2021 in review: here's a bunch of local films that were pretty good

 

Well, that went by quicker than expected. If we're talking about local full length films, 2021 is a generally unremarkable year. However, short films made a big mark here and abroad, doing most of the heavy lifting for Filipino cinema. Most of the year's releases were released through streaming services, and a good chunk of them were just okay. The closure of cinemas for most of the year made the industry rethink where and how to deliver their films to the viewing public, with varied results. 

Vivamax was clearly the winner of this year of experimentation, I think it's due to a number of things. To get people to subscribe to a streaming service, one needs a large library of content and a reason for people to return. To date, Viva has produced the most feature length films of the year and have quickly built up a library of new films to complement their existing library of classic films. Some may consider the pito-pito style of filmmaking negatively, but it's a sound economic decision. The downside to that is with an abundance of content made quick and on the cheap, there are inevitably going to be a lot of subpar movies. Taking into account all of Vivamax's offerings for the year, I find that limitations on production and budget aren't as detrimental to the films as a seeming mandate for these films to create sexy content. Mandates like this have been done in the past and can be done well, sure, but the amount of dreck that this produces is usually substantial. However, in Vivamax's case, the people behind the service know what drives people back to the service - as long as the content is entertaining, it doesn't matter if others perceive it as quality or not. Also, sex sells.

Other streaming services competed with Vivamax for their share of the business, while all these services stood in the shadow of giants like Netflix. KTX and ticket2me provided services with release windows that tried to emulate the cinema experience, while services like Upstream stuck to their pay per view model. Methods for payment also became easier. You can pay for a month of a library of movies and series with only a few clicks.

Film festivals largely went online, like in 2020. Cinemalaya kept chugging along, albeit with a drastically reduced lineup, and other smaller festivals kept operating. Other film festivals, because of production issues, budgetary problems and the general unavailability of cinemas, were nowhere to be found. This trend continued until QCinema near the end of the year, just in time to herald the reopening of cinemas. Its hybrid format with offerings both online and in theaters (with some going theater-only) may be used as a model for future film fests. I'm not privy to any attendance numbers, but not even a mortal threat could get cinephiles out of those cinemas.

Several filmmakers went by the year without making any films, while others probably broke records making theirs - Darryl Yap (like him or hate him) made ten films this year. And here I thought Joven Tan making four films in a year was already a lot. As for the quality of those films, let's just say quantity over quality prevailed in this case. Staples of the film circuit made a number of films as well - Lav Diaz made the reflexive and introspective Historya ni Ha, while Brillante Mendoza took a break from drug war content to make the sexy film Palitan for Vivamax and sports drama Gensan Punch (later released on HBO). Gensan Punch in particular, a paradoxically quiet sports movie about a man struggling to reach his dreams despite the restrictions of an unbending bureaucracy, may be one of his best in several years.

The BL genre that flourished in 2020 evolved with a number of series, though to a casual viewer like myself, I didn't notice a lot of series in the mainstream consciousness (I could be wrong, of course). A number of movies and series got sequels, series adaptations or second seasons, while two series in particular - Ideafirst's Gameboys and Black Sheep's Hello Stranger got full length movie adaptations. Both break out of their zoom cinema forms into more conventional cinematic structures since production has picked up since the pandemic began. Gameboys feels like the fuller, more realized film and a bridge to a still-in-development Season 2, though Hello Stranger isn't without its charms.

And once again, the MMFF reared its head, with (for once, since 2016) a pretty decent lineup but (as always) a marketing policy that is all but non-existent on the MMDA's part and a foolish decision to keep the festival only in theaters. It's unfortunate that it all backfired on their faces (for a multitude of reasons) since there were really a bunch of good films in MMFF 2021's slate. As it is right now, the MMFF is a dinosaur that can't keep up with normal trends. I'm not confident, but I hope they've learned their lesson for 2023... if they're still around.

All in all, it was a year in transition, still in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, with no end in sight... yet. As more people become vaccinated and as the virus evolves to become endemic instead, hopefully that ending will come. For now, I'm okay to stay in my little bubble for the time being.

