Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

Hail, Mary

(Warning: plot twists and story discussed in full and explicit detail!)

If you don't know anything about Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) know this: he spent eighteen years sketching, researching, talking, all-around wheeling and dealing with talents and studios to make this, his Great White Whale film adaptation of what he calls his 'favorite novel in the world.' So if he changed anything in Mary Shelley's book while making this picture-- know that he did so out of love. 

Is the film worth a look? Well let me tell you.

Quezon (Jerrold Tarog, 2025)

Quezon!

Start right off with a caveat: not a historian, merely a student of film. I can talk of storytelling and visual style, but of historical facts about the period and details of the man himself? At most I can repeat what I've found through online research, perhaps hazard a few inexpert opinions based on what I've read. 

Jerrold Tarrog's Quezon (2025) begins in quietly spectacular fashion, taking its cue from the film that inspired many an aspiring director, Welles' Citizen Kane: a silent short depicting the younger Quezon (Benjamin Alves) during the Philippine-American War; for the rest of the running time fictional journalist Joven Hernando (Cris Villanueva) dogs Quezon's heels, digging into and commenting on the man's life the way Jerry Thompson dug into and commented on Charles Foster Kane. Tarog with cinematographer Pong Ignacio (who lensed the previous two installments of the director's period epic) employs the kind of sweeping camera movements Welles used in his second feature The Magnificent Ambersons, or Bertolucci in 1900 or-- to name a model closer to home-- Peque Gallaga in his wartime drama Oro Plata Mata (mind you, I'm not ranking Mr. Tarog as equal to Welles or even Bertolucci, just citing influences).   

Le Grand Illusion (Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir, 1937)

Goodness gracious

(WARNING: story discussed in explicit detail)

Some find La Grand Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937) formless, which I suspect only proves Renoir's artistry. The film does have a design, buried in so much minutiae, told in such an unprepossessing manner, that you can't really be blamed for missing it (as if Renoir ever intended you to see it in the first place). The film is structured like a three-act play, with trimmings: a short prologue gives us the setup and introduces two of four major characters-- Boldieu (Pierre Fresnay) calls out Mareschal (Jean Gabin) to join him on a reconnaissance mission; a quick wipe and Boldieu and Mareschal are POWs meeting the third major character, the officer who shot them down, Rauffenstein (Erich Von Stroheim).

Signs (M Night Shyamalan, 2002)

Little green men

M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense featured a nicely intense performance from a child actor, some creepy atmospherics, a neat twist that makes you want to sit up and applaud for O all of two seconds. Unbreakable I found more interesting because Shyamalan had shrugged off his mainstream appeal and started to show his true colors: a comic-book freak who takes his superheroes seriously, to the point of spending the budget of a major motion picture telling an origin story.

Shyamalan's latest-- where Mel Gibson and family find funny going-ons in the middle of their cornfield-- shows no sign whatsoever of him apologizing for his career to date. His first movie was a hit his second an interesting failure (though not to my eyes, not quite); he's on to something, he believes, and in Signs he wants to make believers of all of us.

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

The neverending struggle

Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland and turned it into an epic production about immigration raids, white supremacy, radical leftist groups, generational conflicts, a father's love for his daughter and vice-versa-- the picture feels so overstuffed with high drama low farce and handheld ordnance you don't feel much if any of the 166 minute running time. 

I'll call it: easily Anderson's best most ambitious most appealing work to date. 

Jaguar (Lino Brocka, 1979)

If you'll be my bodyguard  

Jaguar has a tony reputation: directed by Lino Brocka, loosely adapted by Jose 'Pete' Lacaba and Ricky Lee (from the true-life story "The Boy Who Wanted to Become Society," by Nick Joaquin), edited by Augusto Salvador, lensed by Conrado 'Carding' Baltazar, it's the first Filipino film to compete in the Main Competition of the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

That said the film doesn't come up as often in cinephile discussion as Brocka's Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng  Liwanag or Insiang, which shouldn't be a surprise. Maynila and Insiang were released on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming as part of the Criterion Collection; Jaguar is only available in crummier and crummier streaming copies, in the nether regions of the internet-- until recently, when the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the Philippine Film Archive (PFA), and Cite de Memoire all collaborated on a restoration. The film premiered in last year's Lumiere Festival in Lyon France, then opened the Sinag Manila Film Festival last night with a star-studded screening. After over forty years, Jaguar returns to Filipino audiences with a vengeance. 

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977) vs Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)

A bridge too far

You hear the debate at the fringes of socmed discussion: "Which is the better film, Henri-George Clouzot's black-and-white thriller or William Friedkin's $22 million tribute/remake?" Well let me tell you

(WARNING-- plot twists discussed in explicit detail!)