VMX 2025, In Review

 

Time to bust this out again

In the year of our Lord 2025, 62 Filipino full length feature films were released on the VMX (formerly Vivamax) streaming service. This tally does not include releases from last year (e.g. the Ideafirst collabs such as Table for 3 and Bigayan), compilation specials such as Kiss/Kiss, VMX Rewind, Best of VMX 2025 (recursive!), and the seven films of the Cinesilip Film Festival, which started rolling out streaming releases on the service last month. All of the initial streaming dates for consideration are based on the date the film was first made available via PPV, which discounts Piem Acero's Teacher's Pet (debuted on PPV late 2024, had a wider release January 2025). There is no equivalent example to that this year.

I have seen every single one of those 62 films. I think a little part of my soul died. I am kidding.

Over the past 12 months, I've noticed some things on VMX that I'd like to share.

1. If you haven't noticed already, VMX made less films than the previous year's output of 86 films. That's a decrease of 28 percent. But things aren't as black or white as it looks: while there are less films, they are generally longer. The mid-length 40-50 minute film is gone, replaced by films hovering around the 70 minute mark. At the same time, longer films on VMX are a rarity, and very few films crossed even 110 minutes.

2. The decrease in local output is offset by an increase in output from other sources. Pinku eiga from Japan, softcore films from South Korea and elsewhere, as well as a slew of cheap action movies. BTS content for films continued, though the service also started offering an exclusive VMX plus/VMX Club service with additional content. VMX's sister service Viva One had a few popular releases this year as well, though that's a story for another day.

3. Some actresses from who did work on sexy films or sexy-film adjacent stuff in the late nineties and the first decade of the 2000s made their way onto the service. Krista Miller's appearance on films such as Sponsor was a nice surprise, and though Jem Milton's been in VMX films since the service's first few years, she had a handful of interesting appearances here. But by far the most interesting appearance this year is from Yda Manzano, who had a number of sexy roles in the late nineties and early 2000s. I guess it's VMX trying to appeal to the MILF crowd. She had a few interesting turns this year, but her best outing in my opinion is in Topel Lee's Mamasan, about a veteran strip club manager who forms a motherly bond with the new hire.

4. VMX also started remaking sexy films from that same period. Remakes of Yam Laranas' Balahibong Pusa and Erik Matti's Ekis made their way onto the service, and while they may not be as good as the originals, they are pretty decent, relatively speaking.

5. The inaugural Cinesilip Film Festival made its way to cinemas this year. It was mostly aimed towards the usual audience of VMX, even for films with a wlw theme, but Rodina Singh's Dreamboi, by far the most successful film of that inaugural run, showed that experimentation and audience diversification can draw in crowds.

6, The decreased number of films also coincided with several films that have an IMDB or Letterboxd entry but are not present whatsoever in the service. Some of the films were renamed (Bobby Bonifacio's Paalam, Salamat used to be called Paalam, Ligaya, for example) but some films, like a film called Sex Trip by Lawrence Fajardo, simply disappeared from the VMX service altogether.

VMX Directors and Actors of 2025

Bobby Bonifacio and Roman Perez, Jr. directed the most VMX films in 2025 with seven each, followed by Rodante "Roe" Pajemna and Topel Lee with six each. While Perez Jr fostered talent and directors through his outfit Pelikula Indiopendent (as well as a small, but hilarious role in Jon Red's L: Lakad), Bonifacio found his stride directing VMX films that are slightly different from the usual fare, or otherwise put a spin on familiar tropes.

Rica Gonzales had a bunch of films this year, but she had an interesting turn as a supportive older sister in Ray-An Ludwig Peralta's Hiram and a small but memorable role in Len Carillo's Sembreak. I have a soft spot for this lady, and I hope she doesn't get typecast as pitiful characters next year.

Aliya Raymundo seems to be the actress that VMX is pushing the hardest this year. After a relatively tame start with the middling Elevator Lady, she's been in a number of average films. Some of Raymundo's performances are okay (a mysterious classmate in Sigrid Polon's Mayumi, or as a young woman navigating her relationships in Rain Yamson's Violet), her real standout performance this year is in BC Amparado's Salikmata, a mind-bending Cinesilip horror entry that's told in reverse. 

Speaking of Salikmata, another actor from that film deserves the spotlight as well: Aerol Carmelo spent his time in VMX 2024 playing sleazy characters, but his performance in Salikmata shows that the man has range. Also of note is his turn as a sexual deviant with a cuckolding fetish in Dennis Empalmado's L: Lipad, a complex, fucked up character that's not easy to pull off.

Speaking of sleazy characters, while JC Tan had a number of roles this year with Barurot and Kirot, it's his turn as Bogart in Ronald Batallones' Tusok Tusok that takes the cake for sleaziest character in 2025 Filipino cinema.

