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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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