2025 Present Confusion Year in Review - World Cinema Favorites

 

Yes, I know I'm slow to the party, but better to be here than not.

I will admit, I haven't seen a lot of foreign films this year in order to service my ongoing project for Filipino cinema. Still, over the past 12 months, either through filmfests, theatrical releases or streaming, I've watched roughly over a hundred non-Filipino films. Yes, I've already posted this list over at various social media sites, though I'd like to say a few words about this list of the 25 films I liked a lot in 2025.

25. Mag Mag (a.k.a. Magamaga Onna, Yuriyan Retriever, 2025) - aside from being an obvious parody and homage to 90s and 2000s J-horror, Yuriyan Retriever's Mag Mag plays on ideas of the Japanese rendition of the monstrous feminine, and more broadly on unrequited 'love' in many forms. Plus points for various bizarre sequences, anus lips (yes) and a completely unhinged sequence set to a Sachiko Nishida enka song.

24. Flat Girls (Jirassaya Wongsutin, 2025) - Jirassaya Wongsutin's tender and bittersweet coming-of-age comes to the realization that not even love can always overcome economic and material realities.

23. Tourist Family (Abishan Jeevinth, 2025) - first of all, no, I was not able to see Madras Matinee, SUN NXT is not available here in the Philippines. In lieu of that, I offer this Tamil film about a Sri Lankan family hiding from authorities in a quiet seaside community. It is melodramatic to a fault, but it works really well.

22. Brand New Landscape (Yuiga Danzuka, 2025) - after watching this at times impenetrable sophomore effort by Yuiga Danzuka, I began to consider the idea of a 'polysemy of spaces', in that the idea of place holds different meaning when loaded with different histories - an ordinary looking rest stop shokudo may mean the last place you saw your loved one alive, or the place where you are reunited with them once more. Add that to the idea that reshaping landscapes for the sake of development also removes histories as well, and it makes for a pretty interesting watch.

21. Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir, 2025) - the official Palestinian entry to the Academy Awards' Best International Film category is a sweeping historical epic that shows the many little ways a nation is colonized, a horror film where the monster is in plain sight and its actions are laid bare as it slowly takes away everything you love. It is not surprising at all why continued, unrelenting resistance is the only recourse these characters take.

20. K-Pop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang, 2025) - This one is my comfort pick for this year, a fun, entertaining romp about accepting one's self. It is no doubt the bane (or pleasure!) of many a parent egged by their kid to play this for the 67th time.

19. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2025) - watching this film over at QCinema really made me think of the function of film as a way to send a message - in this film, one of the characters (directly based off of the real life responders who took that fateful phone call) tells another to go to social media to post. They are rebuffed, saying that the social media feeds are already filled with burning wreckage and dead bodies, and many of the people scrolling those feeds are so desensitized that they either will not care or the message will be lost in the noise. The Voice of Hind Rajab is a way of cutting through that noise, a way to have us directly connect with the real voice of a child that was killed by occupation forces. It is my hope, on the other hand, that the awareness this film is aiming for will transcend any accolades or awards or best film lists.

18. Mother Father Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, 2025) - Jim Jarmusch's latest flows breezily, its three humorous and sometimes melancholy family stories hinting at deeper histories unsaid, while we are left to watch the aftermath of those histories in real time.

17. Left Handed Girl (Tsou Shih-ching, 2025) - while it does have a little bit of influence from producer Sean Baker, Left Handed Girl is ultimately a film about women, a film about their evolving roles in contemporary Taiwanese society and the way many women sometimes internalize resistance against that evolution for the sake of tradition. The title, for me at least, hints at this evolution - when in the past using your left hand (or being a woman) is associated with something negative, now those old superstitions sound absurd.  

16. The Land of Morning Calm (Park Ri-woong, 2024) - I particularly enjoy stories like that of The Land of Morning Calm, in which a small, almost innocuous lie slowly but surely snowballs into chaos and upends the relationships in a small, insular community.

15. Resurrection (Bi Gan, 2025) - I wholly admit to not getting all of Bi Gan's sprawling love letter to cinema (if that letter were the size of a novel). But there are some scenes in this film, where dreams and film are one and the same, that left me utterly spellbound.

14. Ne Zha 2 (Jiaozi, 2025) - I would call this my other mainstream pick of the year, if only because it is the highest grossing animated animated film of 2025. Funny, highly entertaining and melodramatic in just the right ways, it's another film I don't mind watching over and over again.

