this is not a farewell post

Back in 2020, the future of Present Confusion was in serious doubt. Though I resumed things after the pandemic, things were never the same as before. If you've been following this blog you'd know that output has slowed over the past year, though I've been (mostly) keeping up on Letterboxd. This would have been okay, but recently Letterboxd deleted a number of pages with my reviews on them. In the middle of the year, I decided to sunset this blog, and that was one of the catalysts for that decision. My plan was I would finish the year with the usual year end speech, end the blog on Present Confusion's 20th anniversary in April 2025 and ride off into the sunset. This idea was met with a bit of pushback from people who wanted me to keep writing. Ultimately, my wife convinced me to continue, and that's exactly what I'm going to do from now on. I'm no longer announcing my retirement - I will keep writing until I don't. I've spent 20 years lurking in the shadows, mostly set aside or ignored, and that's fine. Regardless of what happens to me from here on, I'm gonna give something back as my contribution to local film.

In 2022, I also decided to write a book compiling almost 20 years' worth of essays and reviews from this blog, Present Confusion. As the writing for this book went on, swelling to two hundred pages, then to four, then to a whopping six hundred pages, I found the project spiraling out of control. Even at this point I decided I would no longer add stuff to the book and just write whatever I had already laid out. Friend and film critic Richard Bolisay said as much to me last year when the book was still in this state, and I took that advice to heart. Still, in its final state, the book would have been 800 pages long, which was too long.

That is why I am no longer writing that book anymore - I am writing three books. Basically I've split that monstrosity into three, arranging things into discrete parts. Here's a short description of these books:

Etymologies is the first book, which will be coming out in the first half of this year. This book consists of multiple essays about Philippine cinema, a near-comprehensive review section covering Cinemalaya films from 2005 to 2023, and something like a memoir of my time watching all of these films. There's a section here that I personally like called People I Have Watched Movies With, because I'm a huge sap and I love sentimentality lol. I hope y'all like it too.

The second book is Ecosystem Poetics/To All My Dead Friends, a collaboration with fellow Third World Cinema Club/Film Police Reviews member Princess Kinoc. This book will consist of interviews and profiles of people from all sorts of niches in the Philippine Cinema ecosystem, a gallery of all the times I did a "picture review" (friends will know what that is), and (non) reviews of some real stinkers such as Kamandag ng Droga. This is probably going to be the most experimental of the three books I've been writing, and the book is mostly done aside from a number of interviews. It will likely come out in the latter half of the year or in early 2026, depending on when Princess and I get those remaining interviews.

The third and final book of this little trilogy is called Fade/Out, which includes a lengthy Vivamax section, some reevaluations of films I watched in the past, longer articles, and an extensive catalog of reviews of non-festival films, international films and others. No release date yet for this one though it's also mostly done.

And that's not all! I am compiling ALL of my reviews of local full length and mid length films for the year of 2024 into an anthology book, which I will be releasing as a pdf for FREE, sometime in January 2025. This includes all reviews that were originally posted here or on Letterboxd, expanded versions of shorter reviews, and even reviews I haven't posted anywhere yet. A total of 206 films were released this year and I am on track to watching 204-205 of them, depending on how well the SFFR is at getting screeners (lol). It will also include my top local films of 2024 and an overview of the year that was, including detailed info and statistics of all releases. I'm still thinking of releasing an additional supplement to this dedicated to short films, but that depends on how many I can watch.

That's basically it. Even though I haven't fulfilled all my promises in the past, I don't want to break them as much as possible. Although I don't know until when I can continue writing this blog, I will do it. Is there a reason why? Do I honestly need one? I can only hope I finish this before I stop completely.

To all the people who still read this blog, I'll see you next year. And maybe, just maybe, I'll see y'all at the movies.

MMFF 2024: Reviews of all Ten Films

 

Bambi (Vice Ganda) works as an OFW in Taiwan. She's been working multiple jobs for many years in order to renovate their large family house. After not renewing a work contract, Bambi decides to return home to start a business. Unfortunately, Bambi finds the family house no better than it was when they left, thanks to a string of bad financial decisions from Bambi's younger brother Biboy (Jhong Hilario). 

That description may seem like this is an outright drama, but Jun Lana manages to make a bit of magic in this case: And the Breadwinner Is... is just as much a comedy as Vice Ganda's other films, until it suddenly whacks you in the head with some top tier drama. Lana's use of the camera, working in tandem with DP Carlo Mendoza, is a breath of fresh air in an industry where certain types of standard coverage (shot reverse shot scenes mainly) constitute the norm. Of note is the film's emotional climax, where the camera weaves between characters and each frame also visually portrays their relationships with each other. This is the type of stuff that is shown in filmmaking classes as an example of what to do.

And the content of that climactic scene pretty much encapsulates the film's central thesis, in an argument where everyone kind of has a valid point: why do breadwinners often exist in the singular? Why can't a family help each other as a team during trying times? The characters of And the Breadwinner Is... have the choice to leave the roles they are currently in, though that's easier said than done. And it's not as if they want to stay - these people have tried their hardest to escape, but that only illuminates something deeply broken in Philippine society - that for a lot of people, it is very hard, if not near impossible to pull themselves up from the ground when they've stumbled. It is one of the ways where our society (and government) has failed to take care of its people.

If there is one thing I wish the film could have addressed better is the way it jumps around from one thing to another. The transitions between the film's three acts is very much evident: for example, a certain bread related subplot fades into the background once the drama starts ramping up, and while it's partially alluded to in the film's mid-credits scene, it was a great opportunity to tie everything together. Still, I didn't expect to get emotional at a Vice Ganda film, but here we are.

*

There are certain aspects of streaming culture that disturb me. "Content" is a word that properly describes what is created from this activity; a word that implies a soulless, artless product made to be consumed. In the process, many have created their content in ways that are unethical and disrespectful, and there's even a collective term for it: nuisance streaming. And even with the biggest creators of content, there's a soullessness to the whole thing (ever watched a MrBeast video?) so it's weirdly appropriate that the pushback to that soullessness in this next film is done by actual souls. Souls of the damned, yes, but souls nonetheless. 

Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital (that title is a mouthful, but let's ride along) is a faithful adaptation of Jung Bum-shik's 2018 film Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. Not faithful in the sense that it's a shot for shot remake (it's definitely not), but it mostly keeps the same story beats with new scares and setups. That has its advantages and disadvantages, as we will see.

First off, the film takes place in Taiwan, and not in the Philippines, even though we have no shortage of haunted locales in our country and the ghost hunter genre of TV media isn't uncommon. On the other hand, that lends an extra dimension to the whole thing: in the course of creating content (because that's what this is) people go to foreign places and confer no respect to whatever is going on. Many of the characters touch things and openly mock the spirits there, despite being told by a local that that would be a very bad idea. Additionally, the fact that the nature supernatural entities or weirdo cults that have inhabited the hospital isn't explained makes the whole thing a bit scarier (the scariest, and also the silliest, parts of the film for me are a sequence of old black and white pictures.) 

At the center of Strange Frequencies is Enrique Gil, who embarks on this supernatural expedition as a career boost. The film does have a throwaway line at the end (which if I recall was not in the original) that comments on the lengths people will go for fame, and how the existence of the film is driven by metrics, as Gil won't abandon the production until he gets 3 million views, even when people are dying left and right around him. As with the other actors involved in the production, I wish the film leaned in even more on creating a sense of verisimilitude - commenting on Enrique Gil's current post-loveteam status, or expanding on the comments on the stream when Jane de Leon asked for help. Granted, yes, audiences probably already know that this is fake, but putting some more doubt into that would be, I think, a good idea. As an aside, Jane de Leon's performance is my favorite among all the cast, if only for the fact that she had a lot of great terrified expressions in this film.

Is it scarier than the original? Maybe not. But I think it's a fun time at the cinema, especially with friends.

