A Review of Now Streaming, a Series of Pandemic Stories

 

We've all been affected by this pandemic in different ways, and the CignalPlay series Now Streaming tries to articulate that in audiovisual form, telling six stories from varying genres depicting pandemic life. The set of six stories can be divided into three pairs, based on theme or genre, but each gives us a distinct look at life during this unprecedented historical event,

Perhaps the most lighthearted of the six pandemic stories is Carlo Catu's From My Window, a love story about a man who distantly observes, and falls in love with, his next door neighbor. It speaks to a primal need for people to seek others, amplified by the isolation and loneliness imposed upon us by quarantine. There's a lot of stuff to unpack regarding the neighbor's condition, which can potentially lead into darker things depending on how cynical one is, but the episode focuses on the two protagonists' on again-off again relationship. 

Although seemingly conventional on the surface, the most alluring thing about Siege Ledesma's First of May is the way in which it presents its story: it first shows us Mon and Ida (Sid Lucero and Annika Dolonius, a reunion of sorts from Apocalypse Child), a couple talking via video call. It then engages in a clever bit of misdirection, with each layer, twist and wrinkle feeding us more character bits and unravelling a larger and more complicated story. In contrast to From My Window, which aimed to depict how the pandemic can keep people apart, this episode depicts how the pandemic can lock people in together, whether they want to or not.

In 1956, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl coined the term Parasocial Interaction to describe the way people interact with personas or celebrities. It's a phenomenon that perhaps gained more prominence during the rise of cinema, radio and television, though arguably it's been a phenomenon from the birth of 'celebrity' itself. In these interactions, people gain a false sense of intimacy or closeness with a public personality, even though this relationship is one-way. The next two episodes explore this concept, mutated and evolved thanks to the advent of streaming, social media, and how pandemic isolation has forced some of us to consume this continually.

Bradley Liew's Eater takes this concept to its extremes. It relates the parasocial relationships we have formed during the pandemic (elevated to dangerous levels) to the act of eating, in particular the activity of Mukbang. To me, there's always been something deeply disturbing about the activity of Mukbang, something that is intended as a communal activity, but something that reads as a disgusting expression of excess consumption. That sense of unease translates well here. But I digress. In a way, the creepy stalker antagonist of Eater has a possessiveness fueled by a twisted drive to connect with someone else. Driven to even further extremes, this episode could have ended with the antagonist wanting to consume or be consumed by his object of obsession, but the film shies away from that at the last minute. 

On the other hand, Rae Red's Year of the Rat approaches this concept in a different, metafictional way, by making us part of the audience on one end of the relationship. Andy (Thea Marabut) is an influencer, making the most of social media and the pandemic by creating inane, shallow content. In fact, stupidity is part of her brand as an influencer, often using the hashtag #tanganation (idiot nation) for the things she makes. The viewer's engagement (meaning, our engagement) may stem from ironic enjoyment, incredulousness, or the kind of fascination one has when seeing a car crash. This leads to a crazy fan using her as a means to gain subscribers of their own. It plays out as one might predict for most of its runtime, but then it throws the audience a marvelously constructed curveball out of nowhere, evoking the words of one Obi Wan Kenobi: who is more foolish, the fool or the fool that follows him?

While the previous two episodes dealt with the horror that we find in other people, the last two episodes deal with a pandemic horror that is less tangible - the impact of increasing isolation on our psyches.

In Dodo Dayao's Destroy Everything You Touch, the zoom conversations between six friends get stranger and more terrifying as their anxieties and neuroses begin to manifest themselves in the real world. The episode gives us a reason for these manifestations, but the effects resonate regardless. It perfectly encapsulates a sense of anxiety, fear and paranoia that lurks in hidden places, just out of sight.

And finally, in Kenneth Dagatan's As You Can See, our "communal isolation," so to say, makes some of us vulnerable to exploitation (in this case, the supernatural kind), especially in the absence of a proper emotional support system. The film's main character Patricia (Beauty Gonzales) is separated from both friends and family, and her boyfriend is a gaslighting creep that doesn't try to understand or care about his girlfriend's situation. She seeks solace in a mother figure (a popular trope in Dagatan's works) but it is part of something sinister and malignant, spreading like a virus in a crowded room.

Now Streaming is available for free until May 4, at Cignal Play.

Present Confusion Reviews | Ride or Die (a.k.a. 彼女; 2021)

 note: spoilers.

At around the end of the first third of Ryuichi Hiroki's Ride or Die, Lovefool by the Cardigans starts to play. The song - the lead single off of the 1996 album First Band on the Moon - reveals its true nature when one looks at the lyrics, which contrast with its bubblegum aesthetic. It's a song about a person desperately struggling to keep someone in their life, whether that other party likes it or not. The song goes:

I don't care if you really care

As long as you don't go

So I cry, I pray, and I beg

Love me, love me

Say that you love me

This isn't a song about longing, Lovefool is a song about a need for codependence on a level that approaches obsession. One may hardly call it love at all - and that's the kind of feeling that embodies Ride or Die, an adaptation of Ching Nakamura's manga Gunjou. Hiroki, with a script penned by Nakamura herself and frequent collaborator Nami Yoshikawa, trims out a lot of the fat from the original manga but keeps the spirit of the manga intact.

The movie begins with a dizzying half hour sequence where Rei Nagasawa (Kiko Mizuhara) kills a married man after a tryst at a bar. This man turns out to be the husband of her former highschool classmate Nanae (Honami Sato). Nanae is the victim of domestic abuse, and Rei takes it upon herself to kill her husband. Before this murder, Rei has lived an otherwise ordinary, even happy life: she lives with her older girlfriend and works as a successful plastic surgeon. But her infatuation with Nanae, something that has continued from her high school days, leads her to throw all that away.

