The Coffee Table (Caye Casas, 2022)

Black, no sugar 

Watching The Coffee Table-- picture the ugliest piece of furniture on the face of the earth, a pair of gilt nymphs loosely screwed to a gilt base arcing unsteadily towards each other (every time someone walks around, actually every time someone makes an emphatic move anywhere near, the furniture shudders as if flinching), supporting a reportedly unbreakable glasstop. Picture a chubby mustachioed salesman (Eduardo Antuna) looking up at his prospective customers, meekly if gamely trying to sell them on the table's virtues. Facing him on either side are Maria (Estafania de los Santos) and Jesus (David Pareja) and for the next five minutes they bicker-- Maria about how expensive and godawful tacky the furniture is (she's not wrong), Jesus on how he's spent the day following her and doing what she wants and their whole life-- insisting on having a child, naming the child (Cayetano, which he hates) has been devoted to making her happy. Now he wants a table, this table, for himself alone, just because.

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024)

Three godfathers

Longlegs is haunted by three ghosts-- the eponymous serial killer (Nicholas Cage) who possesses the supernatural ability to pop up inside family's homes and end them; Anthony Perkins (father of the film's writer-director Osgood Perkins), who portrayed perhaps the most famed killer in all of cinema); and director Alfred Hitchcock, whose tremendous success with said film condemned Perkins Senior to a lifelong career of cheap knockoffs and increasingly inferior sequels. 

MaXXXine (Ti West, 2024)

Maxie goes to Hollywood

X had Mia Goth's Maxine shooting a porn flick on a farm owned by elderly Pearl (also Mia Goth) the same time she's being stalked by a serial killer; Pearl as prequel to X sketches the eponymous woman's life as a young farmer's spouse in 1918, uncovering her dreams and frustrations and why Maxine's barebones film production outfit fascinates her so. 

Superhero movies

Ubermensch

You could start a discussion on superhero movies at any point-- from the first Zorro movie in the '20s to Marvel Studios' 2011 Captain America-- but in my book the genre properly began in 1933, with a superpowered vegetarian.

Planet Hong Kong

Cinema of the Overdose

Reading the introduction to David Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong is like reading a friend’s letter on a rarely seen but fondly remembered common acquaintance. I’ve landed in the old Hong Kong International Airport (not all that terrifying if you’re fond of rollercoasters); I’ve walked down Nathan Road with its countless flashing neons and rushing pedestrians and clacking traffic lights (for the benefit of the visually impaired: slow beat when red, rapid tattoo when green). I’ve seen the Cultural Centre, a graceful hulk of maroon bathroom tiles that always ends up as photo background for every just-married couple to walk out of the Civil Registry. And walking to the back of the Centre, I always pause and take in the view-- the one and only breathtaking panorama of Hong Kong harbor with its choppy waves, toy ferryboats bobbing up and down, glass-and-steel towers raking the bellies of clouds.

Oh and yes I too have eaten in Chungking Mansion. Cheap food, and quite good--recommend the roast duck on rice with hot broth on the side.

Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024)

Public hair

Aaaand just because it's summer and we're all entitled to a bit of fun, thought I'd drop in and check out how Pixar's doing.

In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950, from the book by Dorothy B. Hughes)

Killer inside me

(Warning: details from the novel and film discussed in explicit detail)

Reading Dorothy B. Hughes' 1947 novel In a Lonely Place and watching Nicholas Ray's 1950 adaptation is like experiencing the difference between night and day: Hughes' novel takes place mostly at night it seems, in dense fog; you often confuse the misty Los Angeles evenings for Dix Steele's twilight view-- occasionally there's the glare of a passing streetlamp, but it quickly fades into the haze. 

Ray's film feels as if it takes place mostly in sunlight; even its interiors radiate the glow of studio kliegs-- the film is described as a noir but if we adhere to strict definitions it breaks one rule of noir: not a lot of shadows onscreen. The look of Ray's films can diverge from the norm (see his debut work They Live By Night) but in this case he opts for the standard-issue brightness of a Hollywood production-- why?