*

Whenever you watch a video of a person getting their just desserts or receiving the karma that they deserve, do you ever wonder what drove them to do the things that they did? Or do you feel that whatever the circumstances may be, they got what's coming to them? The idea of justice has many definitions depending on who you ask. For many, justice is retributive, driven by revenge: whatever was taken away needs to be paid back. Those who commit crimes are punished. For others, justice seeks to correct, whether it be correcting the effects of the crime, or correcting the behavior in the person who committed it. The act of 'correction' as it is used in many prisons (i.e. 'correction facilities') seldom reflects the realities in these places, which function more to imprison than to correct. There is, however, a definition of justice that stuck with me while watching Zig Dulay's Green Bones, and I'd like to share it with you all here.

The film starts from the perspective of Xavier Gonzaga (Ruru Madrid), a young and idealistic police officer who is sent to the San Fabian Prison and Penal Farm to work as a prison guard. He is surprised at how relatively laid back and peaceful everything is, and is wary of the various prisoners who live there. One prisoner is particularly infamous: Dom (Dennis Trillo) a man convicted of killing his sister and niece, disposing the body of the latter in a nearby river. Ruru feels a special kind of hatred for Dom, as his own sister was murdered when he was a child. Soon enough, Xavier suspects something fishy is going on between Dom and the inmates, leading to a confrontation between the two.

Green Bones is simply a solidly made, well written film about the ways we view justice and people deprived of liberty. Its two-part structure emphasizes the idea of empathy - in that singular perspectives (while understandable) are seldom the entirety of a story. Empathy should be the center of justice, though that's not an easy thing to do, as there are truly heinous people in the world who commit truly heinous acts. For people who want to better themselves, who acknowledge the gravity of their crime, empathy from all sides leads to true 'correction.' Justice, Green Bones posits, should be liberative, a path to goodness being a way to seek freedom - not just physically, but also spiritually. In a world where we're slowly losing faith in people, works like Green Bones are an impassioned defense for the goodness inherent in most of us.

Granted, there are many intricacies about the justice system and its systemic corruption that are left unaddressed here, but in this case, it would be superfluous to include them all. Green Bones is a highlight of the year, and Dennis Trillo's performance is one for the ages. After a long stint in TV, this return to the cinema cements him as one of the country's top actors. 

*

Speaking of retributive justice, there are some people that don't deserve redemption, their evil so pervasive and unchecked that the normal mechanisms of justice simply don't work anymore. Dan Villegas' Uninvited is one of the best of the year, a thrilling, engaging tale of taking matters into your own hands. More than any other horror film this year, it chilled me to the bone. 

Lilia (Vilma Santos) comes to a lavish birthday party being held for Guilly Vega (Aga Muhlach). It's quite clear from the onset that she's there to take revenge. The film slowly reveals, over the next hour, why Lilia is taking revenge.

People born in the eighties or are familiar with goings-on in the nineties might recognize similarities with Guilly's crimes and the crimes of another, well publicized case that took place during that time. A former fellow faculty member of mine was actually involved in that case, and the stories I heard from that time horrified even myself - and I work with gory stuff on a regular basis. That's the scariest thing about Uninvited - no amount of ghosts or supernatural phenomena is scarier than the fact that the things that happen in this movie actually happened in real life.

Guilly himself is the epitome of unchecked, unlimited power, power that is condoned and tolerated. Aga Muhlach has played villains before - including serial killers - but he plays an unimaginably evil character here, perhaps the most evil. And this evil is not only seen in the way he acts around other people - his sliminess reminds me of a certain foreign politician - it's also in the way the people around him react (or more accurately, the way they don't react) to his actions, and in the way his henchmen help him commit that evil. His daughter Nicole (Nadine Lustre) puts it best when she tells Lilia why she condones a monster - it's because she loves his money.

The ever-versatile Vilma Santos has had her share of dramatic roles in the past, but I haven't seen her like this in a long time, if not ever. The way she looks down on the party crowd below exudes a tranquil fury that is ready to explode at any moment. This is a woman with nothing to lose. Uninvited at times segues into action, and Vilma is up to the challenge, but most of the film is about building tension and Villegas lets it build and build. I was glued to that screen for the entire time. 

Uninvited tends to laser focus itself on Lilia's revenge, leaving several plotlines by the wayside. But those plotlines are merely the effect of an excellent, well realized world. It's still one of my favorite films of the year. 

*

One of my favorite, burgeoning sub-genres of romance cinema originated with the 2000 film Il Mare, one of my favorite films of all time. It involves two people, separated by distance and time, communicating with each other through a medium (in this case, letters through a magic mailbox). This formula has been repeated over the years, even in Philippine cinema (a recent example being JP Habac's Love You Long Time (2023)). 

At first glance, Crisanto Aquino's My Future You looks derivative, cribbing from films like Il Mare and Makoto Shinkai's Your Name (2016). But then it transforms into something different in its second half, becoming a film about loving what you have in the here and now.

Lex (Seth Fedelin) is an artist with a loving family and a tragic past. Karen (Francine Diaz) is a recent graduate who wants to work with her dad and not her stepfather (Christian Vasquez). During one starry night, the two wish upon a comet and weird things start to happen. First, a mysterious dating app shows up on their laptops. Normally, I wouldn't install strange apps that magically appear on my computer, but I guess Norton Antivirus didn't detect anything. Lex and Karen meet online, but are unable to meet in real life. The reason: Lex lives in 2009, while Karen lives in good ol' 2024.

The proceedings are very, very cute, and any weirdness that ensues (as this is effectively a May-December romance with extra steps), I can live with because of time shenanigans. Seth and Francine make a good love team, though my favorite couple in the film has to be Lex's parents, played by Bodjie Pascua and Peewee O'Hara. (Their love team name will be PeeJie.) In any case, both Lex and Karen deal with their relationship in an open, emotionally mature manner that, considering the toxicity of other movie relationships in 2024, is a breath of fresh air. 

But at the heart of My Future You is the idea that we change the lives of the people around us even with small actions. Not only that, but sometimes a family doesn't have to strictly follow a set configuration - as long as there is happiness, understanding and love between all parties, that is all one will ever need.

*

Fairytales don’t often concern themselves with the details: once it’s happily ever after, that’s it. Anything else is in the domain of speculation (and fanmade fiction). One could see Michael Tuviera’s The Kingdom as an example of that, a modern day fairytale built on one of the rarer subgenres of Filipino cinema: alternate history fiction. If you’ve read a Harry Turtledove novel, been vaguely aware of the Marvel multiverse or watched/read The Man in the High Castle, that’s pretty much what it alternate history fiction is: stories that begin with a question: what if?

The question The Kingdom asks is tantalizing: what would happen if the Philippines was never colonized? Apparently, it would be a Malay kingdom named Kalayaan, ruled by kings or Lakan who, if legend is to be believed, has the blood of Bathala in their veins. The incumbent monarch is Makisig (Vic Sotto), who has ruled the land of Kalayaan for many years. Social status in Kalayaan is determined by how many tattoos you have, and Makisig has them in spades. Makisig’s three children, Bagwis (Sid Lucero), Matimyas (Christine Reyes) and Lualhati (Sue Ramirez) are set to succeed their father, but a kidnapping complicates matters and gives hints towards something bigger and much more sinister than intially thought.

The world Tuviera and his team build is nothing short of spellbinding: everything from set designs and costumes is immersive. A few janky CGI shots may not be the best, but they are the exception to the rule. Nestor Abrogena, who did the PD work for this film, deserves an award. The lore, on the other hand, isn’t all completely filled out: why does multicultural Kalayaan with many different tribes feel monolithic? What happened to the Muslim tribes in the south? What’s the deal with some Spanish names in a country (Kiko from Francisco?) that wasn’t touched by the Spaniards? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: these questions and gaps in the lore don’t mean that the film is bad, it means that it’s fertile ground for expansion. Films like The Kingdom should encourage questions and discourse, and judging from Vic Sotto’s penchant for cribbing from popular properties in his many projects (the Dune and Game of Thrones inspiration is not lost on me) there might be plans on spinoffs or sequels to expand the lore.

