Full disclosure, I am not familiar with the manga Liverleaf (or as it is called in Japan, Misumisô) was based upon. With that, I fear some of my criticisms may be pointed to the source material and not the film....
Warning: Full spoilers follow. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A man and a woman walk into a bar. They loved each other once. Each had baggage they couldn’t get over. Like a cigarette half-smoked and a song...
Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Duelles is a product of the times. Though a homage to the thrillers of Hitchcock and the aesthetics of Sirk, Duelles’ conceit is one that banks on obsessions of current pop culture: nostalgia and the resurgence of female-led...
Warning: Full spoilers...but come on, it's a biopic! Are spoilers even possible?!? In the Philippines, we are taught to worship heroes from a young age. In primary school, we are made to memorize single-line descriptions of what to remember...
It’s a common platitude, the choices we make defining us. But what about those we don’t make? The country we live in, the class we’re born into, our family, etc. They may or may not define who we are, but...
Warning: Full spoilers ahead. “Te, kailangan ba kitang isama sa frame?” ["Sister, do I have to include you in the frame?"] Barbie (Barbie Capacio), the make-up artist, asks between screams, as she struggles to operate a camera while running...
Time flies like a sonofabitch, and this year it seems to do so faster than usual. We are at 2018's mid-point already. Whoa! That does beg the question though: what films have managed to impress and touch us most, so...
Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is the legendary director's highest-grossing film in over a decade, and audience reception worldwide is pretty kind towards it. Many critics like the film as well, and some herald it as a return to...
Often a trope in movies is when a hermitic, wise -- and often cranky -- veteran is brought out of retirement to school the youth when the times have turned most trying, especially when the villains they once faced in...
Upon exiting the theater after Ready Player One, my immediate takeaway was that “they don’t make films like this anymore.” Based on the 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One takes place in the near-future of 2045, a dystopian...
As Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum starts selling the idea that using exaggerations, myths, and tall-tales as thinly-disguised truths are admirable, truth be damned. I couldn’t help but think about the “meta-ness” of it all. It’s as if Barnum was directly...
Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country opens with Sam Neill's preacher Fred Smith sharing a meal with his Aboriginal farmhands Sam and Lizzie Kelly (exceptional newcomers Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber). "We're all equal in the eyes of the Lord," the preacher sermonizes as he...
From the hovering drone shots that capture how the lush greenery of the island converges with its unrealistically clear blue seas to the immersive surfing montages which alternate from above and below the deep, it’s undeniable that director Paul Soriano's...
Another year over, and what an annus horribilis it proved to be in so many ways. But away from the political atrocities that took place in pretty much every country you care to mention, and the sexual harassment scandals that...
There are projects that beyond their flaws you’ve got to praise for brazenness, the amount of love put into their creation. There’s this air of faith, of passion, that permeates all aspects, smoothening out whatever rough patches the material may...
A jarring insight commonly seen in the renaissance of the true crime genre -- as represented by the deep dives taken in Serial, Making a Murderer and The Keepers -- is that it adds another layer to how we look at crime and the...
In the first minutes of Changing Partners, Agot Isidro’s Alex (don’t be confused, there’ll be two Alex’s here — that’s kind of the concept of the whole film) expresses her excitement over watching the new season of her favorite prime-time...
People often say “see the world through the eyes of a child,” acting as if these words are the remedy to cynicism. Somehow this phrase is charged with what we imagine childhood to be: innocence, authenticity, joy and tears (somehow...
About two-thirds into Giancarlo Abrahan’s sophomore feature Paki, almost the whole of its ensemble start to gather around a table for a meal. This is the first time the family’s matriarch Alejandra (acted to a tee by Dexter Doria)...