The Munekata Sisters (Munekata Shimai, Yasujiro Ozu, 1950)

Sister act

Ozu working for another studio?! The idea seems unheard of, like the director doing a film noir or shooting an explicitly erotic scene. But in fact Ozu's done at least one gangster flick (Dragnet Girl) and three films outside of Shochiku, of which this one was the first (the other two were his 1951 remake Floating Weeds and his second-to-the-last The End of Summer (1961)). As for The Munekata Sisters, Shintoho studios-- basically 'New Toho,' as the actors there had defected from the old studio due to labor disputes-- needed reputable directors and lured Ozu away by offering him more money: 50 million yen, or $140,000 1950 dollars (around $1.8 million today).

Hit Man (Richard Linklater, 2023)

Assassin's creed

Richard Linklater's Hit Man -- adapted from the Texas Monthly magazine piece of the same name written by Skip Hollandsworth-- is that rare news article adaptation that takes an interesting premise (ordinary joe poses as assassin-for-hire for New Orleans PD sting operation) and pushes it to its logical extreme, or at least as extreme as the director can manage. Glen Powell is Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor who teases his students with questions like "What if your self is a construction?" Linklater wastes no time testing that postulate: one day the operation finds itself without a plainclothes officer to deliver the sting, and Gary's colleagues coax him to step in instead.

Utamaro and his Five Women (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1946) in 35 mm

Immortal beloved 

(Warning: plot twists explicitly discussed in detail)

Utamaro and His Five Women begins with a procession-- the camera gliding past men and women in elaborate kimonos with umbrellas held up like banners; cherry blossoms lining the boulevard, arthritic branches holding up tufts of cottony blossoms that suggest a startling depth (you're reminded of Max Fleischer's stereoptical experiments in Popeye). The procession drones on, the men stride forward, the women-- those perched on wooden clogs-- take huge circling steps, their heads bobbing up and down in sinuous waves. It's a fantastic throwaway gesture of virtuosity, as if Mizoguchi had decided to pick up the baton and conduct a warmup passage. 

Furiousa: a Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024)

Book of genesis

George Miller's Furiosa may bill itself as a 'Mad Max Saga' but don't be fooled: it's less an action epic than an origin fable, a myth made in the telling. Where Fury Road was a hurtling bristling juggernaut of armor and wheels smashing everything in its way, Furiosa is more like a decades-long odyssey, of a woman seeking revenge, her home, and finally herself.  

Evil Does Not Exist (Aku wa Sonzai Shinai, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023)

Evil never dies

Rysuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist grew out of a collaborative project with his longtime composer Eiko Ishibashi, who had asked for a film to accompany her live concerts. The concert film-- GIFT-- ended up running seventy-four minutes long; the source footage however apparently took root in Hamaguchi's head and sprouted into a 106 minute film (relatively short for Hamaguchi-- Drive My Car was 179 minutes and Happy Hour 317 minutes) that Hamaguchi released as a separate but not necessarily independent feature.  

Bona 44 years later (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Bona, 44 years later

There's a lovely symmetry to having the restored print of Lino Brocka's Bona (1980) screened in the 2024 Cannes Classics section, in the same city where the film had its world premiere (at the parallel Director's Fortnight) decades ago. Feels like a combination homecoming, resurrection, revelation all at the same time.

Condemned (Mario O'Hara, 1984)

The perfect noir

Mario O'Hara's Condemned (1984) is Aunor at her most baroque and noirish. O'Hara populates the streets of Ermita (the heart of Manila's sordid night life) with pimps, prostitutes, transvestites, with cruising straight and gay men and women; with couriers, snitches, corrupt cops, gang lords, bodyguards, killers. As in Lino Brocka's Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975) it's a vision of Manila as one of the lower circles of hell. But not a depressed hell, nor a hell where the inhabitants accept their fate with sad resignation-- this inferno crackles with the energy of the damned dancing their way from one torment to another, stabbing and shrieking and fornicating and, well, not giving a damn.

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Bona: martyr or monster?