This leads me to something I noticed in The Kingdom that stops what is already a good film from being amazing. In short scenes, we see that Kalayaan is no utopia: its citizens suffer under feudal rule, oppressed by those in higher positions of power, and the governments meant to serve the people are as inefficient and corrupt as the systems we already have. Sulo (Piolo Pascual) seems to be the voice of the masses and their struggles, and as the film goes on he is given an opportunity to try to rectify this. On the other hand, the way the film ends, while satisfying in its own way, leaves the larger problems of Kalayaan unsolved. I can excuse it partly because The Kingdom feels like a fairytale, and like I said earlier, fairytales don’t concern themselves with details after they’ve ended, leaving the rest to our imagination. And, fingers crossed, Tuviera and co. may not even have to leave it to our imagination, as there is definitely potential to continue the story of Kalayaan for many years to come.

The Kingdom is still a very entertaining film and one that is genuinely engaging, its fully realized world a fertile ground for the imagination of audiences. Like last year’s Mallari, it’s audacious in its scope and ambitious in an industry that wants to play it safe, a relative rarity in mainstream Philippine cinema.

*

I found myself physically ill while watching Richard Somes' Topakk. Not because the film is shot at night in a dark warehouse, though that doesn't help. (The very bad projection at Robinsons Manila didn't help either, and I might have to rewatch this at a place with a bulb that's at least been replaced since the Arroyo administration). Not because the acting was bad, as Arjo Atayde and Sid Lucero constitutes one of my favorite protagonist - antagonist pairings. Not because of the weird color grading that made everyone look like red-skinned devils. (It might also be a theater issue, anyway avoid Rob Manila Cinema 1).

No, I was nauseous watching Topakk because of its camerawork, which seems to have been operated by a jittery Chihuahua with Parkinsons, high on a kilo of meth. There was one point where our protagonist Miguel (Atayde) is wrestling with a big guy. I couldn't tell, because it was too dark. The camera wasn't focused on their writhing bodies, it was lazily moving around in an oval like a lazy susan. Handheld action camerawork is not bad per se - but if the camerawork is bad to the point where you can no longer see the choreography, there's really no point to anything anymore. There were points in this film where I was forced to stare at the ceiling because I was getting nauseous - though if I were to look I probably wouldn't see anything anyway. This is an action shooting style popularized by The Bourne Trilogy films, and it needs to go extinct. For examples of good action cinematography, there's always Gareth Evans' The Raid duology and Yugo Sakamoto's Baby Assassins trilogy. Heck. direct to video Chinese action films are better shot than Topakk, and I'm baffled at the responses to the film that call this a good action movie. Have you ever seen a good action movie in your fucking life?

As for this film's story, there isn't much of one, but this is an action film. Who cares. Miguel is an ex-military man notorious for going on berserker rages that end up with lots of dead bodies. He is hired as a security guard for a warehouse. Two drug runners (Julia Montes and Kokoy de Santos) end up in his warehouse, chased by a gang of drug policemen trying to cover up their dirty work. The two runners ask for Miguel's help, and after some hemming and hawing, he obliges. The rest of the film is Miguel securing the fuck out of that warehouse. I hope his boss gives him a raise. 

My favorite scene of Topakk is at the very end. For one, it's not shot at night and it's not shot in a dark warehouse. Two, the camera, while still handheld at times, focuses on the two characters in the center of the fight. You can tell what's happening, and the fighting tells a story. That's the thing: Richard Somes can stage some very good action scenes, We Will Not Die Tonight being a decent example, albeit with similar camerawork to this. And that's what guts me about this film. I should be celebrating this film as I love the genre and I love cheesy, gory action, but (and I can't believe I'm saying this) this year's Banjo was better shot than this.

*

Chito Roño's Espantaho doesn't feel like a horror movie, although it has horror elements. Though it has the sensibilities of some of Roño's film and tv horror work from the 2000s (and 2010s), it reminds me a lot of his 2023 film Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan, with which it shares a loose, almost experimental structure. It might even be more accurate to call this a mishmash of a kabit movie and a horror film, or perhaps a director entering an experimental phase. It's seldom scary, if at all, but it's kind of fascinating, and even a bit goofy.

Monet (Judy Ann Santos) has supernatural abilities. It's implied that she has a third eye and can see ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. She lives at her father's house with her son Keith (Kian Co), the ghostly apparition of her mother Rosa (Lorna Tolentino) and her boyfriend (JC Santos). Monet's father Pablo has just died and they begin the pasiyam, which entails praying over the course for nine days. However, strange disappearances begin to occur, disappearances that are complicated with the arrival of Adele (Chanda Romero) and her two children. You see, Monet is Pablo's illegitimate child, and Adela still resents Rosa for taking her husband away from her. As Adele plans on selling Pablo's house, effectively leaving Monet and her son homeless, the disappearances continue.

Espantaho takes on a somewhat feminist track, as it can be read as a tale about women, mostly victims of the selfish actions of men, taking back control over their lives. It is a story about the many ways women are "haunted," whether literally or figuratively, by the ghosts of men. Adele and Rosa are blameless, perhaps their only mistake being falling in love with an adulterous man. The person (or persons) behind the supernatural goings on are also men driven by self-interest. It is only when the women of the family reach across the aisle and come together when the evil is held back. Espantaho can also be read as a treatise on the kabit film itself, where the act of cheating becomes a specter that claims victims beyond the central parties involved. 

In any case, it's fun seeing Judy Ann Santos, Chanda Romero and Lorna Tolentino flex their acting chops here. Though Chito Roño's made better films, Espantaho is certainly fascinating enough that it warrants some attention. 

*

Pain - whether physical or emotional - is unpleasant, and many of us understandably spend our entire lives trying to avoid it. Lynlyn (Julia Barretto) has an ability that makes this easier - when she touches a person, she can determine if that person will have a positive or negative impact on her life. She meets Woody (Carlo Aquino), an eccentric who has moved to Lynlyn's hometown in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture and takes a liking to him. All is well until she touches him and she gets an ominous premonition...

In Karatsu there exists a pine grove called Niji no Matsubara (虹の松原, Pine Grove of Rainbows), a pine forest planted by a feudal lord who lived in Karatsu in the early Edo period. It was a natural barrier, meant by the people who planted it to protect the city from strong winds and rain. But the forest is not an impenetrable barrier, and as such it does not stop everything from passing through; some winds and rain still make their way to Karatsu. Hold Me Close is a love story that tells us not to close our hearts to pain; that pain is an inevitability of loving, because love does not last forever.

It's certainly an interesting premise, and in theory it's something I can get behind. What prevents Hold Me Close from being any good lies in the details. For one, the dialogue is all sorts of weird and off putting. Lynlyn switches being warm and friendly to being robotic, and it's not Julia Barretto's fault as I think she's a good actress. Woody, on the other hand, feels like an emotionally draining obsessive who is so desperate for love, he doesn't care where that love may come from. He's not exactly the kind of guy I can root for, and I didn't find any chemistry in their pairing because of that.

Despite its capable technical aspects, Hold Me Close is more egregiously written than Barretto's 2019 collab with director Jason Paul Laxamana, Between Maybes, which also takes place in Japan. This one outright leans into an obsessive love for Japanese culture, as if it was written by a weeb or an overly zealous otaku. The various Japanese phrases inserted in the dialogue are cringe, and during one moment where Lynlyn is attacked, her cries of tasukete (help me!) are reflected in the subtitles as "tasukete," as if MMFF audiences will pick that up. It honestly felt like watching an anime fansub from 2005, and I do not mean that positively because it takes place during a very serious scene.

Though it has some potential, Hold Me Close didn't hold up to expectations. がっかりだよ。

*

And finally, a film that harkens back to a legendary entry in this film festival's 50-year history. The 1982 edition of the MMFF saw the release of Ishmael Bernal's Himala, considered by many to be one of the greatest Filipino films of all time. Over the years, there have been many remakes of the film in various mediums, but I've always found myself asking, how do you iterate on perfection? Bernal's original is so refined, so definitive, that remaking it would be like walking a tightrope. While I prefer the original version, I am happy to say that Pepe Diokno's Isang Himala is a wonderful adaptation of  Bernal's film.