Mark Dionisio may not be as much in the spotlight as his other VMX actors, but the roles this man gets are very fun. They're mostly antagonistic roles, but sometimes, like in JR Reyes' Kapag Tumayo ang Testigo, he's goofy as hell. 

Angela Morena is another actress having a decent VMX year: she even won an award for her performance in Pongs Leonardo's Pagdaong. Her performance in Bobby Bonifacio's Sex on Phone is also noteworthy, which also has a pretty great turn from fellow actress Zsara Laxamana.

Azi Acosta may have only appeared in one VMX film this year, but she made it count. She makes the main character in Sigrid Polon's Sorority someone you can truly root for.

And finally, Jenn Rosa had a number of really great performances this year, especially as the lead in Bobby Bonifacio's Kirot, and a small role in Rodina Singh's Dreamboi.

Favorite VMX and Cinesilip Films of 2025 (in no particular order)

Paalam, Salamat (dir. Bobby Bonifacio) - a decades-spanning tale of what I call the ultimate simp, Paalam, Salamat's most meaningful kind of love isn't sexual at all - it is a dedicated life of devotion. I kept on remembering that one person on instagram who said that remembering is more important than loving, or rather, it is the most important kind of love. And conversely, as this films shows, how painful it must be to not be remembered. 

L: Lakad (dir. Mervyn Brondial) - while Brondial may have directed this, writer Jon Red (who also directed another film in this "L" trilogy) has his fingerprints all over this wild and fanciful tale, which can be read as a commentary on VMX itself, consuming sexy 'content' and the pledge to commit to a loving relationship.

Kirot (dir. Bobby Bonifacio) - there are so many interesting thematic ideas in this film - the idea of literally gaining a heart and figuratively gaining the heart to fight back against abuse and the suffocating rigidity and hypocrisy of organized religion.

Sorority (dir. Sigrid Polon) - I've always wondered about the idea of campus frats and sororities, and how they operate to wield and facilitate systems of power (and sometimes, subsequently, abuse). This film does a little exploring in that regard, and shows how in order to challenge that power, one has to break down these systems with their own hands. While this is no Batch '81, it's elevated by a committed performance by Azi Acosta. 

L: Langoy (dir. Jon Red) - this one felt like another blast from the past from Red's digital cinema era, which is also what I said about his other VMX output in previous years. I suppose it's just Jon Red being himself. Esoteric and mysterious, it's a film that's hard to pin down, but it's one that talks about ideas of freedom, isolation and liberation (through relationships or sex.)

Sex on Phone (dir. Bobby Bonifacio) - Bonifacio has already explored the role of sound in sensuality with last year's Ungol, he expands that here. In Sex on Phone, sex isn't just a tangible act, it's also a fantasy, a promise of something unreal. A promise that, when its unreality is exposed, leads to nothing good.

Salikmata (dir. BC Amparado) - One complaint I have when I see a VMX film is that the vast majority of them feel samey, Since your audience isn't exactly watching for the plot, why not experiment or innovate? Salikmata is exactly the kind of film that's the answer to that complaint - formally inventive, well acted and very horny, not to mention creepy (and not always in a pervy way.)

Dreamboi (dir. Rodina Singh) - Another wish I have for VMX is to explore the very idea of desire itself, and Rodina Singh's Dreamboi delivers that in spades. Though it might not be a perfect film, it is one of this year's most important.

Haplos sa Hangin (dir. Mikko Baldoza) - more words about this in my favorites list (because I think it's that good,) but for now let me say this. Haplos sa Hangin is a deconstruction of the sexy films that VMX embodies, taking the tropes of 2000s era softcore and recontextualizing them as horror. It's quite a remarkable film all in all, and not just a good VMX/Cinesilip film, but a good Filipino film period.

***

Hold tight for my next post, which will be a roundup of Filipino Cinema in 2025. How many did I watch? How many do you think I watched? lol.

MMFF 2025: Love You So Bad, Shake Rattle and Roll Evil Origins, Manila's Finest

 

I think Theodore Boborol's Vince and Kath and James (2016) is the prototypical love triangle teen romance of the past decade or so. Over time, a handful of films have been done to try to replicate or at least approximate its success. The latest effort is Mae Cruz-Alviar's Love You So Bad, starring PBB... throuple? double couple?? Will Ashley, Bianca De Vera and Dustin Yu. I have no idea who 2/3 of these people are outside of this film, so I went into this blind. And I'll be honest here: I didn't like it. Its plot is too messy and I found the whole thing kind of cringey. But I don't think it's bad per se, and I think that says more about me than the film itself, because I think I would've found parts of this entertaining ten years ago. Did I just grow out of it? Well, yes and no.

