High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

Heaven and hell

Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) may not be on the level of Seven Samurai but it is a great crime thriller, perhaps one of the greatest.

The Kingdom (Michael Tuviera, 2024)

Freedomland

Michael Tuviera's The Kingdom is that rarity in Filipino films, a high-concept production that in this case answers the question: what if the Spaniards never landed? What if the Philippines-- here renamed Kalayaan (Freedom)-- remained Malay in culture and tradition?

Green Bones (Zig Dulay, 2024)

Presumed innocent

Zig Dulay's Green Bones from a script by Ricky Lee and Angeli Guidaya-Atienza (story by Joseph Conrad Rubio, Kristian Julao, Angeli Guidaya-Atienza, and Ricky Lee) turns on the premise that a convict judged and sentenced isn't always guilty, and truth is always more complicated.  

Having more than passing familiarity with correctional facilities I'd say the answer is: it depends. When you talk to a convict they're always innocent, but when you read their files or talk to someone familiar with their case they're always guilty.

Uninvited (Dan Villegas, 2024)

Gatecrasher

Dan Villegas' Uninvited (2024) with a script by Dodo Dayao is unashamed to flaunt its pulp-fiction credentials, everything from Tarantino's Kill Bill to Ferrara's Ms. 45 to Toshiya Fujita's Lady Snowblood (from which Tarantino stole much of Kill Bill) to Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black-- the Woman Seeking Revenge flick is a suitably disreputable genre that merits revisiting time and time again, if only to allow a director to get his rocks off exercising his filmmaking chops. 

Isang Himala (A Miracle, Pepe Diokno, 2024)

It's a miracle

Let's get the million-peso question out of the way: from my limited perspective Isang Himala does not measure up to Ishmael Bernal's 1982 classic film, not quite, but does easily stand out as the best of the four films I saw at the 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival. 

"But how can this be?!" you ask. Well let me tell you.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Anos de Soledad, Alex Garcia Lopez, Laura Mora, 2024)

One hundred years of telenovela

I remember the first time I opened Gabriel Garcia Marquez's celebrated novel and read the sentence "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." It was an intriguing opening line and I was hooked, but for some reason never made it past the second page. I put the book aside, and didn't bothered touching it again for two years.

Then sitting in a beach-- in the shade, away from that ridiculous scorching sun,  while friends were in the water enjoying themselves-- I had no other choice but to pick up the book again, and this time (I think it was when Jose Arcadio, Colonel Aureliano's father, after many intricate calculations, announced to his wife that the world was round like an orange) I was well and truly hooked. I read till the sun gave up its plan to burn me and sank back into the sea to bide its time; read deep while the moon rose and kept me company; read till the moon gave up and bade farewell and sank back down and the cocks started to crow; read till there was nothing left to read, and when I put the volume aside saw my old nemesis peeking out from over the ocean's edge with a spark in its eye, fresh and ready for another round. 

Three Years Without God, in depth, in black and white

Three Years Without God, in depth, in black and white

(The film will have special screenings to be announced, and will be streaming in IWant TFC (The Filipino Channel))

(WARNING: Plot and dramatic high points in the story discussed in close and explicit detail)

I first saw Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976) in the '90s in a fading magenta print, then saw it again-- partially restored to its former glory by L'Immagine Ritrovata-- in 2016. Earlier this week I finally saw it regraded to black-and-white by ABS CBN' s Film Restoration Project-- not necessarily meant to supplant the original colored copy but to stand alongside, as an experiment meant to address the fading colors by eliminating them.