believed that what Filipino movies needed...
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COMFORTABLY FAMILIAR
Decrying film clichés is easy. Replacing them with something worthwhile is much harder. Tropes become tropes because they’re often the straight-line, natural-feeling answer to common story...
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RECOGNIZABLE AND REALISTIC
The Hearing (Cinemalaya, Pelikulaw, Center Stage Productions, 2024) evokes the experience of a molested child in all its furtive anxiety and shame. Sensitively directed by Lawrence Fajardo and...
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OBSESSION AND MADNESS
Maligno (Rosas Productions, 1977) builds tension with masterful patience and detail, not because it relies entirely on the payoff of its devilish finale, but because Celso Ad. Castillo wants to...
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A FRESH TURN
This beguiling romance offers a fresh take on a familiar premise. At its heart is a story about love, tolerance and honesty. For all its anodyne rom-com silliness, however, 4 Days (Phoenix...
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SOUL STARVING EMPTINESS
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...
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BODIES IN MOTION
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....
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BRISK, TAUT AND FOCUSED
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...
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BITTER REVENGE
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...
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LOVE'S MANY FACES AND DISGUISES
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...
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ENIGMA OF ADULTERY
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...
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UNEVEN AND PRE-PACKAGED
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...
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A QUICK AND SIMPLE SCARE
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...
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STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE
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...
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FOREBODING DREAD
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...
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