Vanna (De Vera) is a party girl (an understatement), but she does this because of a host of personal and family issues. She bonds and dates with LA (Yu), the popular star of the college swim team. Both Vanna and LA, self described "mistakes," bond over their brokenness in a wild montage of social media posts, partying and reckless abandon. But then, one day, LA ghosts her, leaving her confused. In order to get back at her boyfriend, she fake dates fellow classmate (and student council president) Vic (Ashley). But Vic has feelings for Vanna, and that feeling soon becomes mutual.

Though LA's romantic arc with Vanna feels undercooked, it's his overall character arc that's the most interesting to me. LA ghosted Vanna for a reason, and he's a far more interesting character to me than Vic, who comes off as scheming and territorial, but completely feckless in the face of his strict mother (Ana Abad Santos). LA's screen time with Vanna is limited aside from the flashback at the beginning, and balancing moments between the two suitors would have made things more fun. Ultimately the end effect on me was that I wasn't invested in either romantic outcome.

The film's central character, Vanna, is just as messy as the film she's in, and the film knows it - there's a scene in the end where Vanna remarks at the absurdity of two hot guys fighting over someone like her - but there's something interesting in how each of her potential boyfriends affects her. The straight-laced Vic arguably makes Vanna a better person, while LA unlocks her wild side. Unfortunately it doesn't follow through with that idea or what Vanna could've become by choosing either, both (spicy!) or neither, opting instead for an ending sequence that would not feel out of place as the finale of a reality show like The Bachelor.

This messiness can be somewhat entertaining, to the point where I wish I had more scenes with Vic and LA vying for Vanna's attention, but I often found myself rolling my eyes at this film more often than not. The younger audience with me loved whatever interactions there were, however. I suppose fans of the loveteams involved will enjoy this, though by the time of that finale I was completely checked out.

The latest entry in Regal Entertainment's Shake, Rattle and Roll series puts a clever spin on the anthology concept: three stories, each in different time periods, telling the story of the rise of an ancient evil and the people who try to fight against it.

The 1775 segment, about a spate of mysterious deaths in a convent, is setup for things to come, but is also a sort of thematic lynchpin for the rest of the film: the origins of evil aren't always because we fail to prevent it from happening, but sometimes because we let it happen thanks to our own inaction or for the sake of order. It's interesting that many of the nuns in this convent are products of our colonial past, figuratively born from that "sin," while the evil entity is a sort of super aswang, though the film doesn't go into depth in that regard.

The 2025 segment may not be as thematically deep as the previous segment, but it is by far the most entertaining, the one that stands alone the best, and the one that's most fun to watch. Personally, it's the best of the three segments in this film. It's a fun genre exercise employing many familiar tropes from the slasher genre, and is incredibly gory to boot. It also stars many popular young celebrities and personalities from various seasons of Pinoy Big Brother, so I guess there's a certain kick to knowing which of your favorites gets their brains smashed into chunks by the segment's masked antagonists.

The final segment in the year 2050 wraps up all the plot threads, and as such is the one that stands alone the least since it depends on lots of context from the previous two segments. It also depends on a lot of contrivances to conclude the story, because what do you mean the main antagonist of the film randomly shows up to the exact place where our protagonists are when he could have stayed in some remote castle in the mountains? It has some fun sequences but the proceedings lean more towards action. I'm not sure if this would've been better as a fleshed out, standalone film with different context and with more buildup towards its rushed conclusion, but it functions less as its own thing and more as a cap to a fairly okay entry to the Shake Rattle and Roll series.

I've been thinking about Manila's Finest recently, wondering how to express my thoughts on what it wants to say in my own words. To start, let us consider another film of the same name, William G. Mayo's Manila's Finest (2016). In that film, a bunch of Manila cops led by Jeric Raval fight against an international terrorist group that happened to come across Manila. It is your stock copaganda film divorced from reality, portraying policemen as supernatural heroes who beat up stock bad guys and keep us safe, it is a film that romanticizes them, and ignores the systemic rot and the many, many times police have upheld the whims of those in power instead of the people they are supposed to serve. 

Manila's Finest (2025) is nothing like that. It is a film not primarily about cops, but of memory, but we'll get to that later. Even the "good" cops in this film aren't angels - the supposed paragon of policemen, Homer Magtibay (Piolo Pascual) cheats on his wife with Janette (Jasmine Curtis). Homer and his fellow cops represent a kind of policing partially based on a model from the 1950s - where the cops assigned to the area were locals living in the same neighborhood, and the system existed as primarily a civilian institution rather than something controlled by the state. By the sixties, the patrol car system supplanted this, though not completely as in this case. And even then, both historically and in the film, abuses of power did still occur in some capacity. What then happens over the course of the film is a change from something that's not very good to something much, much worse.

