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JUDICIOUSLY EROTIC
In the wrong hands, Palipat-Lipat Papalit Palit (Viva Films, 2024), Roman S. Perez Jr.'s story of obsession and jealousy could have easily been turned into a tawdry film. Perez avoids this thanks...
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RESPONSIBILITY AND REVENGE
Human suffering is an interesting subject for cinema, since it possesses a relative ease in connecting with viewers and evoking emotions. Brillante Ma Mendoza's Apag (Heaven Pictures Hong Kong,...
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SOPHISTICATED, COMPLEX
There are two lines of thought that dominate any discussion of what makes a movie scary: either it is a great deal of subtlety and implication that allows the viewer to imagine all sorts of...
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THE PERFECT COMBINATION
Documentaries often do one of two things: they open your eyes to a topic or story you might have had no knowledge about or they add to the knowledge you already have. But good documentaries are...
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TACTILE AND RELENTLESS
Gerardo de Leon's films are often about people confronting certain despair. His subject is how they try to prevail in the face of unbearable circumstances. His plots are not about whether they...
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CLEVER AND SOPHISTICATED
Lawrence Fajardo's Kabit (Vivamax, Pelikulaw, 2024) demands that an audience ponder its many intellectualized, psychosexual, intertextual and subtextual meanings. At any moment, the film works on...
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A HIGHWIRE ACT
Luisito Lagdameo Ignacio's evocative Abenida (BG Productions International, 2023) is not afraid to ask questions about the nature of love and the boundaries of normal feelings. It’s a slow-moving...
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GASPING POWER
Silence speaks volumes in Iti Mapukpukaw (Cinemalaya Foundation, Inc., Project 8 Projects, 2023) the latest film from Carl Joseph E. Papa. The writer/director uses rotoscope animation as a tool...
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SEDUCTIVE AND DISQUIETING
Roman Perez Jr.'s The Housemaid (Viva Films, 2021) takes place almost entirely within the enormous modern house of a very rich man and centers on the young woman he has hired as a nanny. It...
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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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