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INIT O' LAMIG... Intensely Persuasive
In Init o' Lamig (Cinex Films Inc., F Puzon Film Enterprises Inc., 1981) Gina Alajar’s portrayal of Melissa, a gifted concert pianist with Hansen’s disease, is so intensely persuasive that once you’re...
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SA INIT NG APOY... Making the Tangible Scary and the Intangible Scarier
Sa Init ng Apoy (Trigon Cinema Arts, 1980) forgoes campy self-awareness in favor of reverential faithfulness. Demonic possession is revealed as a malevolent force with which newlyweds Laura (Lorna...
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IKAW PA LANG ANG MINAHAL... Beautiful and Absorbing
Carlos Siguion-Reyna's Ikaw Pa Lang ang Minahal (Reyna Films, 1992) demonstrates the filmmaker’s keen eye for composition as a means of enhancing his actors’ performances. The ornate home at the...
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BILANGIN ANG BITUIN SA LANGIT... A Compelling Love Letter to Cinema
Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit (Regal Films, Inc., 1989) has a lush yet aching beauty that seems to saturate as you watch it. I’m not just talking about visual beauty. I’m speaking of dramatic beauty,...
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SLICK AND SILVERY
A hit-and-run lands a detective in more trouble than he could have ever imagined in A Hard Day (Viva Films, Inc., 2021), a thriller that finds director Law Fajardo handling a taut yet elaborately...
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FRONT AND CENTER
Loneliness and independence aren't opposites but twins, gemini states of being that can give even the shyest among us, courage to stride forth. Yet Maryo J. delos Reyes and Nora Aunor, paired as...
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INTRACTABLE ATTRACTION
McArthur C. Alejandre's Silip sa Apoy (2022) knows how much we enjoy seeing a character work boldly outside the rules. We keep waiting for the movie to lose its nerve and it never does. Working...
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PAST AND PRESENT
Textured by the substance of humanity, Brutal (Bancom Audiovision Corporation, 1980) dwells on the inelegance of real-life interactions. Written by Ricardo Lee and directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya,...
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TIME PASSING
The most immediate sensation conjured by Haplos (Mirick Films International, 1982) is that of time passing. Director Antonio Jose Perez's decision to shoot in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio, enhances...
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FIERY, INTENSE
Roman Perez, Jr.'s Sitio Diablo (Viva Films, 2022) depresses, exhilarates and horrifies. An adolescent's criminal training begins at a more experienced gangster's knees. In one horrifying scene, a...
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EXCEEDINGLY RAW, IMAGINATIVE AND DARING
The chain-of-disaster form of Reroute (Viva Films, 2022) is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. Filmmaker Lawrence Fajardo infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for...
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THE FAINT SOUNDS OF HARMONY
There's a a disarming playfulness to Roderick Cabrido's Purgatoryo (Purple Pig, Waning Crescent Arts, One Big Fight Productions, Monoxide Works, One Dash Zero, Quezon City Film Development...
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A COMPLEX PIECE OF POLITICAL ART
Lino Brocka, a tireless cinematic champion of the underdog has marched under this banner from the start. He plies his viewers with plenty of scenes in which characters debate the finer points of...
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IN THE MIDST OF APPARENT MADNESS
Silip (Viking Films International, 1985), is undoubtedly the work of Elwood Perez's imagination. The violence is explicit and the nudity celebratory. In leaving little to the imagination, Perez...
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A COMMENTARY ON SOCIAL CONDITIONING
For a long time, 1980 has been perceived and commented upon as a kind of breakthrough moment of rule-flouting, a decade’s natural culmination by which time the tenets of independent cinema...
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UNPREDICTABLY MOVING
What makes Gensan Punch (Max Original, Center Stage Productions, Gentle Underground Monkeys Co., Ltd., SC Film International, 2021) so unpredictably moving is that Brillante Ma Mendoza takes the...
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A GLOSSY, FLAT REMINDER
While there’s no good reason to remake Celso Ad Castillo's Patayin Mo sa Sindak si Barbara (1974) it’s not an inherently terrible idea. A pity, then that Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara (Star...
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DEEP EMOTIONAL IMPRINTS
Sex is such a disruptive force that as you watch writer-director Crisanto B. Aquino's Relyebo (Viva Films, 2022) you realize the degree to which the film has succeeded in reducing screen sex to a...
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EVOCATIVE ROMANCE
Marilou Diaz-Abaya's impressionistic, radiant and feverish romance Sensual (Regal Films, 1986), is anchored by the remarkable performances of the film’s two leads. At its heart is an incandescent...
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STARTLING AND DEEPLY HUMANE
What's extraordinary about Separada (Star Cinema, 1994) is that everyone in this story is right, based on their position in the situation. Melissa (Maricel Soriano) is right and Dodie (Edu...
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