I'm talking to you, Steven Soderbergh: you don't know me, but it is my fervent hope that you continue making your big summer blockbusters like Ocean's 25 and Ocean's 26 and Erin Brockovich – hell, even make kid movies like ...Read More

Steven Soderbergh, "Che" (2008).

If you were to watch just one movie this year that included in its cast the most talented actress from a major '90s television show*, dealt with themes of companionship and marginality, and depicted the daily, desperate struggle of the ...Read More

Thor Freudenthal, "Hotel for Dogs" (2009).

Readers who know me only through this blog (and there aren't that many readers anyhow) may be interested in my old blog, The Wily Filipino, which I've just imported into WordPress. Almost all of my movie-related entries have been imported ...Read More

A Brief Announcement.

Found this old blog post from January 2003, which I'm reposting with a few edits here and there. I can't imagine writing the first paragraph in 2009. ----- So I finally got to see my second-most anticipated film of 2002 (the first was ...Read More

M. Night Shyamalan, "Signs" (2002).

I guess I can't say I was terribly thrilled with Brillante Mendoza's acclaimed Tirador (Slingshot), the winner of the Best Director and Best Picture awards at the Gawad Urian and the Singapore Film Festival, the recipient of the Caligari award ...Read More

Brillante Mendoza, "Tirador" (2007).

I give up. As an audience viewer who happens to live in the state of California, where the campaign against Proposition 8 went down in shocking, stinging defeat, it's too difficult for me to evaluate Milk without all the extra-cinematic ...Read More

Gus Van Sant, "Milk" (2008).

I'll start this entry on Danny Boyle's marvelous, if contrived, neon-lit dream jungle fantasy of a film with a quotation not having anything to do with the movies: "The damned of Harlem and the South Bronx, the damned of Calcutta and ...Read More

Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008).

A brief pause from the movie reviews while I geek out and set up my tentative East Bay-biased big-screen schedule for the next two months: Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley will be premiering Che and Waltz with Bashir on Jan. 16; Scott ...Read More

Around the Bay (January / February 2009).

Leading the charge in the recent wave of French-language gore (from good to bad, in order: High Tension, Frontier(s), and the dreadful Them) was the Belgian film Calvaire, all the way back in 2004. It's a particularly pungent and pointless ...Read More

Fabrice du Welz, "Calvaire" (2004).

In his new excellent film, Gran Torino, the audience is introduced to Clint Eastwood by means of a growl: a deep, canine beast of a sound from Walt Kowalski, a recently-widowed, grizzled Korean War veteran. He’s expressing displeasure at his ...Read More

Clint Eastwood, "Gran Torino" (2008).