The murder serves as the bloody exclamation point to an extended, explicit sex scene between Rei and her victim. For people who know Kiko Mizuhara through, say, her guesting stint on Queer Eye, the proceedings may be a bit shocking, to say the least. Hiroki is no stranger to scenes like this in his movies; before moving to the mainstream, he worked as a director in pinku eiga in a variety of subgenres such as S&M, and was even one of the early pioneers of the sub subgenre of gay themed pinku eiga. But to call the film's scenes sexploitation is in my opinion, unfair; in my opinion all such scenes in this film serve as subversion and don't read as titillating at all. Hiroki's work isn't shy about sex or sexuality, but he also manages to craft emotionally complex characters (especially women) whose motivations lie in a large morally gray area.

Perhaps one of the biggest moments of this subversion of the male lens is in the subsequent bathroom scene, where both Rei and Nanae strip off their clothes, the former does so to wash off the blood off her body, and the latter to show the bruises and wounds she has gained over the years. The camera lingers over their bodies in a panning shot which wouldn't be unusual in a gravure video, but here the desired effect is unsettling, framing their bodies as canvasses of violence. At the same time, the scene serves as a moment of extreme vulnerability for both women. The confrontation that follows is probably one of the best acted moments of the film, an amazing performance from Mizuhara, who has flown under the radar with her movie roles in the past few years, and Sato, who is perhaps better known as the drummer for indie rock band Gesu no Kiwami Otome.

The relationship between Rei and Nanae isn't a romance in the normal sense, if it could be called love at all: although it is a bit more ambiguous in the film, Nanae in the manga is straight, and cannot reciprocate Rei's affection, at least in the way Rei wants. Whatever kindness Rei gives her is rebuffed or met with aloofness or hostility, because due to her history and self-loathing, she is unable to process the love she receives. Rei desires Nanae, and would do anything for her sake, but this love is unrequited. She is also troubled by a sense of insecurity and inadequacy. Like in Lovefool, she is consumed by a desire for codependence that she cannot shake off. Perhaps it is better to say that they need each other rather than love each other, and that they often cope with that neediness in self-destructive ways. For Rei, it manifests as a moment where she engages in casual sex with another man, a moment that serves more as an act of self harm than an act done for her own satisfaction.

These are two strangers that, in the words of the manga, are neither lovers nor friends. The nature of their relationship can be seen as transactional: one offering services to the other in exchange for something else. The journey that the film takes us through oscillates between tender moments of gentle reflection and table-turning hysterics. But by the end of the film, this relationship evolves when both Nanae and Rei consummate their bottled up feelings and come into a twisted sort of understanding: that sometimes, when all we have left is each other, that's all we really ever need.

Unifying Japan for Fun and Profit

 

What!? A video game entry in a movie review blog!?

Yeah, I'm diversifying (again). I just want to talk to the void about this.

To lessen my time playing the insanely addicting gacha hellhole that is Genshin Impact, I've decided to take up another video game, a "part time" game to lessen the crushing existential dread that's been in ample supply recently. The game of choice was Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, a cross between Koei's kingdom simulation games and a Samurai Warriors game. The latter is itself a spinoff of Koei's popular Dynasty Warriors series, where historical figures fight large scale battles against hundreds or thousands of enemies with over the top weapons and sometimes even magic. However, the Samurai Warriors series is more than just "Dynasty Warriors but Japan," it's a lot more tactically diverse and the gameplay has diverged quite a bit from its parent game. It has its faults, yes (it skims over some controversial parts of history, understandably so, and its gameplay loop can prove to be tedious for some) but it has developed its own niche following.

In Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, you are put in charge of one of several clans (based on Japanese history) with the ultimate aim of conquering everyone else and unifying Japan under your rule. You fight battles, defend your territory, recruit new generals to fight for you and manage your domain's economy. To the right kind of person, this kind of game is very fun, and I'm exactly that kind of person.

The map of Feudal Japan that you have to work with. Each territory is controlled by a clan, indicated by the flag.

By the third playthrough (a single playthrough on normal difficulty lasts around 9-12 hours), I decided to play the Sanada clan, which featured the Samurai Warriors series' poster boy, Yukimura Sanada. The starting territory is right in the middle of Japan, surrounded by hostile clans. I tried to make alliances at the start so that I wouldn't be attacked constantly, but few clans responded to my offers of alliance. I won each battle by the skin of my teeth; in one battle in which I invaded a territory despite being horribly outnumbered, I won with just 9 seconds remaining on the clock (running out of time means you lose, and you fail to capture that territory).

Eventually my economy started to pick up and my kingdom wasn't running on fumes anymore. To protect myself from the western clans, I struck up an alliance with a clan next to me, creating a barrier and preventing other western clans from invading as I began to conquer the east. In the meantime another clan, the Shimazu, were getting busy conquering the western half of Japan. A showdown was inevitable.

One of the most troublesome enemies I had to deal with in East Japan was the Tokugawa clan, whose defense and troops were, at this point of the game, top tier. One general in particular, Tadakatsu Honda, was a big source of most of my problems, as he is the strongest character in the game. (Historically the man was a badass too.) While the Shimazu were conquering domains left and right, I had to ally with eastern clans (that I would later betray) just to defend myself against the Tokugawa. By the time I was done with the Tokugawa, limping and injured, the Shimazu had time to recuperate and organize their troops. 

After finally uniting East Japan, incurring a number of losses to my own troops, I thought I had some time to rest and recover. That was, alas, only a pipe dream because in the next turn, the Shimazu had conquered my western ally, and were rearing up for an invasion of my territory. When they struck, I was still depleted and my attempts to defend my westernmost domains were feeble at best. I managed to regain my lost territory, but my men were dwindling. Thankfully I had a secret weapon: Tadakatsu Honda, the man that frustrated my attempts to put down the Tokugawa clan earlier. After the defeat of that clan, Honda found himself in my service as I had to recruit people to bolster my forces.