The changes are subtle, insidious. Increasing political unrest was happening at around this time, and officers suddenly gained a level of immunity from personal responsibility, which fostered a culture of impunity. This is a horror film of sorts, an Evil Origins if you may, of the militarization of police leading up to Martial Law. It is a film that gets darker and darker as it goes, and its darkness lies in its inevitability, that unshakeable sense that all this relative idealism at the start is going to go to shit, and our only recourse is to remember so it doesn't happen again, even when, looking at how militarized the police became during the pandemic times and during the last administration, it definitely does happen again. It's fitting that its darkness is made complete when a character surnamed Liwanag is forced out of the service. 

In that sense, the film's central arc is not Homer's, but that of Billy Ojeda (Enrique Gil), a young police officer who tags along with Homer and his other cop buddies but soon falls under the influence of Danilo Abad (Cedric Juan), a member of the National Police Commission that represents everything that went wrong with the system. And by the end of the film, the only way to subsist in such a system is to reject it entirely, because everyone who survives to the end of the film is left damaged. Even Homer is affected: the one person who represented his conscience, his daughter Agnes (Ashtine Olviga), in his inaction to do anything meaningful to the system he works in, leaves. 

It's a solidly acted production with a strong cast, and Piolo Pascual mostly carries the film's biggest moments. The supporting cast, especially Cedric Juan, Romnick Sarmienta and Ashtine Olviga have great moments on screen, the latter especially in her scenes with Pascual. Raymond Red fills Manila's Finest with silences - the film's score is sparse, dotted only by the occasional vintage song. The film's pace is also slower than its MMFF brethren, though this slow burn ramps up at opportune moments.

It's kind of ballsy to release such a film at a time of festivity, but I think it's wise to remember even in these kinds of moments. As a whole, the film speaks to the power of remembering, because we are so easily led to forget. And it's not just about remembering us sliding into darkness, it's also about remembering what we had, and what we eventually could be.

MMFF 2025: Call Me Mother, Bar Boys: After School, UnMarry

 

I'm privileged to have been raised by many mothers. When my biological mother was out there working hard to help keep the family afloat, many others (titas, grandmothers and even otherwise complete strangers who became family) stepped up to the plate. True parenthood is not something merely passed on by blood, it is a constant and continuous decision to love someone beyond love, beyond what is normally expected.

For Twinkle (Vice Ganda), that is a responsibility that was thrust upon her, but one that she took willingly: after receiving a young baby from one of the beauty queens she was coaching, she decides to raise the child as her own. When she plans to move to Hong Kong to work at Disneyland, the fact that she hasn't officially adopted the now 10-year old Angelo (Lucas Andalio) becomes a problem. Now, she has to contact Angelo's bio mom, the popular and successful Mara (Nadine Lustre), in order to officially cement her status as Angelo's mother.

What I expected was something akin to a certain comedic sequence in the beginning of Jun Lana's Call Me Mother: a campy, humorous war of oneupsmanship where one party is clearly branded as the villainous biological mother and the other, the virtuous hardworking mother who truly loves her son. But Jun Lana takes a different path, as the film recognizes both Mara and Twinkle's point of view. Mara's decision to initially let go of Angelo was one heavily influenced by parental and social pressures. (Interestingly, Angelo's dad is barely mentioned at all).

It also touches upon queer anxieties towards the right of parenthood, especially in a conservative society like ours. This topic has been explored before as well, with one of the earliest examples being Lino Brocka's Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (1978), where a gay beautician (Dolphy) takes care of the young son (Niño Muhlach) of the man he loves. In Call Me Mother, Twinkle fears the idea of her son being taken away - mostly due to Mara having the legal leverage over her status as an informal mother. But I wonder how much it's also because, through decades of internalization and conservative social conditioning, she thinks she's fighting against a society that doesn't want people like her to be parents in the first place. To be fair, in the film, Twinkle's social worker Mutya (Chanda Romero) never judges Twinkle for her sexual orientation during the adoption process, and neither does Mara. I suppose, with our society having changed in the interim since Ang Tatay Kong Nanay, it's not as big of a factor as before.

The film is carried by excellent performances from Nadine Lustre and Vice Ganda, both flexing their dramatic chops in a confrontation scene that trades the steady, one-take precision of last year's And the Breadwinner Is... with a raw, handheld scene fueled by sheer acting prowess. With a mix of trademark laughs and melodrama, it looks like the Jun Lana-Vice tandem is a solid one, and I look forward to future collaborations.

If the previous film asked us what it means to be a mother, this film, Kip Oebanda's followup to the 2017 hit Bar Boys, asks us: what does it mean to be a lawyer?

I've always found law school fascinating. While I don't think I have the chops for law, I enjoy the discussions and the use of sound logic to interpret cases and judgements. It's also a field of work that entails service, one that is often thankless. As someone in a similar field of work, I can relate to that.