(Plot discussed in explicit detail)

Lino Brocka's Bona is possibly the least-seen of his major works, partly because the two remaining good prints of the picture had been squirreled away abroad (to the Cinematheque Francais and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) while Filipinos back home had to content themselves with fading recollections and equally faded Betamax tapes. Everyone remembers how powerful the film was; no one can rightly say they've actually seen it, at least in recent years.

Manananggal in Manila (Monster in Manila, Mario O'Hara, 1997)

RIP Floy Quintos

Melancholy In Manila

What's the definition of ambivalence? Your brand-new Mercedes Benz driving off a cliff's edge with your mother-in-law inside, screaming. Or, in this case, starting 1997 with a horror film by Mario O'Hara in which all but the last ten minutes of the movie are terrific--the catch being that those ten or so minutes are awful beyond words.

Bakit Bughaw ang Langit? (Why is the Sky Blue?, Mario O'Hara, 1981)

The court of public opinion

Mario O'Hara's Bakit Bughaw ang Langit? (Why is the Sky Blue? 1981) opens with panoramic views of Manila. We see Babette Gomez (Nora Aunor) and her family arrive at an apartment complex; movers unload furniture carry it into their new home. O'Hara's camera watches as the family settles in and we come to know each member-- imperious Sofia (Anita Linda) presiding over the operation; sullen Nardo (Mario Escudero) carrying out his wife's orders; beautiful Lorie who barks like her mother, but at a lesser volume; quiet Babette-- their other daughter-- skittering about doing as much of the heavy lifting as the movers.

We meet the neighbors: Marta (Melly Mallari), owner of the "sari-sari" (grocery) store at the complex entrance; Cora (Alicia Alonzo) and her unemployed husband Domeng (Rene Hawkins); Luring (Metring David) with a sideline selling clothes and her son Bobby (Dennis Roldan). Only courtly old Mang Jesus (Carpi Asturias) seems to notice Babette; they talk of the tiny cacti she's raising, and she notes (without any irony) that succulents flourish on very little care and water. Luring offers Sofia clothes and her life's story-- she's raising Bobby on her own and needs to watch him all the time because he can't care for or defend himself (he's a young adult with the mind of a child) so she can't go out to earn a living. Sofia makes a proposal: instead of paying for the clothes, maybe Babette can come feed Bobby while Luring is gone.

And so Babette finds herself with a plate of food at Luring's door looking in (you think of little girls in fairy tales peering into dark dens, wondering at the silence). She finds Bobby upstairs, chained, sets the food before him; he hunches over the plate, eating with his fingers. Later, Babette asks Bobby for his basketball-- to clean it, she explains; Bobby hands the ball over after some hesitation. For the first time O'Hara cuts to a closeup-- of Babette's face then of Bobby's (before this the picture has been all long and medium shots). They have somehow connected.

Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024)

This means war

Alex Garland's Civil War is set in the near future (from Max Headroom: "20 minutes into the future") but traces its roots to the recent past, particularly films on journalists or photojournalists wading into war zones trying to catch the story: Under Fire, The Year of Living Dangerously, The Killing Fields, Salvador.

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

House & garden

Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest begins with a band of solid black held for an interminable time-- Mica Levi's sound collages growling from the big screen-- then cut to a German family picnicking on a lakeside meadow. They pack up, go home, arrive after sunset, fall asleep (mother and father in separate beds). Next morning father is hurriedly dressing but the children play a little game, blindfolding him and leading him to the front courtyard where they surprise him with a new canoe, and of course if you know anything about the film's premise you're waiting-- but even if you don't know anything you can't help but tense up as you wonder: why is the camera so claustrophobically locked in the direction of the house, why are we seeing the canoe only from one side and not the other? Finally father must leave, steps away from the canoe; cut to that long-anticipated reverse shot-- father climbs onto his horse, a guard tower looming over him as his animal walks him leisurely into work. 

Blade 2 (Guillermo del Toro, 2002

Hot Blood Sundae

Blade 2 doesn’t so much improve on the first one as it does evolve-- like the creatures at center stage-- beyond. Both movies are based on Marvel’s comic book series, about a half-human, half-vampire hunter who uses a stylish mix of whirling chrome knives and state-of-the-art tech to hunt his bloodsucking brethren.