The battle between east and west began and I took my sweet time. With each victory I crept closer and closer until finally I had cornered the Shimazu to their last domain and won handily. A united Japan at last. It may not be a game to the level of immersive AAA masterpieces, but a fun gameplay loop and the ability to make a story by yourself through gameplay (like what I've done so far) is something that I value in my games. Some games want you to go on a predestined track, which is sometimes okay, but the ability to create your own (meta)narrative is something not a lot of games have.

So that's about it. Sorry you had to endure all that.

Oh, one more thing.

In this game, your playable characters or generals have the ability to form relationships with each other, either as friends, rivals, mentor-students, and in the case of female and male characters, as husbands or wives. There's a way in-game, once the correct things have been unlocked, to create your own cutscene where two generals marry each other in a solemn ceremony.

The marriage scene looks like this.

There are rules, however, but I don't know if they thought this through. Males and females only, which should disappoint some shippers. You also can't put as husband and wife two characters that are historically father and daughter (Mitsuhide Akechi can't be married to Gracia, and Tadakatsu Honda can't be married to Inahime, for example). But brothers and sisters? Mothers and sons? Apparently it's fair game. That's just weird.

Thoughts on Dito at Doon

Compared to other major historical disasters of the past century, this pandemic feels like a catastrophe unfolding in super slow motion, where we are all ripped from our former lives and placed into a situation that is for all intents and purposes, out of our control. In such a situation, wouldn't it be logical to want someone to hold your hand while you watch the world die? 

There is a sense of longing in JP Habac's Dito at Doon, a sense of wanting to live a way of life that no longer exists. It is deeply felt in the film's form, especially in the way it frames online conversations. It rejects the "zoom aesthetic" pioneered by productions created during the early months of the pandemic, instead opting to depict these online meetings as in-person conversations. This framing gives the goings on a sense of intimacy that wouldn't have registered as well if it was filmed as two people staring at each other through a screen. Its romantic tropes and clichés even evoke pre-pandemic romantic films, treading very familiar ground in that respect.

And that thought leads to the tragedy at the core of this film: no matter how much we try to escape with someone else into fantasies of comfort, it is slowly getting harder to avoid the reality that this is not going away. Something was lost when we all retreated into our homes, and that thing is something people struggle to reclaim. Whatever aspirations we have towards love take a back seat to responsibilities towards family and ultimately, one's own survival. To me, Dito at Doon isn't a romance, it's a disaster movie: a movie that takes place in a world where the soil where romance grows is barren.

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

 

It's a Hollywood tale as old as time: an ambitious filmmaker with a grand idea comes to tinseltown with a plan. Almost immediately, executives meddle with that creative vision, leading to a frankensteined product that does not resemble the original idea in any way. Audiences who see the potential of that idea are left with an unsatisfying work of art, wondering what could have been.

What would an Edgar Wright Ant-Man look like? Or a Lord and Miller Solo? Or a purely Josh Trank Fant4stic? We will probably never see the answers to such questions, and that's how it goes in Hollywood. That's why the recently released recut of Justice League, directed by Zack Snyder, is something of an aberration. After fan backlash to the original 2017 film, clamor for a rumored "Snyder Cut" grew until Warner Brothers gave up the ghost and gave the fans what they wanted.

I'm not going to spend the next few paragraphs talking about the lore or the characters in a grander context; many fan-run sites will be able to articulate it better than I ever can. What I can tell you here is, in terms of cinema, what does something like this film mean?

This four hour monstrosity is remarkable. It is a film, but it has aspects that can be seen more in arthouse films than in your usual Hollywood blockbuster. With its runtime, it flouts the rules of commercial cinema, and by chance it is uniquely suited to take advantage of the streaming medium that has supplanted traditional theaters during the pandemic.

That's not to say the film is perfect. It's not God's gift to cinema, no, but it doesn't want to be. It is, however, a vast improvement over the original film, and it's safe to say that any newcomers should avoid the original film entirely and consider this the definitive version.

Despite the many changes, at its core the story is still the same: after Superman's death in the previous film, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) begin assembling some of Earth's mightiest heroes to fend off an alien invasion. What sets both films apart is, first and foremost, a consistency in tone. Gone are the MCU quips that wormed their way into the 2017 version thanks to Joss Whedon's involvement. That is perhaps this cut's best feature: the Snyder Cut isn't trying to be something else, it is its own thing. We get to know the characters first (something that is no doubt alleviated by the releases of 2017's Wonder Woman and 2018's Aquaman) and the stakes are clear. Even the villain, a cartoonishly stock villain in the 2017 film, is given a backstory and motivation in this one.

While it does still suffer from being the follow-up to a mediocre, if a bit silly movie, and it suffers from Snyder's own, sometimes overindulgent filmmaking weaknesses, and it still does at least three movies' worth of heavy lifting, the end result is entertaining in its own, chaotic way.

This film does raise a number of interesting questions. It's probably safe to say that this version of the film would not be the version that Snyder would release theatrically had he still continued making the 2017 film. He was unconstrained by cinema rules or distributors or running times. What if, in the context of traditional cinemas dying, this film is part of a new paradigm in film production moving forward? What does the Snyder Cut say about fan driven efforts? How heavily will fan clamor change how a movie is made creatively? While it worked for this film (giving Snyder free reign to do what he wants), studios reacting to fan demand also has its downsides - see the last Star Wars movie for an example of that. 

One can comfortably end the film at the 3 hour 40 minute mark and call it a day. What follows after that mark is an epilogue that shows audiences what a Snyderverse film would have looked like. In a meta sense, it reflects itself: the epilogue that consists of a dream of an alternate universe, is itself a look into an alternate universe - one where Zack Snyder continued working on future Justice League films. But in the here and now, reality is different: WB has shifted to telling more standalone stories with the release of films like 2019's Joker, and it's doubtful whether actors like Ray Fisher (Cyborg) or Amber Heard (Mera) will return. The epilogue, then, feels a tad cruel, a tease for a sequel that will never come.