I'm perhaps not the best person to go to about this film, because I'm not that big a fan of musical theater, and I haven't seen the Isang Himala musical, which would probably be a better point of comparison than the 1982 film. In any case, here's what I think: the performances are excellent. The film's cast mostly consists of actors with a theater background, and it shows: for example, Aicelle Santos (who reprises her role from the musical) is incandescent as Elsa - she has such a strong screen presence that it's hard not to look at her during her scenes. She's not the only standout in the film, the whole ensemble is amazing. It was like being blasted by a wall of (good) sound for 2 hours.

Diokno doesn't rely on the stage performances to carry the film, he shoots Isang Himala, rightfully, like a movie, creating a sort of hybrid between the musical and the original. He also decides to film in sets meant to emulate the location of the original, creating an effect of these locales evoking a time and place, but also evoking an alien, otherworldy feeling as the audience looks at them.

There's an attempt to keep things going along, but there are some parts in the middle of some songs where one can really feel the film's extended runtime. Musical fans may not mind (and heck, Wicked is longer than this film) but there's a looseness to the film's flow sometimes that occasionally drags for me.

I go back to my initial question when watching Isang Himala, albeit worded slightly differently: why do you iterate on perfection? The answer to that question is at the very end, where there are words on the screen (and I translate/paraphrase here): we are a country that is given a voice; when will we start to listen? Isang Himala is not (just) a remake, it is a reminder. The original Himala is a film about faith, whether it be in deities or in people, and how a people, left with nothing, yearn for someone to save them. Through its filmmaker character Orly's perspective, it is a film about an artist's responsibility towards the truth, and the role of cinema in our lives. It is a film about how blind faith corrupts and destroys. 42 years ago, in the middle of a dictator's rule, it held meaning; 42 years later, with his son now in power, it is still equally resonant.  

Dispatches from SGIFF 2024 Part 1: City of Small Blessings, The Shrouds

 Friday, Dec 6, 2024:

The two films I saw today deal with unrequited love in very different forms.

Based on Simon Tay's book of the same name, City of Small Blessings follows Prakash (Victor Banerjee) as he fights for the right to keep his home. You see, authorities have marked the area for demolition to give way to the construction of a new MRT line. Prakash thinks this is a minor clerical mistake and sets off to correct the problem, much to the exasperation of his wife Anna (Noorlinah Mohamed) and son Neel (Brendon Fernandez).

A retired educator who is responsible for the upbringing of many now influential figures in the Singaporean government, Prakash's pleas fall on deaf ears as he makes appeal after appeal to his former students. City of Small Blessings puts forth an idea of "home," one that exists in the space of one's mind and one that collectively means "home" to society at large. To others, Prakash's home is just an obstacle, a lot of land. But to Prakash, it means so much more than that: what is the loss of one's house or a beach where you courted your love? He has given so much to the land he loves: his memories, his life, his home, and it has given him nothing back. It is an unrequited love that has consumed a  man's entire life.

------------------ 

In 2017, Caroly Cronenberg (nee Zeifman) died of cancer. For his latest film The Shrouds, her husband David Cronenberg draws upon that lingering grief to create one of the strangest odes to a love lost, a story of a love that is, in a sense, unrequited. Because how can one seek love from one who has passed on? Such love will always be in the past tense, as, obviously, corpses cannot give it, the can only function as the receptacle of love with no other place to go.

Stilted, prone to conspiratorial tangents, and dry as a dessicated corpse, The Shrouds is Cronenberg's Megalopolis, ambitious and weird even in Cronenbergian standards. It is a story of death in many forms: the death of an idea, the death of personal and truth via the virtual image. But beyond the film's dry, almost mumblecore (corpsecore?) aesthetic is a tale of a deeply hurt man who sees his wife, ravaged and mutilated by disease, in everyone he meets, unable to detach himself from her even if he wants to, fixated on what is left of her body, creating stories to keep her in his mind long after her passing. 

A review of Idol: The April Boy Regino Story

 

During my last year of medical school, our batch was sent to San Juan, Batangas for our Community Medicine rotation. There's a variety of barangays in the municipality, ranging from cozy seaside villages to remote villages near the mountainside, and as only men in our block, we were sent to the latter. A good half hour away from the bayan by tricycle (and as you may expect, even longer by foot), it was one of the most remote villages in the entire municipality, consisting only of a smattering of houses. During one particular week, a karaoke machine served as the sole source of entertainment. My fellow intern and I decided to sing along, and it was clear the people of the town had their song preferences: the most popular song by far was Teeth's Laklak. But firmly in second place, collectively, were the songs of one April Boy Regino.

There's something about Regino's songs that make them extremely fun to sing. During a week where people were debating the annoyance of having people sing songs during a musical film, this was the film that made me sing out loud in a cinema, and not the other one. Thankfully, there were only three of us in there and the sound system over at Fisher Mall was loud enough to drown out my feeble attempts at singing. Despite its problems, Idol: The April Boy Regino Story transported me back to carefree times at the karaoke house in the province or back home. It's something that I appreciated, even though it struggles to reveal anything at all about its primary subject.

Idol: The April Boy Regino Story is about as straightforward as it gets, to the point where it's like the filmmakers consulted the Wikipedia page of April Boy and called it a day. Most, if not all, of the film's major plot points come from the page, to the point where anything not covered in the wiki isn't included in the film either. I would've loved to see various points of the man's career, including a short stint in acting (do you know he starred in a superhero movie with Carmina Villaroel?) and his long careers in Japan and the US are only barely alluded to.

To its credit, there are some points in the film where they try to show some of the man's inner turmoil: when he runs into problems and disagreements with his brothers Vingo and Jimmy (also his bandmates in the musical trio April Boys) the film cuts to a rendition of Regino's Umiiyak ang Puso, whose lyrics fit in with his current predicament. However, those moments are the exception to the rule. Despite being a biopic, the film doesn't say much about its subject's interiority.

Great moments are few and far between. Most notably, when Regino's most iconic song Di Ko Kayang Tanggapin starts to play, it's hard not to get swept along, despite the partially unserious, tongue-in-cheek goings on in the background.

Idol: The April Boy Regino Story operates with the energy of a tv special, its well meaning and committed performances befitting that of something you might see in GMA's Dramarama sa Hapon or Magpakailanman. It gets even worse during the film's second half, mostly dedicated to Regino's spate of health problems during the last decade or so of his life. Regino (John Arcenas) goes to a pair of doctors in America. I know they are American because of the very prominent American flags on their desks. One of them tells Regino, who is suffering from prostate cancer, that they are going to prescribe him some antibiotics, which is not something that's used directly for cancer. One of those doctors even stumbles on their words, calling a benign tumor malignant, as if second takes don't exist.

The film ultimately means well, and to be fair it's much better than a bunch of its biopic contemporaries (Isko, Kahit Maputi na ang Buhok Ko, Sa Kamay ng Diyos). If you recognize any of those films, just know that this film is better than them. It's not a particularly high bar to scale, but the man's music more than makes up for its numerous flaws, at least for me.

QCinema 2024: musings on Santosh, Mistress Dispeller, Cu Li Never Cries

This trio of "reviews" will be pretty informal, as I'm currently putting my energies to something big I'm currently working on.

I suppose it's serendipitous that prior to watching Sandhya Suri's Santosh, I watched two other Indian cop films in theaters: TJ Gnanavel's Vettaiyan, and Rohit Shetty's Singham Again. The latter of the two is unabashedly nationalistic, set in a world where the titular hero's tough cop, impunitive ethos is so baked into the public consciousness that there are now regional Singhams all over India. The former, Vettaiyan, is a film I'd like to compare with Santosh, because the first two films approach the same subject matter in completely opposite ways.

Santosh begins with its titular character (Shahana Goswami) running through the streets in a panic. Her policeman husband has just died. In order to earn herself money and to restore honor to her family, she takes her husband's job and becomes a constable. Soon enough, her ceremonial position is put to the test as she investigates the murder and rape of a young lower caste Dalit girl.