13. Exit 8 (Genki Kawamura, 2025) -  When I first heard about this I wondered, how do you make an adaptation of a very simple video game about a person escaping an endless subway corridor? Little did I know, a lot actually. I absolutely love what Genki Kawamura added to the source material. I love the usage of Bolero (a famously looping musical piece that may have been created by a guy with advancing dementia) as a musical echo to the film form. And finally, I love how the game's liminal horror and endless loop is tied to the purgatory of personal inertia.

12. Human Resource (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2025) - there are so many things in this film that remind me of birth and the creation of life, but twisted into a dark version of itself: a long car wash that serves as a birth canal, a job interview that serves to "give birth" to a new employee, the sounds of lovemaking reduced to mechanical noises. It is in many ways an anxious horror film about the bleak prospects of introducing a new life into this world.

11. Jinsei (Ryuya Suzuki, 2025) - aside from the fact that the whole film was animated by one person which is impressive in itself, Jinsei takes us from relatively humdrum beginnings to an indictment of the entertainment industry to pulpy science fiction and ultimately into a transcendent, wordless, utterly strange ending that still sticks with me to this day.

10. Teki Cometh (Daihachi Yoshida, 2024) - rarely does a film switch from terrifying paranoia into deadpan hilarity in the space of a handful of scenes and make it all work. This one does.

9. Blue Heron (Sophie Romvari, 2025) - at first Blue Heron looks like a straightforward account of a childhood indelibly marked by a family crisis, but then it transforms into something introspective, looking at itself in the mirror with the benefit of distance and time, trying to find closure where none truly exists.

 

8. The Way We Talk (Adam Wong, 2024) - there have been many films about the deaf community, but many of those films have been framed from an outsider's perspective looking in - this one, on the other hand, considers how an actual deaf person contends with either accepting their identity as something distinct from the rest of the hearing world, or integrating themselves into a perceived notion of normality.

7. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, 2025) - Park Chan-wook's films have their protagonists make decisions whose ends are technically well meaning (in this case, finding financial stability for one's family and finding pride in work that one truly loves) but are driven to extremity. Add that to a certain playfulness with form and we have a film that may not be one of his best, but even an okay film by Park is still something to watch out for.

6. Tomorrow's Min-jae (Park Young-jae, 2025) - no other film in this list left me on the edge of my seat as Tomorrow's Min-jae, where its titular protagonist, perhaps out of guilt from a wrong decision, spends most of the movie trying to do the right thing, even though issues of class and other social hierarchies have corrupted social systems so much that not doing the right thing will always give you the advantage.

5. Rental Family (Hikari, 2025) - Rental Family is an easy film to love. Yes, it is fluff compared to many other films in this list, but I appreciate the way it is a film about acting, about how, in being someone else for somebody, you tap into something beyond yourself, something almost divine.

4. A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, 2025) - we're living in a world where resistance is needed more than ever. A Useful Ghost demonstrates how memory is integral to resistance - that is, how the act of remembering, whether in personal, cultural, and national scales, is itself a form of resistance. (It's also very funny.)

3. The World of Love (Yoon Ga-eun, 2025) - Few films in 2025 were as quietly devastating as The World of Love, a film about reclaiming your life from unspeakable trauma. I immediately latched on to the idea that everyone in this film does what they do out of love, regardless of whether those actions were appropriate or even right.

2. Kokuho (Lee Sang-il, 2025) - the relentless pursuit of a singular craft is not uniquely a Japanese thing (see Whiplash for a prominent Western filmic example) but they have made so many films about it that it's its own subgenre. Kokuho argues that to become the absolute best at one's craft, one has to lose something in exchange - that is, to become a god, one sheds all that makes them human.

1. Bound in Heaven (Huo Xin, 2024) - rarely do I see a film that rewires my brain in such a way that it changes the way I see every film that follows. While many may view Bound in Heaven and see a well-made, moody arthouse romance thriller that's nothing special, I adore the way it articulates a very intense, possessive kind of love perfectly. It's also gorgeously shot, and a certain cable car sequence will live rent free in my head for decades to come.

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This is just the first part of our belated roundup! Next up (and finally!) a roundup of Philippine Cinema in 2025.

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.

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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.