But people were saying only a few years back that this cut will never, ever be a thing, and look where we are now. The possibilities are endless.

Present Confusion 2020 Rundown Part 3: World Cinema Favorites

 

...I've run out of jokes

It's a bit ironic that when the pandemic forced us all into our homes, it allowed cinema to expand beyond borders at the same time. International film festivals started offering their films to international audiences, sometimes for free. The world became a smaller place.

In rough order, here are some of my favorite films from around the world that I saw in 2020.

John Tawasil's

WORLD CINEMA FAVORITES 2020

Honorable Mentions:

15. Exit (Lee Sang-geun, 2019) - An enjoyable thrill ride from start to finish, while Exit isn't as profound as other films in this list, it's by far one of the most entertaining. At a time where the world wasn't looking too sunny, it was the injection of stubborn, boldfaced positivity that I needed. 

14. The Half of It (Alice Wu, 2020) - This refreshing take on Cyrano de Bergerac intersects queer love, friendship, immigrant integration into society and religion and culture in a small town all in one surprisingly wholesome package. Where's the other half of it, Netflix?

13 My Sweet Grappa Remedies (Akiko Ohku, 2019) - I've always associated "coming of middle age films" with anxious, chaotic and even violent awakenings. Akiko Ohku's My Sweet Grappa Remedies takes the opposite approach, gently easing us into a woman's entrance into that strange realm between youth and old age.

12. Under the Open Sky (Miwa Nishikawa) - Miwa Nishikawa has a penchant for stories featuring characters who employ deception, and this absorbing character study is no exception - except this time, the only thing the main character of Under the Open Sky is truly deceiving is himself.

ELEVEN WORLD CINEMA FAVORITES

11. True Mothers (Naomi Kawase, 2020) - It seems like Naomi Kawase has gone full circle: from deeply personal documentaries about how motherhood has shaped her, she's made an emotional exploration of motherhood in all its myriad forms. Also, I'm a fan of Kawase's work and I hope she gets to make more films like this in the future.

10. You and I (Fanny Chotimah, 2020) - few films are as heartbreaking as Fanny Chotimah's debut work about the twilight years of two political dissidents who find each other during their incarceration and grow old together. An intersection of the sociopolitical effects of activism on one's life, a "love" story unlike any other, and a gentle meditation on the finite nature of life, it's hard to type words about this film without breaking into tears. It's that affecting.

9. Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa, 2019) - I guess it's pretty telling that this film about an ex-con/juvenile delinquent pretending to be a priest communicates true Christlike behavior better than any faith based film that I've ever seen in my life.

8. Eeb Allay Ooo! (Prateek Vats, 2019) - hierarchies dominate the theme of Prateek Vats' debut film, and it's pretty telling that in these ladders of social order, ordinary humans like you and me aren't necessarily at the top.

7. Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) - a tender drama about an immigrant family trying to make it in the rural United States, Minari is a film about the smaller stories that make up the tapestry of a proud nation of immigrants.

6. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao, 2020) - It's kind of interesting that in a year where loneliness is forced upon us by circumstance, there's a film like Nomadland, about a person whose loneliness exists by choice. There's also a sense of larger machinations with economies and society trickling down and destroying the underlying fabric of America, scattering its peoples into empty wastelands, perpetually exiled from each other.

5. Nasir (Arun Karthick, 2020) - 2020 marks a year where the inherent weaknesses of populism were laid bare by the pandemic. A person can think critically; while masses of people are prone to manipulation, and their hatred can be directed against others. In an environment where hate is cultivated day by day, it is always the everyday man who suffers the most. In this adaptation of a short story (itself based on real life events), the humdrum day of a man is shown in gentle detail, before hurtling towards an inevitable, unfortunate conclusion.

4. Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Žbanić, 2020) - as with Nasir, Quo Vadis, Aida deals with the monstrous consequences of hate and the inevitability of history. But it also deals with the banality of evil, in that normal people - your neighbor, your coworker, even yourself - can be capable of heinous things. What place does accountability have, then, in a society trying to move past such a difficult history?

3. Crazy World (Nabwana IGG, 2019) - I saw this rerelease of the 2014 Wakaliwood classic during the height of the pandemic, during the We Are One global film festival - and I think it's exactly what I needed. While far from perfect technically, it's as crazy as the title says - a wild, inventive (and surprisingly, lesson-filled) love letter to cinema, and I'm all for it.

2. A Balance (Yujiro Harumoto, 2020) - This is actually my favorite film of 2020, as the #1 is there for mostly sentimental reasons. Harumoto's debut film, a meditation on media, truth, and truth-telling, is the most tense 153 minutes I have watched this entire year. 

1. Happy Old Year (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2019) - as we throw away the garbage of the previous year, I guess it's appropriate that the film at the top of this list deals with throwing things away, and the idea that that process is never that simple. As with many of Nawapol's films, this particular film feels low key, almost deadpan, then does a 180 turn and shoots you straight in the heart.

***

That ends Present Confusion for 2020. To be honest, guys and gals, I legitimately thought of hanging up my gloves at the end of 2019, but the pandemic gave me room to stretch creatively. With the way things are going now, I don't think I can go back to cinemas yet. So unless I've been vaccinated, I've decided not to cover any Filipino films with a purely theatrical release..

That said, the format of this blog will likely change in the coming months. I'll probably start talking about different things, if I ever find the juice to talk about anything at all. For all we know, this might be my last entry in Present Confusion, and if that's the case, with 15 years of stuff behind us, I think this is a good place to end it. But if I do manage to think of something to write about, expect it here and nowhere else.

In the meantime, I'll still be working with the fine folks over at Third World Cinema Club, and I have a youtube channel now. That might go on for a while until I run out of ideas again and make my way back here.