Santosh recognizes the multiple interlinked, intersectional issues that affect cases like this: issues of social status, of caste, of gender. There's an interplay between Santosh's own personal experience and her pursuit of the case: she is mostly dismissed and discriminated against due to her status as a woman, and her pursuit of a Muslim suspect may also bleed into the personal, as her husband was killed in a riot held in a Muslim neighborhood. 

And the film is acutely aware of how the same case is treated in mainstream Bollywood cinema like in Singham Again, where police action is seen as virtuous and something to be emulated, a source of national pride (the final scene even has its Avengers-like team standing on the bow of an aircraft carrier). There are a couple of scenes where Santosh views this idea as fantasy: one where a scene from a Bollywood film is shown on a TV, and another where Santosh looks at a meme where Indian police are seen as bumbling and incompetent compared to Chinese police.

The more Santosh gets immersed into the rhythms of police life, the more she appreciates what (relatively) unfettered power connotes. Her mentor is Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a senior policewoman who has embraced this culture wholesale. But while Santosh sees justice as the pursuit of truth (and thus, closure), Sharma sees justice as the rest of the police force sees it: as the impression, but not the actual restoration, of social order, and the pretense of a resolution, reached.

Compare this to TJ Gnanavel's Vettaiyan, where an overzealous cop named Athiyan (played by Rajinikanth) pursues a suspect of a brutal rape and murder. Any complexities are smoothed out, even though the film seems to present ambiguities in the case. His "mentor" is Sathyadev Bramhadutt Pande (Amitabh Bachchan), a member of the Human Rights Commission who shows Athiyan what can happen if justice is miscarried. 

Both characters react to this realization in different ways: Athiyan tries to corrects his mistakes by working in the system, while Santosh sees the force as it truly is and shows she has the same integrity as the man she once loved.

***

Filipinos love kabit stories, and during a central confrontation in Elizabeth Lo's Mistress Dispeller, every single person in that theater probably waited with baited breath. But in this documentary that seemed too good to be real, there were no fireworks - only a conversation, albeit tense, between two women who love the same man.

The film does not take any sides in the conflict, opting to stay mostly invisible until certain fourth-wall breaking moments. This invisibility only contributes to how cinematic it all feels, despite being a documentary. The film's tone seems to cross the uncanny valley of reality and fiction because of this, which makes for a subtly unsettling experience.

Even the title invokes something mythic, as if infidelity was some sort of spirit that is created from wayward love, that grows like weeds and dwells in the cracks of a relationship growing stagnant. But instead of banishing these "spirits," people like Miss Wang assuage them, understanding that in the middle of this infidelity are flawed people who made bad decisions out of their loneliness.

***

Near the end of Cu Li Never Cries, Mrs. Nguyen (Minh Chau) heads to the Hòa Bình Dam with a waiter she fancies, who, for appearances' sake, she pretends is her son. She reminisces the times when she took part in the dam's construction. The glow from those historic moments have long faded, and she holds on to the dying embers of those memories. Hòa Bình Dam was once the largest hydroelectric damn in the region, but its record has since been broken.

Time and life both flow inexorably like a river, but like the dam she helped build, Mrs. Nguyen tries to stop its flow, to stem the tides of time and prevent it from moving forward - at first, out of a fear or repeating the past, but ultimately out of a fear of the future, and the idea that it might leave her behind. Her history, and by extension Vietnam's national history, seems to reflect that anxiety towards change. Ideals about love, marriage and society at large are changing, and she sees this in her newly pregnant niece and her well-meaning boyfriend. But at the same time, she worries about the idea that while time goes ever forward, it moves in a circle, with events doomed to repeat themselves.

Throughout its deliberate, languid 93 minutes, Cu Li Never Cries details the slow and arduous process of letting go, not only of the past, not only of deeply held beliefs or anxieties, but also letting go of the fear of what is to come.

Seven Days is the worst local film of 2024

 (... so far)

In December of last year, actor-director Mike Magat held a press conference for his new film Seven Days. Magat's IMDB filmography is spotty, but as far as I can tell Magat started out in several action movies as a goon or extra, including 1990's Robin Padilla actioners like Anak ni Baby Ama and Bad Boy. In that press conference, Magat talked about wanting to work with other actors, which in itself sounds like a cool thing.

After seeing this film, I would like to say to all those actors... run. RUN. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE GET SOME HELP

Seven Days is the heartwarming tale of a man who stalks a beauty queen, intrudes into her house and kidnaps her, then tells her that if she doesn't fall in love with him in seven days, he will let her go. Guess what fucking happens.

Seven Days is, in terms of technical ability, one of the worst made films I've seen this year. This film has credits: there's an editor, a sound designer, an assistant director, the usual stuff. But unlike other movies, the names listed in those credits function differently. They are less credits and more like vague probabilities. Like, did Someguy Whatshisface in the credits edit Seven Days? I GUESS. More like some dude fiddled around in Windows Movie Maker until it looked like something resembling a film. Certain shots inexplicably turn up before the scenes that they are supposed to appear. Did the sound guy do the sound in Seven Days? Kinda. There are sounds in this film, but to imply that they were edited in any way would simply be a lie. Sounds in Seven Days exist in a spectrum, ranging in between "commentary during a golf match" and "2 foot long hot pokers being inserted into my ear canal." The sound guy's personal philosophy seems to be laissez-faire. Or maybe he is not a sound engineer, but merely the suggestion of one.

The film begins in medias res, on the fourth of the seven days, with Kate (Catherine Yogi) running for her life from her captor, Marco (Mike Magat). He creeps up on her like a serial killer and catches her. The funny thing about this is, there's tense music while he's chasing her that CUTS OUT whenever it cuts to Kate, as if they rendered his chase scene first with the music and inserted her reaction shots in between.

Kate wakes up chained to the wall of a bamboo house. Marco walks up to her but he's shot in a very weird way, as if it's a surprise as to who it really is. WE JUST SAW WHO IT WAS FIVE MINUTES AGO. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOI-

hilariously, the film repeatedly cuts to his pants and shoes lol

The film then cuts to the time when Marco kidnapped Kate, and there is no question that he's a creeper. There's a part during this scene that's shot like it's from the point of view of inside the car, and it's very silly because the car's headlights are on and it's going like 1 kph following this girl and she doesn't even notice. She gets incapacitated with chloroform, he puts her in his van and races off to a remote island near Taal Volcano. The soundtrack post kidnapping is really inappropriate, but as we will see inappropriateness is par for the course for this movie. Set to a sun at around 8am (the kidnapping takes place at night, so that's some pretty powerful chloroform), the scene is set to music that doesn't sound like some poor lady's been taken against her will, but instead sounds like if Marco rescued Kate from a rebel stronghold in Mogadishu with Josh Hartnett in tow.  

Back to the present. now we see who Marco is, like that matters now. Kate is understandably distressed about the whole thing, because, as we all know, SHE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED. Marco plays it off and offers the girl coffee and bread, but she doesn't reciprocate his "kindness", because, and I can't stress this enough, SHE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED. During this scene, the "editor" (as I've said, this is a very gracious description of what he actually does in this film) cuts to and from shots of Marco and Kate. Not different shots, just the same ones. Did they run out of footage?

We're not even fifteen minutes into this film, and God has already abandoned us. From now on, we will only stray further from His light.

The film goes from day to day, documenting Marco's advances towards Kate. On day 2, he takes her out to pee and there are shots of her legs as she squats on the grass. Mercifully, we don't actually see any pee actually come out, which is a positive for this film, but it's not much of a consolation. Oh, and I forgot, she does this WHILE SHE IS HANDCUFFED TO MARCO. Kate hasn't changed clothes, but Marco assures her that he will buy her seven dresses, seven bras and seven panties. We will soon see that the number of clothes Marco will ultimately buy will vary. I don't know exactly why this inconsistency exists, though it does paint Marco as a serial liar, or at least, someone who exaggerates the truth.

