Early in Joselito Altarejos' Memories of a Love Story Eric (Oliver Aquino) and Jericho (Migs Almendras) lock gazes, and you hear a k-tchak! as the camera cuts to flashback. Annoying sound, but gradually you realize what Altarejos is trying to evoke: the clack of a View-Master stereopticon shifting from one photograph to the next, offering you-- in three-dimensional imagery, no less-- a glimpse into a brightly colored forever frozen past.
Anna Isabelle Matutina's debut feature 12 Weeks is powerful both for what it says and doesn't say. It's a laser-focused look at a woman (Max Eigenmann as Alice), firmly in charge of her life and career, suddenly blindsided by the fact that she's pregnant at 40-- what she feels, what she (implicitly) thinks, what she faces in terms of social and practical challenges in the Philippines, where abortion is illegal.
How many ways can Lav Diaz take on the Marcos dictatorship? As early as Batang West Side (West Side Avenue 2001) where a lead character admits to a dark relationship with the regime, the director has presented that period in Philippine history as a kind of collective trauma, a recurring nightmare we are all still struggling to awaken from.
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So now we have it: a fairly big-budgeted adaptation of Neil Gaiman's celebrated fantasy series. Beautifully cast, ingeniously reworked, adequately directed.
Despite the rather dry title Master and Commander, Peter Weir's uncommonly good adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey novels is anything but, a grandly outsized lovingly detailed and authentic (as far as my landlubber eyes can see) recreation of 19th century naval warfare, from the point of view of a single British warship.
