Everything Everywhere All At Once’s philosophy of love is a pastiche.
What us humans should do in the midst of eternity is a question that plagues Western philosophy for decades. It has then seeped in Western cinema. While nihilist worldviews towards infinite time-loops had been done time and time again, the concept of infinite parallel universes is trending anew (under its new buzzy name, the “multiverse”).…
Two tragicomedies about crises – Whether the Weather is Fine and Big Night
Carlo Francisco Manatad’s debut feature Whether the Weather is Fine and Jun Lana’s Big Night! both got wide releases in the Philippines during the 2021 Metro Manila Film Festival after a couple of years being held off. Their topics cover resounding national traumas – typhoon Yolanda’s destruction of Visayas and the war on drugs’ reign…
Support PH Cinema, abolish the MMFF.
The season’s here again. Families go out to watch the biggest blockbuster fronted by the biggest names. Prestige doesn’t matter. Good and bad qualities become muddled by the immensity of the spectacle on-screen. The faces and plot are familiar, if not because they remain rehashed formulas tried and tested to capture the largest box-office draws.…
Arisaka – Mikhail Red needs introspection with his genre filmmaking.
Mikhail Red’s Arisaka works as a moody genre piece. In its core is a skeletal framework that is functional but later gets muddled because of the meat Red attaches it with. Red’s filmography shows that he’s good with genre – and his films are always technically sound. Although they lack the innovativity and introspection that…
The transgression of Titane comes from its transcendence away from gender categories and the human body.
There are two narratives in Julia Ducournau’s Titane. First, there’s the narrative of a female sensual dancer, Alexia, who has sex with a car and is impregnated by it. She is later on exposed as a serial killer and is forced to go on the run, burning her parents and their house to eliminate evidence.…
QUICKTAKES: Berlinale 2020 Silver Bear Jury Prize recipient Filipiñana (dir. Rafael Manuel)
You would think a short film titled Filipiñana would evoke something like its name. But from a golf course to girls sketchily clad in servant-like uniform, the irony and wit of Rafael Manuel’s work is that the milieu of it barely registers as Filipino. Its dark-skinned and petite young female main character feels plucked from…
Filmmaker Petersen Vargas speaks about his film, SEAShorts 2021 finalist How to Die Young in Manila.
In green-dyed Manila, a teenage boy gets off a taxi after seeing another teenage boy he was supposed to meet for a hookup. Heavily influenced by the aesthetics and sensibilities of Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien, How to Die Young in Manila depicts a Manila we can’t exactly pin down where. This is because it…
Filmmaker Jon Cuyson speaks about his film, SEAShorts 2021 finalist Mutya.
A call between an OFW seafarer, Kerel, and his trans girlfriend, Mutya, who is taking care of his sick mother populates the whole of Mutya. We never really see them in the frames, only the environments surrounding them in a black-and-white finish. And what a stark contrast there is between the green and lively scenery…
Filmmaker Mary Andrea Palmares speaks about her film, SEAShorts 2021 finalist Gutab.
A provincial beauty pageant is being held in the town of Libertad, Antique. Interspersed with the pageantry are scenes showing the town’s local trade, banig weaving. A voice over is heard narrating how the weaving process can also be applied in creating the perfect pageant candidate. “Gutab is a Kinaray-a word. Kinaray-a is the mother…
Parasite and Nomadland: Why the Academy is quick to bite
For decades, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy) has been the most revered institution setting the standard for Western-American cinema. But more practically, the Academy Awards (the Oscars) is a gargantuan marketing machine for non-blockbuster films to be exposed to casual moviegoers so much so that there remains a constant need…
Death of Nintendo – Nostalgia, without reflection
Everything in Death of Nintendo is filtered through the lens of arrested development. There’s this one scene in the film where the three boy leads masturbate to a Playboy magazine – with video game sound effects heightening their strokes and ejaculation. It leads one to ask: How should the audience react to this? With adoration?…
Roh (Soul) review
Coming from Malaysia, director Emir Ezwan’s feature debut Roh (Soul) is a small-scale folk horror set in the middle of a desolate forest where a family of three lives in a decrepit hut. The appearance and their adoption of a little girl triggers a chain of events that may have something to do with a…
Formalism on two short films on longing – as if nothing happened (2020) and The Man Who Isn’t There (2019)
Cinema Rehiyon showcased films from regional filmmakers categorized under various programs based on themes. One program is called “Longing, Forgotten Memories.” And it contains seven short films. I will be looking at two from the seven as an exercise in seeing how form is explored in the two films and how it evokes longing. JT…
Riders of Justice review
Riders of Justice pushes its synthesis that a chain of trivial causes can lead to events happening in the grandest of scales by having its plot elements emerge out of the blue. If that’s ironic, it is. Coming from an initial stance that causality is true, the film in its point of crisis flirted with…
Buy Bust review: Solid flick, dodgy commentary
*This article was originally published on Tinig ng Plaridel in July, 2018. Erik Matti’s technical expertise rivals, if not surpasses, those of Hollywood filmmakers. It comes as no surprise that many Filipino moviegoers have hailed Matti as a modern master of Filipino Cinema. Matti delivered teeth-grinding action in On The Job, well-paced emotional drama…
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