Day 3. Marco leaves to buy groceries. He leaves Kate with a charger for her cellphone. Not so that she can call for help (there's no signal in the island), but because, in his words. "para makapagselfie ka."

AO:DFJBGAE:LGBAEOIGDBADLKGJBE:ODILHNGE"SDLGHNS:ODGN

Sorry, my mind broke for a second there. While shopping for groceries, Marco finds a wanted poster of himself. It is printed via inkjet that seems to be running out of colored ink or is printing on draft mode. I get it, printer ink is expensive. Where is the wanted poster posted? On a wall somewhere? On a telephone pole? On the side of a building? Nope, the poster (more like a piece of bond paper) is nailed to a tree. Not just any tree, a tree in THE MIDDLE OF A SMALL FOREST. Marco tears up the paper.

Day 4. Marco is jogging somewhere nearby to the tune of light, jaunty music while Kate tries to escape from the "island". Like in a previous scene, the nincompoops who made this film rendered the jogging scene with the audio before editing it with Kate's escape. What results is Marco jogging, then the music abruptly cutting while Kate runs in silence. Amazing. Even high school students edit better than this.

The police talk about Marco. They don't actually try to catch him or hold a manhunt or anything, they just kinda call each other on the phone while looking at the poster they printed. You know, the one printed by a dying inkjet printer on bond paper. It might even be the same poster prop that was torn earlier and they shot these scenes out of sequence. While they are talking, the film cuts to a 2 second shot of a bonfire. The bonfire has nothing to do with the current scene, but it does show up in a latter scene. It was probably left there by mistake by the "editor."

The bonfire actually comes from the night of Day 4, where Marco holds a romantic dinner for Kate. Kate understandably still wants to escape but she plays along for now in the hopes that he'll slip up. During the dinner date, Marco explains in detail how he stalked her for months, found out she's a beauty queen and captured her to make her fall in love with him. "Sorry for kidnapping you," he says, as if that makes everything better. She runs away but he catches her (this is, if I recall correctly, the scene from the beginning of the film).

Day 5. Kate has a dream that she's dating Marco in some sort of garden. At this time my stomach sinks. Oh no. OH NO. OH NO.

Day 6. Nothing much happens. Marco sleeps near Kate and tells her good night.

Day 7. Marco tells Kate that he knew that from day 1 that Kate wouldn't like him SO WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HOLD HER CAPTIVE FOR SEVEN DAYS YOU FUCKING - 

these were my notes during that period. The chaotic scribbles to the lower right are a graphical sign of me losing my fucking mind.

The couple look at Taal in the distance and it seems to be erupting (!) I don't think these people had much of a budget so this was one hell of a lucky shot. It goes incredibly hard and is the best thing I like about this "film".

The euphoria from that shot soon vanishes when it is confirmed that yes, Kate has somehow fallen in love with Marco. I know Stockholm Syndrome is a thing and any movies have been made about that particular condition, but the film has so far given me no signs that these two are gonna fall in love. They have ZERO chemistry. It's made even more worse by the fact that they get married two weeks later, and what's even more hilarious, during what I assume is their wedding day, Marco STILL has handcuffs on his person! Does he plan on cuffing her during the honeymoon!? Who knows!

I suppose that the handcuffs are Magat's symbol for a relationship or something, but cuffing someone connotes the lack of agency or free will. To cuff is to imprison, to deprive someone of liberty. Is he applying that metaphor to marriage as well? What the fuck is going on in this man's brain? Have parasitic worms eaten Mike Magat's frontal lobe or something?

Two months later, Marco goes all the way to Manila to buy Kate some flowers, as if there isn't a florist anywhere near Taal. The Manileño florist identifies Marco immediately because he has a picture of Marco on his phone for some reason, and he calls the cops. Right in front of Marco. Who hears everything this bald dumbass is telling the cops. Genius storytelling right here.

The cops chase Marco in one of the slowest bike chases in cinema. The informant calls a cop, who calls another cop. As the second cop talks to the first cop, the phone's ringtone keeps on ringing, even if the second cop has already answered the goddamn phone.

Eventually a random car hits Marco's bike. He is killed on the spot. Kate mourns him; his tombstone is inexplicably located not in a cemetery but in some random forest (probably the same forest where the police nailed a bond paper to a tree). This cuts to a scene seven months later, where Kate is STILL mourning Marco. Couldn't they have combined the two scenes together? Why expect something rational from this trainwreck? During Kate's mourning scene, I kid you not, the film cuts around a dozen times to Kate's crying face and Marco's tombstone. They ran out of footage. AGAIN.

There's an epilogue to this film that I will not spoil (it's in the trailer, but it's out of context so it's easy to miss) that ultimately doesn't matter. This is a baffling film, a pure failure of filmmaking craft that demands 275 pesos from its audience. Did I say audience, I meant victims. Or maybe the correct word is patsies. Who is more foolish, the fool who makes the film or the fool who watches it?

What really put me in for a loop is the ridiculousness of this film's plot, but there is, weirdly, historical precedence to this. When I was a kid, I wondered why one of my uncles on my father's side looked different from my other uncles. Eventually, one of my other relatives answered the question: hundreds of years ago, apparently one of my ancestors decided to kidnap a Dutch woman (probably part of a crew of traders) and basically did a "Seven Days" on her. I cannot corroborate whether that's true or not but needless to say I was horrified, and I have since heard similar tales from other people.

Surely, you might say, this doesn't happen today, but a culture that doesn't respect a woman's agency and one that somehow justifies kidnapping to sate the desires of a man is a way of thinking that's still ingrained in many men today. Take for example Magat's co-star in his earliest films: Robin Padilla. A few weeks ago Padilla, the 1990's symbol for toxic machismo, made statements regarding the consent of women when that woman's partner has the urge to have sex. "Wala ka sa mood, paano ako?" he said to the horror of many. But that's the thing: a lot of people think that way, people like Padilla and people like Magat. Some make regressive statements that way because they do not respect the personhood of women; they do not recognize that they should be free to make decisions for themselves, that any kindness given by their captors is not kindness but a means to get what they want. Some make regressive (and technically inept) movies because of the same reasons.

These are the kinds of people who should be shot in front of Taal Volcano. I mean it in the other sense. 

Sinag Maynila 2024: Reviews of all Full Length Films

Jewel (Rebecca Chuaunsu) is an elderly Filipino-Chinese woman suffering from dementia. Her lawyer son Kyle (Boo Gabunada) hires a caretaker, Teresa (Elora Españo), to take care of her, and they form a sort of tentative bond, albeit a bond that isn't completely altruistic. As Jewel recounts her childhood and family situation growing up in a strictly conservative Filipino-Chinese family, she remembers how her brother Magnus (Richard Mata) tricked her out of her share of the family's inheritance and decides to sue him.

Her Locket is a family drama that in the larger scale of things, doesn't really do anything new, but it's a comfortable and generally enjoyable movie to watch. It follows in the slew of films about Filipino-Chinese communities popularized by Joel Lamangan's Mano Po, and it does that depiction well. It also touches into generational divides and how rigidity and traditional thinking can rip families apart.

However, something feels off about the whole enterprise. Perhaps it's that the film's final act (and the decision that resolves it) doesn't quite align with everything that leads up to it. I get the pivotal character decision near the end of the film, as it is probably a sign of someone who knows they only need to be proven right, as there is no utility to 'winning' at this point in one's life. Perhaps it's the numerous court scenes, which mostly revolve around seemingly random percentages touted as forensic analysis, and often devolve into hammy, overly theatrical sequences that suspend my disbelief. Or maybe it's Teresa's character arc, which doesn't feel fully realized, showing only a fraction of her interiority, if at all. Or maybe it doesn't delve too much into Kyle's own story and how it could mirror his mother's. But my favorite scene of Her Locket, and perhaps its most effective, is a wordless shot near the end, and Rebecca Chuaunsu and Elora Españo communicate everything that's needed at that moment. It almost made everything click into place.