Bar Boys: After School returns to our titular boys ten years after the events of the first film. Torran (Rocco Nacino) is now a law professor, who also makes principled stances in his law practice. Chris (Enzo Pineda) who spent the last film fighting for his girlfriend, is now seen separating from his now ex-wife. Erik (Carlo Aquino) spends his time working for a non-profit rights organization, while Josh (Kean Cipriano), now having retired after a successful acting career, finally takes up law for good. They're joined by Torran's students (Sassa Gurl, Therese Malvar and Will Ashley), each aiming to pass the bar exams after graduation.

With at least seven plot threads (one for each character, and that's not counting the film's central plot involving a labor dispute with farmers), the film often runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight. Some character stories are given only a little time in the story itself, or told only through side stories in the credits. Ultimately, the film is held together by a solid ensemble cast, with special mention to Odette Khan, who reprises her role as retired Associate Justice (and former professor) Hernandez. Hernandez ties all of the narrative threads together with her mentorship; in her last days, she embodies the consummate lawyer passing on her wisdom to the next generation.

The rest of the characters have their own time to shine (Will Ashley, Kean Cipriano, Rocco Nacino and the prolific Carlo Aquino are standouts) and make for some genuinely entertaining moments. It's talky most of the time, with some segments making it feel like you're in the law school classroom with them. While it may not be for everyone, for people like me who find legal discussions fascinating, these segments are scripted in a way that I personally found engrossing. For many who enjoyed the first film (including myself), it's just a treat to spend time with these characters again.

To be a lawyer is to be invisible, says Professor Hernandez in a heart to heart talk with Erik. It is inherent to their job. But while they may not be remembered by history, they are the ones that help make it. Throughout the film Torran's students (and Torran and co. themselves) ask themselves why they wanted to be lawyers in the first place, and if it was all worth it. Like all things, the practice of law is a conscious decision to live a life of service, and not a decision taken lightly. Most of it stems from a conscious, human desire to advocate for one's rights, which is baked into what it means to live in society at large.

Celine (Angelica Panganiban) and Ivan (Zanjoe Marudo) are having their marriages annulled. Not to each other, mind you: Celine's tired of her husband Stephen (Tom Rodriguez) and his narcissistic, controlling tendencies, while Ivan's wife Maya (Solenn Heusaff) wants to split with her husband for reasons that will soon become clear. After accidentally being scheduled with a lawyer appointment together, the two bond over their similar situation.

Jeffrey Jeturian's UnMarry details the long, costly and arduous process towards getting a marriage annulled in the Philippines, one of only two countries in the world where it is the only legal recourse to ending a marriage. It doesn't cast either party as particularly villainous,  painting them not as complete monsters, but as flawed, sometimes broken people. Refreshingly, it injects nuance into each character's motivations, and it's easy to understand why each character does the things that they do. It's all thanks to a snappy, solid script by Chris Martinez and Therese Cayaba and committed performances by both Panganiban and Marudo. 

The film is relatively safe and formulaic in terms of form and is shot pretty conventionally, but in familiar, romantic-melodramatic tropes it serves its purpose. During the film there were lots of murmurs in the engaged crowd about the annulment proceedings. As an informative guide to something that's not often discussed in Filipino society, having such a film in a wide reaching, national setting like the MMFF is something I can get behind.

Cinemalaya 2025: Bloom Where You Are Planted

 

These days I look at the news, see all the hopelessness going on in our state of affairs and my mind sometimes wanders. At times I wonder what we're even fighting for, if the people and institutions we're fighting against are so entrenched that it often feels hopeless. But there are people who fight anyway, even if it means their lives. 

Noni Abao's documentary detailing the lives of three activists and community organizers working with the people of Cagayan Valley could have been a run of the mill talking heads documentary, but Abao manages to capture human moments with his subjects and the people close to them. A lingering shot captures a brave but fragile front. When Amanda Echanis recites a poem about her slain father, we only hear her voice - pushing us to imagine what she is describing in her head, making the words more meaningful in turn. A former colleague of Randy Malayao tells stories of his friend, building up to actual footage of his death.

Bloom Where You Are Planted captures the meaning of struggle, that the meaning is the struggle - we fight not necessarily because we want to win, but because it's the right thing to do. A life given in tribute to the greater good is not a wasted life, but a  meaningful one, one that is well-lived.

Cinemalaya 2025: Child No. 82

 

Humans are social animals by nature and it's hardwired into our culture to seek people who we think can lead us. Humans used the concept of gods in order to bring sense to the world and our lives in general, and that idolatry and worship eventually extended to people, upon whose shoulders we confer some sort of authority. Over the centuries it has led us to make some horrible decisions whenever we pick the wrong ones. In the meantime, in the quest for gaining their own power, some people began to manufacture leaders for their own ends, even making an industry out of it. It makes a weird sort of logic: in a world where we commodify people, we also commodify the idea of leadership, where we manufacture idols of our own. Art and media over the ages - paintings, sculptures, and now films - have been created as a means of creating the manufactured image of such idols. If you've read some of the posts on my blog Present Confusion (or if this is the future and you've already read one of my books) I've written about this very phenomenon - about how some screen idols exploit the parasocial relationships we have with them to gain personal and political power and influence.

