Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started

CineSensual

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.…

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…

Loading…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.


Follow My Blog

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.