Andy (Perry Dizon) is a historian. As with many an academic, he is in the process of finishing a book that might never get finished. The years (and an addiction to alcohol) have taken a toll on him and his memory is slipping. After collapsing during a lecture, he goes to live with his translator cousin Christine (Dolly De Leon) in order to recuperate. But visions of a mysterious woman named Salome (Ram Botero) haunt his life, both in waking moments and in dreams.

At a certain level, Gutierrez Mangansakan II's Salome shares themes and elements with his 2018 film Masla A Papanok: the erasure of culture by colonialist ambitions, that cultural erasure mirrored in its central character's deteriorating memory, and a woman whose mythohistorical existence is shaped by an amalgamation of multiple cultural elements (Christianity, indigenous religious beliefs, etc), a sort of protean historiography. There is also the looming threat of an apocalyptic event, but while in his earlier film this apocalypse refers to the death of colonized cultures, the events depicted in Salome refers to something equally resonant and immediate.

This is not to say that Salome is a simple reiteration of that earlier film; in particular, the film points at the looming extinction of another set of people: cultural workers and historians like Andy and Christine, and how the reception to the film proves its point.

That's why I consider the most pivotal scene in the film to be one where Christine and Andy look at the looming horizon and talk about their work. They lament their respective career quagmires and consider the importance (or unimportance) of cultural workers like them. In my view, what they do is of utmost importance: they provide context to text; that is, they help us understand the meanings of art, historical records and photographs. The film notes that historical records (in particular: photographs) have long been used "for the purpose of empire," To 'decolonize' culture we need understanding, and to do that we have to look back and interrogate the intent and history behind the many things left by our former colonizers. Indeed, Christine's current project involves Antonio Pigafetta's Primer Viaje en Torno del Globo, which is one of the first books to describe Filipinos from a western perspective. Without the benefit of Christine's translation and the context provided by historians, how do we make sense of their accounts other than what is presented to us ex facie? Without them, it would be like looking only at one side of the moon, one face eternally facing earth, the other side perpetually locked in darkness.

Salome, whose original name was Dayafan until the colonizers 'westernized' her memory and history, can be seen as a sort of parallel to Andy and Christine: she is a prophet, and prophets are conduits, interpreting and translating the language of the divine in order for the common people to understand divine will. She prophesizes a coming calamity and relates the outbreak of a disease in her community that decimated her people. Like the prophets of our indigenous past, historians see cycles and patterns that ostensibly help us prevent them from reoccurring. Alas, as Salome takes place in the last few months and weeks before COVID, these prophecies sometimes reach deaf ears.

There is also one more thing in Salome that metatextually refers to its own utility in this process of decolonization: as it is itself a work of art, there are people whose task is to glean meaning from it. The late David Bordwell once wrote that "the text is inert until a reader of listener... does something to and with it... Meanings are not found but made." Aside from filmmakers, the cultural workers that do that are film historians and critics, but film critics are as much in danger of extinction as art historians, partly because we as a society are fostering a film watching culture that eliminates nuance, that sees its critics trapped in western formalist discourse, that reduces an opinion to a single number or phrase, and is populated by fundamentally incurious, willfully ignorant people who refuse to engage with a work unless everything is spoonfed to them. That is made more than evident upon reading some of the reactions to this film. To those people, no meaning is created, and nothing will ever be created. To liberate film, to decolonize it as part of decolonizing culture, is to disabuse ourselves of this emerging insipidity and to continue to create meaning, to understand, and to use that understanding to be free.

Arvin (Tony Labrusca) wants to work, and it looks like he just landed a job in a resort in Palawan. He's been at it for a while, watching self-help videos in an attempt to give himself an edge. But Arvin's job hunt comes at the worst time, because it happens just at the cusp of a certain worldwide pandemic...

Trapped in his home with ever more dwindling prospects for work, Arvin begins to lose his mind. He is then 'visited' by Ace (also Tony Labrusca) who is Arvin's total opposite, or rather, his deep-seated Id, acting out in ways Arvin could only imagine doing himself.

What You Did captures the isolation and loneliness a pandemic can bring, and how, for some people, that same pandemic took away their ability to be useful to society. Having to rely on handouts from relatives can feel humiliating. The first part of the film feels like a fugue state, where Arvin's (and by extension the audience's) sense of time and place blur.

The isolation of the pandemic made a lot of us turn inward (in introspection) and bring out parts of our psyche that social graces had previously hidden. Through various forms of social media and outlets on the internet, the pandemic revealed something dark about a lot of people - podcasts, for example, went on the rise during the pandemic period, partly because of our desire to be entertained, and partly because of our desire to connect to someone else. It comes as no coincidence that the first thing Ace puts out on the internet (in Arvin's name) is an insane conspiracy theory, which is just a manifestation of Arvin's growing paranoia and anxiety - and it also has to be said that people flock to him regardless, like moths attracted to a flame. 

What You Did is weakest as it transitions to its latter half, where it tries to provide a justification for Ace's existence and awkwardly stumbles towards a conclusion. There are some tense moments but the film could have benefited from building up more of it. At this point the pandemic years seem so far away, even though we still had vestiges of it in early 2023. It's going to be interesting seeing 'pandemic' cinema as filmmakers and audiences look at it in retrospect.

(as an aside, getting like 100k views is gonna get you jack shit even if you monetize it lol)

The first time we see Macky (L.A. Santos, In His Mother's Eyes) and Molly (Kira Balinger) they're a couple newly in love. Five years pass since their first meeting, and they're living a relatively humdrum existence: Macky is a restaurant manager and Molly, like the rest of her family, is subservient to richer relatives, working as an assistant to her cousin. In order to gain financial freedom, Molly decides to immigrate to Canada with Macky, re-enter college there and eventually find a way to get permanent residency and try to move the rest of her family into the country.

Benedict Mique's Maple Leaf Dreams resonated a bit with me, because it's the sort of experience my loved ones have experienced: for one, my maternal grandmother spent decades in Ontario until her retirement. Canada has a reputation of being one of the most immigrant-friendly nations in the world, taking in hundreds of thousands of people in the country every year. 

The film is pretty rough in its construction: at one point, it uses social media as a narrative device to depict its characters' feelings, as if everyone in the world is an influencer of some kind. They really don't need to be gallivanting around the city like it's one of those "travelogue" Star Cinema films, and the whole thing feels forced. 

What Maple Leaf Dreams does successfully articulate, however, is the immigrant experience of many Filipinos seeking a better life abroad. It's not Canada-specific, the film could have taken place in Azerbaijan and not a lot would change, but it doesn't need to be. In particular, Maple Leaf Dreams shows how lonely a life abroad can be: years upon years away from family and loved ones, earning money but not for one's own enjoyment, eternally (and in Molly's case, ironically) at the service of others. The film shows one of the greatest assets one can have while living in a foreign land: not (just) the monetary compensation, not (just) the affordable healthcare, but the presence of community, the "third space" that forms when people from another culture settle in a wholly different country.

A seemingly superfluous scene, where Molly and Macky leave a steaming hot (!) Christmas dinner for a party with fellow Filipino-Canadians, ends up being the film's centerpiece. It turns into a documentary style sequence of stories from actual Filipino-Canadians relating their experiences abroad. Mini spoiler alert: it's not an easy life. And with rising global anti-immigrant sentiment, worsening economies all around the world to the point where even in Canada, immigrants are struggling to make ends meet, it's not getting any easier for people who are considering taking the risk. But, as the film tries to say in all its clumsy ways, it's a little bit easier to dream when you have someone dreaming alongside you.

Alvin Yapan's Talahib begins with a lengthy quotation from retired justice Isagani Cruz. The quote refers to an en banc decision Cruz made in 1989 over the implementation of the Agrarian Reform Law, which was supposed to award land from landowners to farmers. Said landowners protested, saying that the President had no authority to do that, or that they were owed some kind of compensation. Cruz dismissed these petitions and upheld the law, giving the land to the farmers. In his closing statement, Cruz says that "meantime, we struggle as best we can in freeing the farmer from the iron shackles that have unconscionably, and for so long, fettered his soul to the soil."