One of the most powerful weapons of the manufactured idol is the power of nostalgia, and in the beginning of Tim Rone Villanueva's Child No. 82, the faux trailer at the beginning of the movie is a clear callback to films like Fernando Poe Jr's Ang Panday (1980.) The character of Maximo "Boy Kana" Maniego, here played by Vhong Navarro, is a clear homage to FPJ, though his character also shares elements from other action stars turned politicians like former president Joseph Estrada. 

The elder Maximo is the subject of idolatry of his son Max (JM Ibarra), apparently one of many, who lives a humble life assisting his grandmother and mother with selling Inabel, a textile native to the Ilocos region. When the elder Maximo suddenly passes away, Max sets off to his wake in order to stake claim to his share of the inheritance and to say goodbye to the father that he never knew.

Max is not a perfect person, and throughout the film we see that he shares many similarities with his deceased father, to the point where it's clear he could be a successor to his reign. At the same time, Villanueva shows us the miniature ecosystem formed around an idol: fan clubs, family both included and estranged, staff, goons and hangers-on all wanting a piece of whatever Maximo had. Child No. 82 shares themes with other recent films like Antoinette Jadaone's Fan Girl (2020), which subsequently shares roots with the quintessential film about this form of idolatry, Lino Brocka's Bona (1980). But while Fan Girl focuses on the way fanaticism and blind worship leads to abuse, Child No. 82 dives deep into the process of creating an idol, and in turn, the process of creating fandoms. While Max waits for an opportunity to get close to his father, there are subtle and not-so-subtle signs that his dad was not a nice person, nor did he care about anyone else but himself.

There are a lot of meaningful choices throughout the film that add a metatextual layer to the film's themes: the film's protagonist is set in Ilocos, home to a political "idol" that brought the country to ruin, with a son following in his footsteps; Vhong Navarro in his heyday was a popular public figure who had his own share of controversies that negatively impacted his career for a long time (though some fans still stayed with him regardless), and the young JM Ibarra is the very popular finalist of a recent season of Pinoy Big Brother, a rookie celebrity already with a sizeable fanbase of his own.

While macho posturing and negative masculine energies contribute to Max's troubles, his fate as the second coming of his father is not sealed, and in Child No. 82 it is counteracted by the love and care his mother and grandmother give him. Rochelle Pangilinan's role is central to this; as Max's mother, she is conflicted about what happened in the past, and her desire to keep Max away from his father's influence fuels her decisions. While the ensemble cast is capable and well-rounded (including a hilarious turn from Irma Adlawan as Boy Kana's number one fan,) it's Pangilinan's performance that shines above the rest. On the other hand, the film also shows how this nurturing energy can be used by kingmakers to create idols of their own, embodied by Boy Kana's widow (Dexter Doria).

All this is wrapped in a package that is supremely entertaining and geared towards larger audiences outside of Cinemalaya. At times I even mused that this film would have felt right at home at something like the MMFF. It's filled with jokes and references that fans of old school Filipino fantasy works like Darna and Panday will love, and it cleverly integrates pixel art animated sequences near the end (perhaps as a way of dealing with budget constraints, but those sequences can cost a lot too).

As a people, our eternal search for a savior will always be part of our national history. It's baked into our popular culture at this point. The mid credits sequence of the film, obviously cribbed from the MCU, is used to show the cyclical nature of people like Boy Kana, old gods taking new forms.

Cinemalaya 2025: Warla

 

Stories featuring trans characters are not common in Cinemalaya, but there are some prominent examples. The strange thing about it is that both examples I'm familiar with happened in the same year. The most well-known is the late Eduardo Roy's Quick Change, whose general structure is not dissimilar to the film we'll be talking about today. The second one is the last segment in Adolfo Alix's Porno (2013), with its central character played by Angel Aquino. I have zero authority to speak on my trans brothers and sisters in terms of representation, though as someone who has viewed media depicting them over the years, I can make the following observation: on the surface it looks like we've been making strides towards better representation, but after watching Warla, I don't think we've changed enough. Corollary to that, I don't think we've significantly changed in the way we write about films with trans characters, though for both filmmaking and writing, trans filmmakers and critics are slowly and rightfully gaining visibility in that regard.

Warla is based on the real life criminal gang who kidnapped and extorted wealthy foreign nationals in order to fund their own gender affirming surgeries. Our POV character is Kitkat (Lance Reblando,) who comes to the gang after the death of her beloved mother figure. She finds family in these women as she is rejected by her own family: her traditionally macho father does not accept her identity, while her biological mother stays trapped in an abusive relationship with him. In the search for the love and support that has been denied her, Kitkat tries to cling to whoever is there for her, even if it's a criminal gang whose methods she does not necessarily agree with.