Christ almighty

Questioning The Passion of the Christ

Mel Gibson and his publicists have repeatedly claimed that his The Passion of the Christ is the most historically accurate of all pictures made on Jesus.

Gaano Kita Kamahal (Mario O'Hara, 1981)

Eternity and a day

Coming off the commercial and critical success of Kastilyong Buhangin (Castle of Sand, 1980), Nora Aunor, Lito Lapid, and Mario O'Hara put their heads together once more to present Gaano Kita Kamahal (How Much I Love You, 1981), a more ambitious more lavish production.

Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024)

Done again

(Warning: details of both '84, '21, '24 films and '65 book discussed in freewheelingly explicit detail)

Denis Villeneuve finishing his two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel and you want to ask: was it worth the wait? Was it worth the hype? Was it worth sitting through the first movie?

Madame Web (SJ Clarkson, 2024)

Thread softly

Madame Web is mostly awful but not as bad as y'all say.

David Bordwell (1947 - 2024)

David Bordwell (1947 - 2024)

I remember him in the Hong Kong Film Festival, always at his preferred spot: first row, at the exact center, the screen filling his eyes.

I remember talking to him in between screenings, and on the ferry between Hong Kong and Kowloon: when I mentioned that 30s Hollywood films lost their visual dexterity thanks to the advent of sound he took exception; turns out he was right because he's seen practically every film ever made, or at least more than I ever did.

And while I'm trying to catch the latest and hottest films he's running off to some far-flung theater to catch the screening of a rare Hong Kong or Chinese film I've never heard of. If I was smart I'd have been trailing him.

I remember writing about his book Planet Hong Kong and having fun not just reading it but writing about it.

I still read his blog, an encyclopedic and authoritative resource for detailed analysis on everything from The Dark Knight (he hated it) to Hou Hsiaou Hsien (loved him) to Hunt for Red October (loved it).

I remember helping him access a few Filipino films, and him sending me in turn a copy of his book Poetics of Cinema. He was wonderful company, and an amazing (and amazingly thorough) film writer

Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap (Should the Skies Clear, Laurice Guillen, 1984)

Family planning

(WARNING: storyline and plot twists discussed in detail)

Laurice Guillen's Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap (Should the Skies Clear, 1984) is yet another popular komiks series (adapted by Orlando Nadres and Lualhati Bautista from a serial by Gilda Olvidado) about young Catherine Clemente (Hilda Koronel), upset that her mother Minda (Gloria Romero) has fallen for newcomer Pablo Acuesta (Eddie Garcia). Catherine's boyfriend Rustan (Christopher de Leon, almost a required name for middle-class melodramas) scoffs at her fears but Catherine won't be placated; she knows Pablo and his progeny-- Chona (Isabel Rivas), Rita (Amy Austria), Jojo (Michael de Mesa)-- are up to no good.

Tikoy Aguiluz (1947 - 2024)

Pugilist

Tattooed gangster

As Tikoy put it he grew up in a penitentiary (the Davao Penal Colony, or Depacol, where his father was prison auditor) learning how to box from one of the veteran convicts. With his six other brothers, all of them wearing shorts instead of long pants and speaking in a funny Tagalog accent instead of everyday Visayan, they attracted the attention and ridicule of all the other kids, not necessarily starting fights but finishing them wherever they went. Tikoy's ambition in life was simple: to get a tattoo, and be a gangster; he ended up working briefly in Hollywood, then coming back to the Philippines to become one of the finest filmmakers in the industry. 

Bagong Bayani (Unsung Heroine, Tikoy Aguiluz, 1995)

Proxy mother
 

Tikoy Aguiluz's Bagong Bayani was made in two months on a shoestring budget, has been plagued by unaccountable production delays (due to pressure from Viva Studios, perhaps?); so far no theater has agreed to release it, so the closest you might get is this article. 

Which is a filthy shame: Bagong Bayani is the best Filipino film of the year. "But the year's only half over," you might point out; actually I think this is the best Filipino film since Orapronobis in the late 1980's.

