It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)

It's a good life

(Warning--plot and narrative twists discussed in explicit detail)

I do think Frank Capra's best-known film is some kind of masterpiece. 

Hell or High Water (David Mckenzie)

Cops and robbers

David Mackenzie's Hell or High Water, from a script by Taylor Sheridan (Sicario) turns on a terrifically compelling premise: that brothers Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster respectively) are so financially threatened by the reverse mortgage loan lent them by a bank--the fictional Texas Midlands--for their recently deceased mother's treatment that they've taken to carefully robbing that same bank's smaller branches (teller's drawers only; no vaults, no bundles, no large bills) to repay the loan.

Moana (Ron Clements, John Musker)

Aloha oe 

Moana, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker is Disney's latest attempt at politically correct culturally sensitive storytelling. The results I'd say are better than anything the studio has ever done before, which if you know my history regarding all things Disney is saying something.

Martial Law Movies

 

Martial Law Movies

Rodrigo Duterte on former president Ferdinand Marcos (italics mine): "President Marcos was a president for so long and he was a soldier. So that’s about it. Whether or not he performed worse or better, there is no study, there is no movie about it. It’s just the challenges and allegations of the other side which [are] not enough"

Well then!

For studies let me recommend a few titles: Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines by Albert F. Celoza; The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave; and The Conjugal Dictatorship, by Primitivo Mijares, who worked for Marcos, turned against him, disappeared shortly after the book was published. 

In literature there's Lualhati Bautista's Dekada '70; Emmanuel Lacaba's Salvaged Prose and Salvaged Poems; and Ninotchka Rosca's State of War.

And more, much more; I'm only citing titles I'm familiar with.

As for movies--in ascending order, my incomplete unobjective totally off-the-cuff list of titles that do in fact deal with the Martial Law Era.

Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, Mario O'Hara, 1976) - restoration

(Now available on iTunes, with English subtitles)

Lost girl

I first saw Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong aong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God) in the 1996 Pelikula at Lipunan (Film and Society) festival two decades after its initial commercial run and was convinced it was the finest Filipino film ever made. Sitting down to watch the picture two decades later I have to approach carefully gingerly, like with an old friend who has been long out of sight: Has it lost its power? Has its edge dulled with familiarity and time? Does this World War 2 drama still speak to us-- to me-- with eloquence and force?

Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson)

Middling Strange

Scott Derrickson's new fantasy is the latest stone added to the intimidating wall that Marvel and Disney are presently constructing (in this case Marvel producing, Disney distributing) and as far as bricks go this one isn't too different: a bit quadrilateral, a little inert, a tad dense.

The Neon Demon (Nicholas Winding Refn)

Model student
 
Nicholas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon provokes as many questions as it does responses: is it a horror thriller? An existential comedy? A condemnation of the LA fashion scene or a stylization and glamorization? Feminist or misogynist? Part fantasy or part sick fevered dream?

I say all of the above and none; if anything I'd call it a somewhat exaggerated contemporary documentary on modern-day Los Angeles, a timely rectal temperature reading if you like of the City of Angels, with the thermometer thickly smothered beforehand in a hallucinogenic lubricant.