The ethos of Warla's gang is, in the midst of living in a world where your very personhood is denied, to return that same energy to that world, to deny it, to revolt. "Hindi tayo pinalaki ng sexbomb para bumawi," says Joice (Jervi "KaladKaren" Wrightson), the leader of the gang. When Barbie (Serena Magiliw) violently beats up one of their marks (Jacky Woo), she tells Kitkat that she's not doing this for revenge, though given what has happened to her previously (getting beat up by the potential stepfather of her child, for one) you get the feeling that might not be entirely the case.

That said, the presentation is a bit muddled, the film trying to get at a point that isn't as realized as it could be. The film takes a bit of time at the start by showing us slices of life from the Warla gang, but these sequences feel haphazard. By the third act the film feels like it's clumsily rushing towards a conclusion that needed some space to breathe. The film's thrust towards a certain social realist, melodramatic tone is not unfamiliar - I found myself remarking "yes, this is definitely a Cinemalaya film" - which will work for some, but is not really novel (though to be fair, I don't think it was aiming for that.)

There is no singular "trans experience," because the community is so varied, so diverse, that no singular film is representative of it. Perhaps that's why these stories flow and are structured so similarly - transformation as motivation, characters operating on the bounds of society and crossing it, the body as a canvas of suffering and/or death - they are attempts to articulate the collective pain of the community as a whole, which I guess is something shared and maybe even universal. Warla, and the canon of local trans cinema before it are noble attempts, even if they fall short. But in that regard, perhaps negotiating that articulation is better served by those within the community itself.

Cinemalaya 2025: Padamlagan

 

In Bicolano, the word padamlagan refers to the light (usually a gas lantern or gasera) that is left on before one sleeps. The light keeps vigil over the night, perhaps also serving as a signal for those who might want to come home in the dark. There is a sense of hope, however determined, for someone to come home, as long as the flame is kept burning.

Doring (Ely Buendia) keeps such a flame. He is a devotee of the Blessed Virgin of Peñafrancia, particularly a voyadores, tasked with delivering the Blessed Virgin from her shrine to the Naga Metropolitan Cathedral via a fluvial procession. Doring's relationship with his son Ivan (Esteban Mara) has been deteriorating. Ivan has started dabbling in activities that Doring does not understand. This comes to a head when, during the procession, the Colgante bridge overlooking a part of the river collapses, leading to the deaths of more than a hundred people. With Ivan missing in the aftermath of the tragedy, Doring sets out to search for his son.

Aside from its narrative sections, Padamlagan also intersperses several documentary-style interview segments, telling the story of the Colgante bridge - that it had apparently been rebuilt after a previous collapse, that it was ill-equipped to hold that many people, and that it would eventually be rebuilt again. Considering recent events where infrastructure projects were completed in substandard ways (or not even completed at all) because of massive internal corruption, it's kind of depressing to think that the same problems persist more than 50 years later. The bridge itself embodies a kind of cyclical regression towards tragedy because people forget, because people keep on making the same mistakes.

All this is gorgeously lensed by DP Steven Evangelio, who frames Doring amidst a sea of people, or trapped in hallways or corridors, bathed in dreamy light as if everything we're seeing is a memory. In its pace and in the way it executes its story, it shares a few similarities with fellow Cinemalaya batchmate Raging. But Padamlagan doesn't go much beyond that, and while Buendia is an okay actor, I don't think he manages to carry the film on his shoulders. I often found myself unable to get anything out of his performance other than his stoicism. Also, while the narrative pieces are there, tying these themes of searching to the larger political milieu feels lacking.

It still is a decent film all things considered, though in the end even with a seventy minute runtime it feels like there's a lot of fluff. I wonder if the film would be better served as a short instead.

Cinemalaya 2025: Paglilitis

Jonalyn (Rissey Reyes-Robinson) works as a virtual assistant. She's lying low for now, because in her previous job her boss (Leo Martinez) sexually harassed her. All she wants is to move on, but an offer from a hotshot lawyer (Eula Valdez) gives her a chance to air her story.

Paglilitis feels like the kind of film that one would figure out from the onset - at first glance it seems like Jonalyn will spend the rest of the film fighting a legal battle against her former boss and gain some justice from the whole thing. But thanks to twist in the middle of the film, the "trial" of Paglilitis ends up being one that's waged in different spaces - in the amorphous mass of opinions that is the internet, and in one's own mind. Soon we see that many of the people that advocated for Jonalyn do so out of self interest, or at least an ulterior motive: her mother initially objected to filing a case, but does so now in order to provide for her other daughter's education, while the lawyer who initially takes on Jonalyn's case does so in order to increase her visibility for political ends later on. Ultimately, the film's central theme seems to be that the most important person who can truly speak for you and your pain is yourself.