In years past, I've ended these things by saying "see you at the movies," but since this time things are different, I'll settle with saying: Be safe. Take care of yourself. And if the fates are kind, I'll see you around.

Present Confusion 2020 Rundown Part 2: Philippine Cinema Odds and Ends

 

the B in this BL probably means something else

The comic sans font doesn't really justify this piece. This piece isn't all about bad films since in this space I want to talk about interesting films too. Because film production in the country came to a halt, there weren't a lot of bad films. And no, your one star review of some popular movie that's actually not that bad doesn't count. That doesn't mean, however, that no bad films came out this year. 

This doesn't have much of a structure, either, and it's not in list form. I guess you'll just have to read through.

Blade Entertainment, the entertainment wing of the ubiquitous seller of car paraphernalia and knick knacks of the same name, is perhaps the last place where you'd expect a diamond in the rough. And that sentiment is at least kind of right; Ara Baldonado's Good Times Bad isn't exactly top of the year material, but it sure did leave an impression on me. 

There isn't exactly a lot of plot to hold the film together; it's about two people, complete strangers, who try to find stolen items that hold sentimental value to them. The entire film is about them trying to do just that.

The film has a lot of filler; the film tends to drag out some of its sequences, and the film also includes a number of strange additions, such as a cameo from Akihiro Blanco, reprising his character from Blade Entertainment movies 12 Days to Destiny and The Next 12 Days. But the film is structured so weirdly that it feels like an experimental film sometimes: there's a time loop in the middle of the film. There are various monologues about the mysteries of life, delivered as if in a drug induced haze, scattered all throughout the story. At points it was so delightfully weird that I was compelled to keep watching. It's probably one of the most surprising local movie experiences of the year.

For people talking about their favorite films this year, remember this experimental short disguised as an IG live? This almost kinda made it, but to be honest the conversation that followed was far more interesting than the film itself. Imagine being a little angry because you felt duped by a film, when the very idea of a love team is in itself a manufactured construct?

One of the most wild experiences of my 2020 moviegoing experience has to be Noriel Jarito's Huramentado: Kill The President. Yes, THAT president, but you don't get to see the act on screen (you don't even see if he's successful or not!). The Samar-based Jarito has made one other major film before (starring himself!) called Rindido, which can be viewed on his Youtube channel.

Long story short, this movie is bonkers. I almost contemplated making a (non) review of this film in the spirit of classics like Durugin ang Droga and Exit Point, but I simply didn't have the time. Maybe someday. The entire first 10-15 minutes is basically footage from an actual CineLokal premiere edited to look like an assassination is about to take place. All fine and good, until you realize that intercut with these scenes are seemingly accidental clips of some middle aged guy in his boxers lying in bed. I wish I could tell you I was joking.

Jarito seems to want to say something with his film, and you can palpably feel a seething sense of distrust towards corruption and a hatred of establishment politics and feudal rule in the provinces. Points for effort for that. I hope the film gets shown on youtube again so you can all see it in its crazy glory.

I've already said my piece about Pakboys Takusa, and I won't waste my time talking about that. They had a prime chance to screen a hentai at the MMFF and all we get are the ugly bastards. Just kidding. Or am I?

Pakboys the Animation (2021)

But there is one other film that I intensely disliked in 2020, and that's Oligase: The Demon of Fear. I dislike it because while (I think) it means well, and its disparate elements mean well, it's all in all a miserable affair that does nothing except paint indigenous peoples as backwards-thinking, histrionic morons. 

It's all in there: the stock religious masochistic suffering-to-redemption narrative, the devaluing of education, the devaluing of indigenous peoples, the weird colonialist undertones, the amount of sexual violence just for the sake of it. In a year where a film like Tokwifi gained mainstream recognition, this is just a giant leap backward.

***

That's about it for local cinema in 2020. Anyway, stay tuned for my favorite picks from international cinema.

Present Confusion 2020 Rundown Part 1 - Philippine Cinema Favorites

 

the worst BL

Well, what a year this turned out to be, huh? Here I was, ready to face another year of Philippine Cinema, when suddenly the concept of cinema itself was irrevocably changed thanks to a worldwide pandemic. We're living in interesting times now, folks, and although things seem to be slowly getting better, we still have a long way to go. The pandemic revealed aspects of our society that existed in plain sight, and showed us that just, equitable and good governance is important. Obviously good governance is something we don't have in the Philippines, so we had to learn those lessons the hard way.

Because the pandemic shut down everything, productions had to get creative, and the increased isolation made people create interesting, sometimes beautiful things. Films like Love Lockdown managed to make something during the height of the lockdowns, and other productions adapted plays into online stage readings. Some opted for a mixture film and stage, like Chuck Gutierrez's Heneral Rizal, while the Himala event organized by ABS-CBN film restoration sought to deconstruct the art that we already had. That makes the shutdown of ABS-CBN that followed a few months after that all the more tragic. It's a major event will send out ripples throughout our media, TV and film production for years to come.

At the same time, some creators tried to fight the dread by positive stories. The show at the center of that surge is the wholesome and endlessly entertaining Gameboys, directed by Ivan Payawal, which became a big hit. It initiated a slew of similar shows, leading to an unprecedented boom of the Boys' Love genre, which culminated in films like Bobby Bonifacio's My Lockdown Romance and Dolly Dulu's The Boy Foretold by the Stars.

Movies from earlier years started to show up on streaming services, either as paid content or free of charge on Youtube. Channels like Regal Entertainment even started rotating some of their older movies for free. For the Filipino moviegoer, while access to cinemas was out of the question, many Filipinos gained access to a wide range of Filipino films that would otherwise only be available through occasional screenings or through piracy.

Microcinemas that depended on steady audiences and support suffered the most during this difficult time. Cinema Centenario, a fixture over at Maginhawa, had to shut its doors thanks to the continued loss of business from the lockdowns.