El Conde (Pablo Larrain, 2023)

Bloodsucker

I remember mentioning a notable name in the Filipino film industry to one of our better filmmakers, who declared him "an impakto" --Tagalog for 'bloodsucker.'

I looked at him. "Really? How about--" and mentioned someone else. "Another impakto." "And--?" "Yet another impakto!" I tossed off several more names and all he could say was "impakto, the lot of them."

Which conversation I remember while watching Pablo Larrain's latest feature, a rather obvious high concept horror comedy that answers the question: what if Augusto Pinochet was a vampire? Not a political or metaphoric monster draining Chile of its economic prosperity but a literal supernatural leech?

Dune (Denis Villeneuve 2021; David Lynch 1984; Frank Herbert 1965)

Done

(Warning: plot details for the 2021 remake the 1984 adaptation and the 1965 original discussed in explicit detail)

Denis Villeneuve's long-delayed Dune (initiated 2016; shot in 2019; released 2021) does this much right: it tells Frank Herbert's story-- the societal complexity (Great Houses and Guilds), the skullduggery (plans within plans within plans within plans), Paul Atreides' meteoric ascent-- coherently. Villeneuve carefully hands over with both hands what Lynch in his 1984 version threw at us wholesale, not so much an info dump as explosive diarrhea. With Villeneuve you feel a touch overwhelmed; with Lynch it swirls past your eyebrows, climbing. 

The Wicker Man

Snicker man

Difficult to understand why anyone thought a remake of The Wicker Man-- the classic horror mood piece about a police officer who lands on a far island in search of a missing child-- would be a good idea: the film has a plot twist that once revealed was basically it for the audience; only thing left was to pick up your coat and look for the exit. Audiences who saw the 1973 production would know; those who haven't are advised not to bother.

American Fiction (Cord Jefferson, 2023)

His pafology

Cord Jefferson-- who penned an episode of the inventive (if somewhat reductive) sequel to Alan Moore's Watchmen-- has settled into the director's chair, adapting for his debut directorial feature Percival Everett's Erasure, and it's a treat of a film-- funny without being laugh out loud, intense without pratfalling into standard-issue melodrama, wry clear-eyed skeptical of whatever happens to be trending on socmed. 

L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)

Reprinting an old article Bresson because--well, because there's no good reason not to read about Bresson (list of my posts on him as follows): 

Au hasard, Balthazar, 1966), Journal d'un cure de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951), Mouchette (1967), and Un condamne a mort (A Man Escaped, 1956)

On bread alone

(Note: plot discussed in close detail)

The ostensible subject of Robert Bresson's last film L'Argent (1983) is money (hence the title), and in fact Bresson uses the pulling out, counting, and passing over of franc notes from one person to another as a kind of repeated motif throughout. But it's the love of the stuff that causes the real trouble (a distinction Catholic priests like to remind us of in Sunday mass) and initiates the central movement in the film, the downward slide of Yvon Targe (Christian Patey) from heating-oil deliveryman and husband to convict and axe murderer.

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

Pride of Frankenstein

Yorgos Lanthimos' latest has an early scene of Bella (Emma Stone) holding a scalpel at an alarming angle and stabbing a corpse's eyeballs multiple times while her horrifically disfigured father Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe in heavy makeup) looks up fondly from the patient he himself is cutting-- and yet I agree with the assessment that the film is a comedy-- possibly Lanthimos' warmest most cheerful most wholesome work yet. 

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader, 2022)

Bonsai!

Heard it said of Paul Schrader's Master Gardener that it's his umpteenth retelling of the God's Lonely Man trope, starting from Taxi Driver (1976) to three of his last four films including First Reformed and The Card Counter, but I disagree; those films ended with redemption or rebirth or some form of baptism as climax, either through love, or punishment, or blood. This film I think takes up the narrative years later, a 'what happens after?' question hanging in the air.

Films of 2023

List of 2023

Not everything I've seen for the year but everything I think deserves to be noted, for good or bad. More mainstream than I'd like but life happens. I do try note films I've seen but not newly released in 2023, and why I thought them worth talking about.