It's also pretty revealing that most of the people who use Jonalyn for their own ends are women themselves. One of the people who Jonalyn comes up against as the film moves towards its second half is her boss' wife (Jackie Lou Blanco), often depicted in prayer while wholly aware of her husband's behavior. Aside from the silence of victims, abuse is also perpetrated by the silence of the people who enable abusers.

Rissey Reyes-Robinson, who comes mainly from a theater background with a handful of film and TV credits, takes on her first lead role and she makes the most of it here. She adroitly embodies Jonalyn's journey from hesitant victim to determined, impassioned advocate. The adaptation of Paglilitis also trims some scenes from the original Palanca script, especially a part near the end, while still staying true to the original's intent.

Unfortunately, Paglilitis suffers from a slew of technical problems. The film's unpolish would make it right at home as a film in the earlier years of Cinemalaya, with sound problems (a certain spoken line, for example, remains undubbed), an edit that feels flat, and a general look to the film that makes it feel like a TV movie. There's definitely merit to it, but the end product is still pretty rough.

Cinemalaya 2025: Shorts A and B

 

It's time for Cinemalaya Short Shorts Reviews 2025 edition. This is a very short intro paragraph I have nothing more to say

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Out of all the shorts in this program, I've already seen four, but I've only written about one, in my list of favorite short films of 2024: Maria Estela Paiso's Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat Ha Langit, or Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From The Sky. This angry, formally creative short was great then and it's still great now.

On the other hand, I've seen Water Sports several times by now. Much like director Whammy Alcazaren's short Bold Eagle (2022) tackles the (honestly absurd but extremely serious) issue of global warming with even more absurdity. Can love stop the earth from burning to a crisp? Maybe not, but it's a bit comforting to have someone hold your hand as you watch the world die.

As part of deliberations for last year's SFFR awards, I've also seen Miguel Lorenzo Peralta's Please Keep This Copy. There are some similarities, at least in form, to Yoshinao Satoh's Papers (1991). But while papers uses its newspaper clippings to show how these paper records are inseparable from who we are, Please Keep This Copy, through its depiction of teaching materials like CAT (Citizen Army Training) rules and guidelines and other bureaucratic documents depicts how these things are embedded in high school life. It's arguable how successful it is from entrenching young people in bureaucratic and oppressive systems that they will experience in adulthood, as the shots of these papers are juxtaposed with an anxious, liberative energy that seeks to subvert what these papers represent.

And then there's Arvin Belarmino's Radikals. I've seen it a couple times now and I still can't wrap my head around it. It seems to be saying something about the nature of performance and how sometimes it leads into a new version of yourself? This is also a me problem, but I honestly found it too abstract for my own tastes.

Kung Tugnaw ang Kaidalman Kang Lawod touches on the same subject matter as Ryan Machado's Raging, but this time it's a horror film in both literal and figurative ways, the claustrophobic halls of a cargo vessel serving as a prison its protagonist cannot easily escape.

Hasang (Gills) is a very cute film that conjures an Animorphs cover in my dumb brain every time I remember it, but it's also a film about how the desire to transform into something else is an (absurd) expression of unfulfilled desires, and how sometimes returning to the past is unattainable due to how much things have changed.

Figat is very simple in terms of premise, but I have to admit it made me a bit emotional by the end. It's a loving tribute to our parents and grandparents. In their passing, they leave a little bit of themselves before they leave us, and sometimes that little part of themselves they leave behind includes a love and appreciation for one's own culture and traditions.

For many gamblers, the motivation for keeping the chase towards riches lies in false hopes, in the idea that a big win is just around the corner, when it's always the house that has the advantage. Ascension From the Office Cubicle takes a similar approach, with its many employees trapped in jobs that feel more like inescapable spirals, despite a repeated mantra that things are going to get better. The lottery that entices its central character feels like a way out, up the socioeconomic ladder into a better life, but like I said in the first sentence of this short review, in a system where those with capital have all the cards, the house has the advantage.

Insecurity, imposter syndrome, guilt from leaving people behind - they all take the form of something monstrous in I'm Best Left Inside My Head. In the course of a reunion at an orphanage, the claymated, offbeat, sometimes genuinely strange characters of this short act up in delightfully weird (and sometimes funny) ways.

And finally, it's kind of a relief that The Next 24 Hours was the last film I watched in its respective set that day, because, true to form for director Carl Papa, the subject is heavy and emotionally draining. And it should be, as it depicts a woman (Christela Marquez) trying to regain control of her life following a sexual assault, with the persistent vibration of her phone a constant reminder of her trauma. Like in Papa's earlier film Paglisan (2018), the main character's deteriorating mental state manifests when backgrounds start to dissolve into a hazy mush. In the meantime, she navigates cold and uncaring bureaucratic systems that are ill-designed to support her properly.