Let's go to the films. All in all, I've seen more than a hundred Filipino films this year. Apologies for not giving an exact number, since I neglected to log all of the shorts I watched and some don't even have entries on letterboxd. Of those films, I have seen 75 full length feature films out of approximately 83 that were released this year. Six of the films that I haven't watched belong to the MMFF, one isn't available anymore (that would be Ilocano Defenders: War on Rape) and one that's a remake and I've seen the original (Roman Perez Jr.'s The Housemaid.) Otherwise, I've seen them all, even super obscure ones that probably no one else has seen. Have you seen the all-OFW psychological thriller Lamentasyon? Do you know that among these 83 films there's an apocalyptic local horror film called The Herald and the Horror, and that it's the only local 2021 film that's on Amazon Prime of all places?

This woman is supposed to be on the side of the protagonists. I cheered when her character died.

The list doesn't count films like Yellow Rose (though I've watched that too), or restored classics, but it DOES include Joven Tan's singular offering this year - Ayuda Babes starring Gardo Versoza, and it does include Joel Ferrer and Miko Livelo's barely feature length Ero (hero without an H, not ero as in erotic).

Before we go on to the feature length list, here are some

2021 shorts that were pretty good, if not excellent though by no means comprehensive since I saw like what, 30 shorts this year? Out of possibly hundreds?

Okay here we go.

Ampangabagat Nin Talakba Ha Likol is one of the year's most visually and conceptually creative shorts, and one of the highlights of QCinema 2021. It touches on feelings and emotions both personal and very universal - anxiety, fear, frustration and anger.

Filipiñana is pretty amazing, a short form examination of the absurd gap between the haves and the have nots, of power, control, and the desire for that control.

My favorite short of QCinema 2021 is Kaj Palanca's Henry, an (IMO) underrated short that's filled with many small details that pop out the more you watch it.

As someone who has some experience with these kinds of retreats, Kids on Fire resonated with me in a weird sort of way. Also, Mystica in a Cinemalaya movie, I can finally say that's a thing.

After the wonderful To Calm the Pig Inside comes Sol, a narrative companion piece to Joanna Vasquez Arong's 2020 film and a solid film about the many ways tragedy shapes us and the people we love.

There are many more films that deserve mention (Ang Pagdadalaga ni Lola Mayumi, City of Flowers, Don't Worry, We Still Hear You, Black Rainbow to name a few) though like I said, I haven't seen enough shorts to make a comprehensive list.

On the other hand, in no particular order here are five

2021 full length films that I think were pretty good 

Age of Blight (various directors) - okay, this is more of an omnibus rather than a full feature, but I'm counting it. It's a very interesting look at the slow nightmare that was last year. There are individual segments that stand out among the rest (the above picture included) but overall I think it's a solid work.

Big Night (dir. Jun Lana) - MMFF 2021's best picture is one of the most interesting takes on this current administration's drug war, a kafkaesque labyrinth of absurdity that is equal parts funny, frustrating and terrifying.

Dito at Doon (dir. JP Habac) - While many other films this year went the conventional route in terms of romance, this romance-but-not-really caught my attention. It's a disaster film of the saddest kind, showing how this pandemic has changed our relationships in both subtle and profound ways. But at the same time, through its rejection of the zoom format it's a bit of a defiant stand against that idea as well.

Kun Maupay Man It Panahon (a.k.a. Whether the Weather is Fine, dir. Carlo Manatad) - a strange, phantasmagorical depiction of coping, loss and grief, it's also a film about how some tragedies are so profound that we cannot make heads or tails of them, and how the systems that are made to govern or protect us are so fundamentally dysfunctional that they might as well be gibberish.

On the Job 2: The Missing 8 (dir. Erik Matti) - I have cheated yet again, since this was not released in the Philippines as a movie, but as a series (edited together with the first On the Job.) It's a genre-flavored fun (yet also depressing) little snapshot of the country as it is today.

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More to come when I discuss a couple of films that were, to be honest, pretty bad. Stay tuned.