Audiences had to shift to the online space, and festivals like Cinemalaya and the MMFF had an all-online edition, while QCinema opted for a hybrid approach, considering cinemas for the eventual new normal.

Who knows what will happen in the months and years to come. I do not know what the future will bring for Philippine Cinema, but I truly hope that it will be a journey we can all still walk together.

With that out of the way, here are 10 of my favorite Filipino (and Filipino-ish) films of the year. I've tried my best to watch everything that came out this year. Sitsit? Quarantina Gothika? Boyette: Not a Girl Yet? Yup, watched all that. I still have pending entries on letterboxd. I'm lazy like that.

yes, even The Next 12 Days.

Guidelines are: FAVORITES, NOT BEST, must be something I saw first this year (so no Tokwifi in this list, sorry), something about the Philippines (and not necessarily directed by a Filipino) and nothing before 2019 at the earliest. Without further ado, here is...

John Tawasil's 

10 FAVORITE LOCAL(ish) FILMS OF 2020

Oh, but before that, some Honorable Mentions:

Short films You are Here, Replay, and The Man Who isn't There and Other Stories of Longing from the Mindanao Film Fest deserve recognition for their depiction of life at the end of the apocalypse, during the apocalypse, and before the apocalypse, respectively as well as Jay Rosas' Budots: The Craze, which paints a pretty interesting picture of a man whose creation has left his control. One feature film figures in this list of honorable mentions as well: Lawrence Fajardo's Kintsugi, about the diaspora and the cracks in society we'd rather keep hidden.

Okay, here we go now, for real:

10. Watch List (dir. Ben Rekhi)

Movies and media about the War on Drugs have ranged from atrocious Reefer Madness wannabes (Kamandag ng Droga) to being insidious in its manipulation of form (Alpha: The Right to Kill). Ben Rekhi's Watch List is arguably the best of the lot. Congratulations as well to drugs for winning the war on drugs.

9. Elehiya sa Paglimot (dir. Tops Brugada)

The loss of a loved one is probably something a lot of us have dealt with during this pandemic. Tops Brugada's deeply personal examination of his relationship with his father, the plasticity of fragility of memories, and the days leading to his father's eventual demise, resonates even more strongly in the light of recent events.

8. Dreaming in the Red Light (dir. Pabelle Manikan)

Accounts of the cyclical nature of violence (in more forms than one) against the most underprivileged members of society are a (sadly) frequent topic in the realm of local documentaries. Pabelle Manikan's Dreaming in the Red Light depicts the Sisyphean struggle of a mother and daughter as they try to lift themselves out of poverty.

7. Sa Susunod na Habangbuhay (dir. Jorel Lising)

Yep, a music video is in this list. this is my favorite KathNiel film, and I can't exactly pinpoint why. Maybe it's because of that lovely concept by Juan Miguel Severo about two lovers experiencing an endless timeloop of memories both painful and happy. Maybe because it doesn't tell its story, it shows instead. Maybe because it allows this loveteam to express their emotions without dialogue. Either way, even if the year were full of films, this would be somewhere on top nevertheless.

6. Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos (a.k.a. To Calm the Pig Inside; dir. Joanna Vasquez Arong)

Bad governance isn't only limited to the current administration, it's an ongoing, systemic problem that's lasted for a while now. There's an idea in this film about people in disasters resorting to whispers and mythmaking, resorting to gods and mythical creatures in the absence of tangible leadership, and I think that's pretty interesting stuff.

5. Himala: Isang Diyalektiko ng Ating Panahon (dir. Lav Diaz)

The best Lav Diaz film this year lasts five minutes tops, a metafictional examination of the lessons we have learned (and not learned) since the time of the original Himala. 

4. Midnight in a Perfect World (dir. Dodo Dayao)

After an extended period of time looking for a place and time to be shown, Dodo Dayao's second feature film finds its way to QCinema. And what a perfect time and place for this film, an examination of the concept of safety, or the illusion thereof, in a society where murder is permitted and even encouraged.

3. Fan Girl (dir. Antoinette Jadaone)

The word fan comes from the Modern Latin fanaticus, meaning "insanely but divinely inspired," and that's how some of us think of the people we venerate: as divine, infallible beings, and we think of them like that to the point of irrationality. But ultimately, they're the same as we are, only with the power to do what they want, and that can lead to nothing good. More an allegory than an examination of fandom (that's another movie, for another day), Fan Girl tells us to stop, take a long hard look in the mirror and question who is it exactly are we championing.

2. Overseas (dir. Sung A-Yoon)

When labor is commodified, people have different ways of  adapting to that, to make themselves better 'products' in the labor market. Overseas depicts one such environment, a training facility that exists to help domestic helpers in their eventual jobs overseas. It explores far more than that: even the roles and spaces women overseas workers have to operate in compared to their male counterparts. 

1. Aswang (dir. Alyx Arumpac)

It's been a hell of a year for documentaries (several, in fact, occupy this list) and the best of them is Aswang, about an all too real monster. Said monster exists in plain sight, but operates invisibly; in fact in this documentary he is not even seen or heard. Nevertheless, his hand is palpably felt in every grisly death and injustice in this film. Somewhere in the Philippines someone is being killed or people are being unjustly imprisoned thanks to a system built on oppression and impunity, and Aswang shows us the brave few who dare to look the monster in the face.

***

Next up: Odds and Ends from Philippine cinema!

MMFF 2020 Reviews: Tagpuan, Suarez The Healing Priest, The Missing, Mang Kepweng

 

As the title implies, Mac Alejandre's Tagpuan concerns itself with meetings: its three main characters talk about love and other things in pretty locales. These locales reflect their respective personalities: Shaina Magdayao's spunky OFW character reflects Hong Kong, a messy but charming mix of two cultures. while Iza Calzado's artist reflects the busy, bohemian streets of New York.

