Handhell
Sherad Anthony Sanchez's Salvage (2015) takes its title from the common Filipino slang word for summary execution, which Pete Lacaba in his Manila Times column "Carabeef Lengua" explains: "It was during martial rule that salvaging came to acquire its present Filipino meaning. To salvage is to save things from a wreckage, but the visual similarity of the word to the Tagalog salbahe (naughty, abusive), which is itself derived from the Spanish salvaje (savage), inevitably led to the present denotation of salvaging as extrajudicial or summary execution of both criminal and subversive elements."
I remember a simpler explanation, though I can't remember where I got it nor find any documentary basis online: that the military is 'saving' or 'salvaging' the victim's soul from the evils of communism.
Children of the mist
Ralston Jover's Hamog (Haze, 2015) starts appropriately enough with just that: a thick cloud hovering low over humid Manila canals. The camera (presumably mounted on a drone) glides towards and rises over a huge sewer pipe lined with cardboard, on which the homeless young lie sleeping.
Eye of the beholder
I'm guessing the secret to Sigrid Andrea Bernardo's success with Kita Kita turns on two things: 1) She wasn't looking to make the usual romantic comedy and 2) Audiences were sick to death of the usual romantic comedy and wanted something else.
Wheel fast
Edgar Wright's Baby Driver is like a little go-cart that whizzes by lickety-split; the action scenes are reasonably coherent with little visible CGI effects unlike some recent fast-car movies I can think of (Fast Five anyone?) cut to the rhythm of a catchy if not genuinely eclectic sound track.
Love is a closely pondered thing
(Warning: plot and narrative twists discussed in detail)
Trust Mike De Leon not to pursue the usual career trajectory. If most aspiring writers and filmmakers are advised to write (film) 'what you know,' with Itim (Rites of May 1975) he spun a haunted tale evoking Gothic atmosphere with uncanny skill,* demonstrated a mastery of sound and image that made critics sit up and ask "What'll he do next?"
*(There's a rumor--not taken very seriously--that Hideo Nakata once worked in or apprenticed at or at least visited LVN Studios around the time of this film's release. True or not, tickles me pink to think that De Leon's first film may have had an influence on Nakata's own)
Next apparently was a quiet little comic romance, not just intimate but downright confessional. Admit to not having met De Leon or knowing much about him, but Kung Mangarap Ka't Magising (Moments in a Stolen Dream 1977) gave one the impression of an extremely private man allowing a glimpse into his soul.
The living dread
Looking at George Romero's first feature film you can't help but feel: this is a nightmare.
Brexit
Christopher Nolan's latest deals for the first time with an actual event, massive in scale and complex in nature--the mass exodus of over 300,000 soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, arguably the greatest retreat (some might prefer the term 'escape') in history.
