You know, a movie doesn't have to address the big questions in life for it to be enjoyed over here at film eyeballs brain. And like a Michael Haneke film or this impending final season of Lost, not all the ...Read More
In his lovely essay over at Lilok Pelikula, Richard Bolisay writes about the spectrality of the camera, or rather, the camera as the ghostly presence in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's haunted film, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee. It's a film set in ...Read More
While ultimately little more than a vehicle for the singer-songwriter YUI, Midnight Sun (Taiyō no Uta, or Song of the Sun) is a competently directed movie that capitalizes on the lead actress's musical talents. But instead of the usual frothy ...Read More
Avatar is probably the most beautiful film I’ve seen in the last 12 months. James Cameron’s fantastically detailed vision of the planet Pandora is a sumptuous visual feast: entire villages in lush trees, floating crags of rock, the way ships ...Read More
Is it that time of the year yet? I thought I'd post my picks early, with two disclaimers: 1. My list isn't limited to movies made or released in 2009, but to the ones I only saw this year. (The not-always ...Read More
When the DVD booklet warns you that the film you're about to watch shouldn't be thought of a sequel (despite the “2” in the title), but as “a totally new and different cinematic adventure starring the same exciting characters and ...Read More
[SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW, but trust me, most of the plot, including the money shot, is almost all in the trailer anyway.] Paranormal Activity has its conceptual and formal charms, but they, like my patience, wore rapidly thin. Purportedly the home movie ...Read More
I've seen just about every Michael Mann film (some more than once, unfortunately) and I've never been particularly impressed. I'm probably in the minority when I write that Heat (1995) was a bloated mess, and that all I remember from ...Read More
There was a time, back in 1994 when Pulp Fiction came out, when I just couldn't shut up about Quentin Tarantino. In a fit of movie giddiness, I had seen Pulp Fiction on the big screen maybe three times the ...Read More
Is it time for a Best Films of the 2000s list yet? (Because if not, I'll be reposting this at the end of 2010, and removing the two films below from 2000.) The list will probably undergo numerous revisions -- obviously ...Read More
The first impulse is always one of love. The more films I saw, specifically local independent films, the more I wanted to see. The deeper I got, the more responsibility I felt, the stronger the need to do something, to share ...Read More
I've found that advocacy documentaries are the most difficult to write about, because the audience's positive reaction is inevitably premised on the shared opinion that, well, the filmmakers are right. In a sense, there may be no better environment -- ...Read More
The utterly bleak Martyrs is at the crest of a wave of nasty little horror films coming from France, ranging from the excellent (Haute Tension, by Alexandre Aja, who unfortunately hasn't made anything good since) to the terrible (Ils). One ...Read More
It's only August, so it's probably a little early to pull out words from my box of hyperbole, but a second viewing of Kathryn Bigelow's new film The Hurt Locker propels it up onto my year-end list of favorites. The Hurt ...Read More
The very title of Veronica Velasco's comedy, Last Supper No. 3, promises seriality and repetition, and absolutely delivers. Winner of the Best Picture award at the recent 2009 Cinemalaya festival, Last Supper No. 3 is an intelligent little satire about ...Read More