The concept of meeting also implies traveling, and in this case, the travel involved is immigration. Shaina and Iza's characters leave the Philippines either to find themselves or just through circumstance, but the results are varied, and the results are tied to their socioeconomic standing. 

And all meetings imply a parting, as all three characters' paths diverge after a certain point. It's all very interesting, at least in theory. However, there's one thing that prevents Tagpuan from capitalizing on all these ideas: its central character.

The central character of Tagpuan, a businessman played by Alfred Vargas, is one of the blandest characters I've ever seen in a movie this year. His childhood desire is "to be a businessman," and not of any specific business either. He just wants to do some kind of business. Other than that, he hates Ipads, and that's it - his character doesn't exactly stand out, and that isn't helped at all by Vargas, who has the emotional range of a block of pinewood. His character weakly reacts to every revelatory statement the two women throw at him by weakly approximating an emotion every so often.

While this is a film with lots of talking, a lot of the talking feels clunky and too expository for its own good, at times overexplaining things that would probably better be shown subtly. Perhaps this is due to personal preference, but the dialogue doesn't flow like a normal conversation should.

In any case, there's a good film to be found in Tagpuan, but it's hiding under some big problems.

Fernando Suarez was a priest who claimed he had miraculous healing powers from God. He was accused of a number of different things, including money laundering, collecting funds for a Virgin Mary statue that did not materialize, and sexual molestation of minors (he was acquitted of that last thing by the Vatican; as for the other two, who knows.)  He was preparing to return the work when he died playing tennis at the Alabang Country Club.

Suarez: The Healing Priest is a strange film. It feels oddly defensive, as if the film is obligated to defend the man at every turn. Why defend a man already proven innocent? While Suarez (played by John Arcilla) is supposed to be the main character, much of the screentime is occupied by people talking about him, as if their testimony will exonerate him from his alleged crimes. What happens instead is that things look a lot more suspicious. Suarez the character spends most of his time in the movie moping around while other people provide commentary on how innocent he is.

Suarez's money problems are not touched upon in this story; instead, the film focuses on the molestation allegations (allegations that, shortly before his death, were thrown out.) Joven Tan uses his usual meta tricks, during a sequence where two journalists (?) prepare to interview Suarez about said allegations and question his motives, as if to serve as stand-ins for the audience. But you know their minds have been made up. All the characters in this movie (save for some villainous priests) exhibit a kind of hivethink that surely, this man can do no harm, even though the film hasn't made a decent effort to let the man's actions speak for themselves. Eventually, whatever controversy about him is left unresolved, as if to say "hey guys, believe us, he's innocent because we said so."

There's a line between biography and hagiography, and this film has clearly crossed that line. But even then, in trying to portray Suarez as some kind of saint, without managing to do the legwork to achieve that, the film fails there too.

While it functions as a perfectly run of the mill MMFF Horror Movie (TM), Easy Ferrer's The Missing has some interesting ideas. 

Iris (Ritz Asul) lost her sister to kidnapping and has developed PTSD because of it. She is contacted by her ex, Job (Joseph Marco) for work in Japan with her former teacher. She agrees to do the job (a house restoration and remodel) but strange things begin to happen inside the house itself.

The film tackles the very real fear of losing someone important to you, and in different ways. Iris' sister was kidnapped in the Philippines and never seen again, destroying her family in the process. Another character lost a family member in Japan, and desperately seeks to fill that void. And yet another character has not lost anyone yet, but the fear of losing a loved one drives that person to extremes.

Another theme in the film is how commodified labor for export can be exploited for gains that are either at the personal level or on a wider scale. In a way, the film's concept of Hitobashira (literally, 'human pillars') fits in to this theme, as foreign labor becomes the foundation of foreign economies, often to the detriment of those laborers (and indirectly, their home countries as well,) becoming a figurative sort of human sacrifice.

But back to the film at large. Unfortunately The Missing struggles to land its conclusion, as it deals with most of its plot threads in the last 15 minutes, leading to an overload of information. While it is visually impressive, the soundtrack is conventional horror fare; it might have been better to build the atmosphere and let the audience discover the horror by themselves instead of lampshading it with ominous audio cues. The script is full of weird insertions, such as a yoga scene that does nothing except to set up a jump scare. Like with Tagpuan above, this is a film that could've been more, but hinders itself because of its own glaring flaws.

I still don't know how people are going to sell Mang Kepweng Returns, which seems to be geared for a trilogy. The only people who know Mang Kepweng and the lore behind the character will be adults, who may be turned off by the kid friendly nature of the movie, and kids will have no idea what or who Mang Kepweng is, why he has a scarf, and so on. But I'm just a guy who watches movies, not a movie producer, so what do I know? Either way, Mang Kepweng: Ang Lihim ng Bandanang Itim is a perfectly serviceable MMFF film, and much better than the first one.

After the events of the first film, Kiefer (Vhong Navarro) is still doing his thing as an albularyo, or folk healer. However, he notices that the source of his power, his magic scarf, is losing energy. He is then alerted by denizens of a magical domain that another scarf has been stolen, a scarf that gives its wielder the power to bestow diseases. He then sets out with four of his friends to stop that from happening.

There's nothing particularly deep or profound in this film to talk about, so you get exactly what you come for. Some (or should I say, a lot) of the jokes in the movie at are the expense of someone else, so if you're not a fan of this Vice Ganda-style comedy, this movie isn't for you. The film doesn't do much in terms of visual effects, and the costuming is fine, but compared to Magikland, the differences soon become apparent.

I'd personally like to see what the reception to this film is. If Star Cinema thinks this is worth investing, they might know something I don't. From a purely film standpoint, this latest installment of Mang Kepweng isn't horrible, but it doesn't exactly stick in one's memory either.

