Monthly Archives July 2009

Hayao Miyazaki, “Ponyo” (2008).

The premiere of a new movie from Studio Ghibli is always an event over here at film, eyeballs, brain, and if it’s by Hayao Miyazaki, I line up for over an hour to catch it on the big screen. (I must say I was a little disappointed in Berkeley — there were literally two other [...]

Park Chan-wook, “Thirst” (2009).

Park Chan-Wook’s new film, Thirst (Bakjwi), is a bloody mess. Quite literally: blood spills on floors, trickles from eyes, spurts from necks, dribbles from mouths, and gushes out of flutes; it gets quaffed, sucked out, licked off, vomited, refrigerated, and microwaved. But it’s a bloody mess, too, in the ways that matter.There are a lot [...]

Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary, "Hubad" (2009).

For a movie with a title like Hubad (Tagalog for “naked”), the promise of heavy breathing and unfettered eros just isn’t quite fulfilled. Oh, there’s a seething hotbed, all right, but one seething with frustration and repression and lack of funding. Art and desire, conflated here in sparklingly incisive ways, is consistently cockblocked, if you [...]

The Resistance of Philippine Cinema Film Festival.

I missed Geo’s presentation on The Resistance of Philippine Cinema when he swung through town last month (I didn’t know one had to RSVP!), but here, I guess, is the next best thing: a free screening each of Auraeus Solito’s The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros), from 2006, Ishmael Bernal’s Himala [...]

Michael Mann, "Public Enemies" (2009).

There’s one flat-out great sequence in Michael Mann’s new film, Public Enemies, the kind that makes you wish you were watching another movie. It’s a spectacular (and poorly thought-out) shoot-out in a lodge in the Wisconsin woods where John Dillinger and Babyface Nelson, the two most notorious gangsters of their time, are holed up. It’s [...]