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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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EVERYBODY HUSTLES
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...
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HOOK AND FLAW
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...
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SILLY, CLASSY, ENJOYABLE
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...
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IMPORTANT AND ABSORBING
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...
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MORE THAN SURFACE ELEGANCE
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....
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COMPLETELY REWARDING
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...
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PASSION AND COMPASSION
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...
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REVENGE AND SACRIFICE
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...
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SOUL-CRUSHING
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...
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SENSUAL AND INTIMATE
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...
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GRAB-AND-RUN
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)...
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SYMPHONY OF DREAD
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,...
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EMOTIONALLY AFFECTING
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...
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THOUGHTFUL AND COMPLEX
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...
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DISCOVERING OLDER CINEMA
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...
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