MMFF 2020 Reviews: The Boy Foretold by the Stars, Isa Pang Bahaghari, Pakboys Takusa

 

Dominic (Adrian Lindayag) studies at a boys' school. During a religious retreat (par for the course at any Catholic school, believe me) he meets Luke (Keann Johnson). At the same time, he receives a prophecy from a local fortune teller (Iyah Mina) about a potential soul mate.

The mere existence of The Boy Foretold by the Stars is astonishing in itself: it represents the first BL (Boy's Love) movie ever screened in the Philippines. Popular in countries like Thailand and Japan. BL is a genre that exploded in popularity during the pandemic season with local shows like The Ideafirst Company's Gameboys. Last year, I would never have predicted that we would have a film like this in the MMFF, but here we are, and that fact makes me overjoyed.

It's a very sweet, well shot film that follows the conventional tropes of the genre, and that in itself is a huge thing. But even though the film is relatively wholesome the film still manages to address the difficulties effeminate gays face while living in a very conservative, even homophobic society. The film even explores, in certain classroom scenes, the roots of that homophobia and how interpretations of religious texts can be weaponized for people to rationalize their own hate.

But I digress. The Boy Foretold by the Stars is a simple love story, one that tells us that love may not always be up to destiny, sometimes it takes one person to say "fuck it," throw caution to the wind, and just start loving.

Because of the title's similarities to Joel Lamangan's other recent MMFF entry, Rainbow's Sunset, I thought Isa Pang Bahaghari was also an LGBT love story. I was only partially correct, as this film is more a family melodrama with some LGBT elements.

Dom (Philip Salvador) returns home after a long stint abroad, and not by choice. He comes home to his wife Lumen (Nora Aunor), and she is not happy about him coming back. If you just caught yourself thinking "hey, this sounds really similar to Coming Home," yeah, me too. But this time the script makes it easier to suspend disbelief, and the lead actors make the script work somehow. He was lost at sea, and someone took care of him, eventually getting married to him. It's still a pretty out there explanation. The plot still begs several questions: Dom lived with someone else abroad for years? Why wasn't he deported? Did he hide from the authorities? Why didn't he contact Lumen? Was his new family really that stingy with international calls?

The film feels very old fashioned. The film's narrative is reminiscent of family dramas from the nineties and early 2000s. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but the proceedings move at a very languid place, and the plot drags in several areas. Also, at a time where films like the aforementioned The Boy Foretold by the Stars exist, the inclusion of the "baklang martir" trope with Michael De Mesa's subplot (he's Dom's best friend and has been carrying a torch for him all these years) feels a little dated. 

I'll give Isa Pang Bahaghari this: it's not as bogged down with sideplots as Rainbow's Sunset. The conflict between Dom and Lumen gets resolved more or less by the 2/3 mark, leaving more time for the story to explore its characters. And it all comes to a head with an ending that I can only describe as baffling. It's a major stretch of disbelief, and the emotional impact of the ending with audiences will vary. I can say the same for the entire film, to be honest.

I'd have thought, with the pandemic shutting down movies and moviemaking for a year, that we would not see any stinkers this year, at least nothing too bad.

I was a fool to think that.

Pakboys Takusa is a film about four married lotharios whose sole purpose in life seems to be to breed with as many women as possible. I didn't bother to know their character names, because unless they're pets, animals don't have any names. They style themselves as Casanovas. I think the more appropriate term would be "sexual predator." One of these "people", (notable Gunpla seller Andrew E) is even a dentist. He makes out with several of his patients, which violates several professional codes. Note that I put people in quotation marks.

Most of the film consists of one joke: one (or more) of the four Pakboys is cheating on his wife, sometimes with multiple women, sometimes two or more Pakboys with the same woman. Said wife almost catches him in the act; he reacts by making outlandish excuses. Wife inexplicably forgives him. Rinse, repeat. This goes on for one hundred and twenty three fucking minutes. As you may notice, this joke is no longer funny; it is even less funny when you repeat the same joke 420 times. It was never funny, but some guys way back seemed to think it was funny. They are, of course, wrong. 

There is nothing to speak of about the film's plot, because it probably consists of scribblings on a torn receipt for Knorr Chicken Cubes. The film copies the formulas of similar films from the eighties and nineties. Hell, there's even a beach scene for some reason. There's no point thinking about it. This is like the worst porn ever: no plot (expected for porn), but no sex either. And what's left isn't even funny.

I wrote something when I wrote my review of Sanggano, Sanggago't Sanggwapo, and I think it still applies here:

this is fantasy wish fulfillment for middle aged old men, that somehow their old, bloated, fat, rotting bodies are still desirable to younger women even though they do not have the money or charisma to attract them; that somehow they can hold their own in a martial arts fight with hardened thugs; that they are actually as charming and cool and suave and funny as they think they are. This is a film by dinosaurs for dinosaurs.

Maybe the people involved did the film as an excuse to ogle chicks, I dunno.

Wait John, I hear you say, maybe this film portrays the toxic, philanderous behavior of its main characters because at the end, the characters realize how wrong they were and change for the better. HAHA NOPE! The film makes it a point that none of these characters have learned their lesson and will keep on happily shooting their spooge into any hole (not specifying which, because maybe they like butt stuff) that's available at the moment, like a cream pie conveyor belt, their penises bobbing up and down into an assembly line of gaping vaginas. 

Then again, I hear certain stalwart protectors of Philippine Cinema pipe up and say: well, this movie isn't for you. And to that I say, yes, I fully agree. This is not a movie for me. This is not a movie for anyone I know. This is not a movie for any self respecting human being. The only people I can recommend this to are probably sex offenders or genetically downgraded mutants.

Pakboys Takusa is the putrid grime festering on the perineum of Philippine Cinema. It's not satisfying, it's not funny, and it was a general waste of time for all involved. I am now stupider for having watched it, and if you, dear reader, try to watch it anyway, may whatever god you believe in have mercy on your soul.