If we are to assume that case forms the basis of the film, the opposite seems to have happened: the land itself is possessed by a malevolent spirit, the ghost of a man who was buried there, seeking vengeance upon all that oppressed him. A woman (Sue Prado) and her would-be rapist are killed in the beginning of the film. This leads the local police, led by Bong (Joem Bascon) to investigate. When they run into a group of young people led by Joyce (Gillian Vicencio) at the crime scene, things get a little more complicated.

Talahib is rich conceptually; Yapan is no stranger to allegory, and the land's seeming malevolence against anyone who walks in its territory is anger distilled from years of unfair treatment. At first watch I was confused: the victims of the Talahib killer call themselves farmers, but they do not do farming; the land is untilled, the grass grows tall and is not reaped. A dilapidated model house stands alone amongst the grass, and there are talks to sell the land for purposes other than farming. These 'farmers' are rich and send their children abroad. Then I realized, their testimony of the ghost is false. In my reading of the film, the 'killer' is not a 'killer', or at least he wasn't one until after he was killed; the victims of the 'killer' are tenants and landowners who call themselves "farmers," but benefit from land that is not theirs.

That all said, the film is not very well made. From the first frame, I felt a feeling of impatience to the film in its editing and sequencing of events, as if it did not want to bother establishing a scene, filling in narrative blanks, or introducing us to its characters. There's one time where the characters anxiously search for a character named Vernie, and I was like "who the heck is Vernie?" It's Kate Alejandrino's character, but I only knew that after looking at the credits. In another instance, a tense chase inside an abandoned house abruptly cuts to a shot of two policemen waiting outside. The tense chase scene ends off screen and is rarely alluded to again. It's like massive chunks of the film are missing. 

Talahib is a disappointing mess. While it does build some dread in some of its scenes, it is not tense; as a police procedural (for at least 80% of the film, it functions like one) it fails. 

What makes a film good to me? Is it the cinematography, the editing? Is it its intrinsic entertainment value? I'm not really sure I can answer that right now, but I think one of the factors is how much fun it is, for me and for the filmmakers who made it. Banjo is objectively not a very good film, but I had a blast watching it, and the dedication and passion of the filmmakers is more than evident, despite working with what I assume is 50 pesos and a prayer.

The film begins with Banjo (Bryan Wong, who also directed the film) in dire straits. He was supposed to infiltrate a drug cartel led by crime boss Franko, but his cover is blown and he's captured by Franko's underling Zaldy (Rhodium Sagario). Before he is captured, Banjo goes to a fiesta where he sneaks up on a guy stealthily to kill him, ignoring the fact that in the reverse shot there are like five people behind him and he would be spotted immediately.

Zaldy forces Banjo to kill a hooded figure, who turns out to be his brother Marko (AJ Arobo). Banjo then proceeds to kill everyone in that room for making him do that, and sits in the corner after the deed a bloody mess. His pants are also ripped at the crotch area, not intentionally (I think!!!!) but that's beside the point. Let me tell you this right now: Banjo has a couple of decent action scenes at least in terms of choreography. The camerawork and editing may need a little polishing but there's something dynamic in these scenes that we don't usually see in other action films.

The superior officer in charge of Banjo's operation (Mon Confiado) tells Banjo to continue trying to get to Franko - he's likely to be chased by Franko's goons from now on and as long as he doesn't die, maybe he can get Franko to emerge from hiding and expose him. This is also the last time we see Mon Confiado in the film, because I guess that's all they have in the budget for his talent fee. In the meantime, however, he has to get the hell out of Zaldy's base, so he calls his ally Yuri (Missy Acodile) to rescue him. Franko's goons quickly find out where he is, however, and raid the hideout.

Banjo's sent to a butcher who's going to use his body to store contraband (replacing his organs with drugs) while Yuri and a bunch of other women are set to be sold off as sex slaves to a wealthy congressman. Franko's underling Hector (the late Bordie Carillo) does his sales pitch selling weapons, girls and even parts for nuclear weapons (!!!) Meanwhile, Banjo, Yuri and her new lady friends are in a room. before Banjo is dragged out of the room to be dissected, he defiantly kicks one of the gunmen on his way out! Yuri ends up choking the guy guarding her then she... lies beside the girl next to her??? I have several questions. Why are you storing drugs in dead people? Isn't lugging a dead person around Mindanao gonna look suspicious? Where did those other women come from? Why did Banjo kick that guy while he was being dragged out of the room???? What happened to the guy Yuri choked into unconsciousness???? What dimension does this take place in??????? 

Banjo manages to free himself and rescue the hostages and go to a secluded location in Rogongon, Iligan City that used to be a tourist spot. If you're familiar with Bryan Wong's previous short films (he has a LOT on his FB page), then you know he likes to shoot in resorts in Mindanao, and that's also the case here - he shoots in at least two resorts in Banjo, or maybe it's the same resort and they just shot it in different parts. Here's where I found the one thing I liked the most about Banjo: it has extensive lore for its huge cast of characters. Banjo meets up with Rakman (Malizord Waway Estillore, and damn that's a tokusatsu-ass name if I ever saw one) a former rival assassin who Banjo made an ally through the power of friendship. Yuri also recounts how she met Banjo - after some family issues, she becomes a party girl, apparently doing drugs and dancing the night away in a club that has a total of four people in it, tops. Maybe it was a soft opening. After the Rogongon sequence, we don't see these two people again.

The Rogongon action sequence is probably the film's centerpiece, as it embodies a lot of things, in all its ultra low budget glory. It understands the flow of an action scene (preparation, action proper, then resolution) but doesn't quite understand how it fits into filmmaking (what looks like an establishing shot doesn't match the location where the action actually takes place, and doesn't quite communicate the locations and positions of its characters in an obvious chase scene). In one glorious moment, Banjo hides under a bridge and snipes Franko's henchmen one by one. One last henchman falls, but there's no gunshot - THE POOR MAN JUST SLIPPED ON THE MUDDY GROUND. The take keeps rolling as the man struggles to get up, while a firework effect made to simulate gunfire simmers nearby. He decides not to get up and instead squirms on the ground towards Banjo's position. I have never felt so much second hand embarrassment for another person in a while. Banjo eventually puts the poor man out of his misery. My eyes are full of tears, but not from crying.

Banjo escapes from Rogongon and goes into hiding, eventually gaining crucial intel left behind by his brother Marko, who happens to have a very pregnant wife (MORE LORE!!!). His new boss, General Laguesma (Jerome Laguesma) is in Los Angeles for some reason, tracking a guy named Dr. Sanders. Why a General would personally be doing a covert operation instead of one of his agents baffles the mind, but whatever.

This review is getting way too long (and I want to keep some spoilers in case you see the film, please release the film somewhere) so let's just say Banjo always gets his man. I'm telling you though, there's a ton of things I haven't even talked about - I sometimes take notes on films I watch and it's usually 2 pages tops. For this one, I took 10 back to back pages of notes about a truckload of characters with backstories and relationships to Banjo. 

It's like a AliExpress John Wick in here. Among the other characters, of note is Banjo's daughter (!!!!) who talks with the famed assassin in cutesy language that only proves the point that no matter how badass you are, you're always gonna act cringe to your kids. This is not a film that was made without thought (okay, yeah it was, filmmaking wise), this story had an outline. This film has lore. Bryan Wong, this absolute madman probably had character sheets. Character sheets!!! He probably even had a relationship chart, this movie has enough material for five sequels. And from the films two (yes, two!!!) mid credit sequences, I would not be surprised.

Banjo proudly continues the tradition of cheap but supremely enjoyable action schlock made with earnestness from truly independent, regional filmmakers. It's the most fun I've had in a cinema all month. I would honestly watch Banjo 2: Franko's Revenge, Banjo 3: Big Wolf Keeps Slipping On Mud, and Banjo 4: His Pants Ripped Again At the Crotch if they ever had the budget to do so.