Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)

Vengeance is mined

With Kill Bill: Volume 2 Quentin Tarantino completes what for better or worse represents his vision for the new millennium-- a three-hour chick-takes-revenge flick with obscure allusions to martial arts movies, gunslinger movies, pulpy genre fare of all kinds. 

Leonor Will Never Die (Martika Ramirez Escobar, 2022)

Leonor lives!

Leonor (Sheila Francisco) is a retired Filipina action filmmaker who nurses a script she dreams of directing, same day she receives a disconnection notice from the power company and her eldest Rudie (Bong Cabrera) schemes to work overseas but can't bring himself to tell mother. Humble junkyard welder Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides) watches in horror as his younger brother is falsely accused of drug dealing and gunned down (shades of Rodrigo Duterte's extrajudicial killings); Leonor is struck in the head by a stray television set (don't ask), suddenly finds herself inside Ronwaldo's increasingly hazardous storyline as he seeks his brother's killers. Meantime Rudie, staying by his unconscious mother's side, decides to produce his mother's unfinished script for the big screen--

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)

Kill swill

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is about as basic as you can get-- The Bride (Uma Thurman) once upon a time badly beaten and shot in the head by people she once worked with and loved; falls into a coma, sleeps a couple of years, wakes up demanding payback, big time.

Beneath the Cogon (Sa Ilalim ng Cogon, Rico Ilarde, 2005)

It's alive

(Beneath the Cogon is available streaming at Amazon Prime)

Horror gets little respect in the Philippines-- gets little respect anywhere-- but there's been good maybe even great work done.

Dimensions of Dialogue (Možnosti dialogu, Jan Svankmajer 1982)

Clay mating

Considered by some to be his masterpiece, this twelve-minute film is divided into three parts: