Miko Livelo’s Unli Life is, just like last year's Patay Na Si Jesus, that odd but hilarious member of the family in this year's Pista Ng Pelikulang Pilipino. Vhong Navarro is Benedict, a podcast DJ who is too eager to please his girlfriend wherever they go, whatever they do, a trait that can be considered sweet or suffocating. Unfortunately, his girlfriend thinks it's the latter. Crestfallen after the inevitable breakup, he finds a bar by the street called Turning Point that is manned by Joey Marquez. Here he is offered a “wishkey,” a strong drink that takes him back to different eras and gets to meet the people he knows except with different personas. He believes this is his chance to correct something in the past to prevent his massive heartbreak from happening in the present. Here’s a disclaimer: The concept here is definitely high, but the comedy is grounded, old school. And it works. Navarro’s shtick can sometimes be overplayed, his physical comedic mannerisms far from fresh, but it’s the treatment of these on a material so unhinged makes Unli Life a joy to watch. Even if the anachronisms are all over the place, the props and sets laughably crude, many of its sight gags and jokes are gold, benta, a feat that can only be inspired by Wenn Deramas’ filmography. For example: “Sinong John Lloyd?” “Ah, John Lloyd... Yung poet.” Who thinks of that?! It breaks the fourth wall, it feels unscripted, brimming with a veteran improv’s tendencies, like it has the spirit of a Monty Python work. Livelo knows the space of absurdity his movie occupies, and he is not ashamed to flaunt. He flaunts it hard.
[ photo borrowed from this site ]
Jason Paul Laxamana’s The Day After Valentine’s enlists again what makes his previous movie 100 Tula Para Kay Stella succeed despite its too-engineered plotting, which is the tandem of JC Santos and Bela Padilla, this time as Kai and Lani, respectively. (These actors have ridiculous strong chemistry). One evening, the two meet by chance where the Lani works, and like all love stories where two persons have no distinct commonalities—with Kai being private and cautious, and Lani being forward and spontaneous—they eventually find themselves stuck with each other, for reasons that are rarely seen in Filipino movies. It is immediately revealed that Kai self-harms; when his thoughts and emotions are too much to handle, he makes small cuts on his right arm to divert the pain. Lani, being a good person, comes to his aid. She believes she knows what and how he feels. She even goes the extra mile, literally, by flying back to Hawaii with the FilAm Kai, whose tourist visa is expiring. The movie soon shifts into a story of shared trauma and enlightenment instead of mere heartbreaks, and becomes an anti-love story, a direction that could either go really bad or incredibly good. The Day After Valentine’s goes somewhere in the middle. Metal health issues are taking major spotlight in many conversations today, which is good, but the movie somehow toys with the idea that you can be better if you have someone—can be with someone—and yet turns the other way around and reprimands you for bringing up the idea. All in all, it’s a dangerous idea. Nothing is more detrimental to a mind troubled by internal and external pressures than indecisiveness. But thankfully, in the end, it redeems itself with a message that barrels through this little ambiguity: Be kind to yourself because, like wounds, it always takes time to heal inside, and not one person can ever rush you to feel better, no matter the occasion.
[ photo borrowed from this site ]
Jay Abello’s Pinay Beauty: She’s No White does not waste its time in showing its intentions, one of which is to poke fun at the many demands of our insecurities constantly playing in our heads. We are instantly introduced to the world of Chai Fonacier’s Annie and her dreams of having skin so fair, so “white”—like Disney’s Snow White but with bigger boobs. “I am happy when I am beautiful,” she would say. And serving as a tension to this journey to voluptuous whiteness, the story parallels to Migs (played by Edgar Allan Guzman), Annie’s boyfriend, who has wronged his uncle after stealing money for Annie’s plastic surgery. It also throws into the mix Maxine Medina’s Lovely G, a morena princess-like celebrity who dreams of getting better roles, to further complicate the movie’s attempts at social criticism. Despite the breeziness and mostly unassuming demeanor of comedy, everybody should know that comedy is not easy. And for someone reason, it feels like Pinay Beauty knows this very well, too, because it strains extra hard to make these scattered elements work. Yes, it is funny, it is charming, and this movie can be Chai Fonacier’s validation that she could lead a movie. She effectively portrays the whiplash changes of her character’s emotions. The movie does have the absurdities that are a requisite of a work of satire, but Pinay Beauty feels like it is pulling its punches, does not whole-heartedly embrace the dark, ironic humor that often comes with risky decisions. You know, like going under the knife to look better and, thus, feel better? The movie slightly touches on the issue of beauty and what constitutes the idea of beauty in the Filipino context, but slight is not what we need. All in all, the treatment that we get is harmless and tame for this subject matter. For first time in a long time, I think this is a movie that simply stumbles for being not ridiculous and exaggerated enough.
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Adolfo Alix Jr.’s Madilim Ang Gabi, the second Pista Ng Pelikulang Pilipino movie I got to watch this year, comes at a most opportune time in Philippine cinema. Fantasy, action, comedy, and romance are just fine, but we also need the mirror that reflects the conditions of our reality. It stars Gina Alajar and Philip Salvador—both showing stellar, understated performances—as the couple Sara and Lando. They live not far from the PNR railway tracks and, for the sake of their only son and a dream of good life, try really hard disconnecting their ties to drugs by selling the last of their supplies. They believe in change, not purely out of fear but also of necessity. It shows in the recognizable baller ID that Sara proudly wears wherever she goes. And then one day their son goes missing. Many non-mainstream movies that tackle on the lives of slum dwellers often showcase a kind of hardship and poverty that could be indulgent and leave some viewers distanced or disconcerted. Not with Alix Jr. In his hands Madilim Ang Gabi takes an even more urgent tone when it accompanies several scenes with actual audio recordings of speeches of our current administration. The words are terrifying, outlandish, but you know it is familiar because it is real. There is no distancing from the truth. The movie also features a dizzying array of cameos from veteran stars, slipping in and out of the moment, some lasting for only a few seconds, which could be distracting to those easily swept by celebrity. The “night” that the title speaks of arrives very late in the movie, and yet every scene might as well be the titular evening. We see lives eternally enshrouded in darkness, whether in daylight or moonlight, because of a violence that is bureaucratic and of a system that only favors the powerful and the influential. This movie is a dismantling of everything that led us to believe that this vast network of oppression is all right and ordinary. Our reality is never just a case of good and bad, one that can easily be summarized with a message on cardboard like “Wag Tularan” to know which is which, especially when the bad knows the good rhetoric that people love to hear. It has never been. Madilim Ang Gabi has its faults though—the meandering plot, the unhurried pace, and the growing fatalism that pulsates throughout the film—but at the rate our collective moral decline is going, all this is easy to dismiss. We are all dead, we can all be dead, either in the streets or on the inside. But like Sara in the middle of the film, it is never too late to start living with the right choices, to genuinely change, to remove from her wrist the false promises that come with the baller ID.
[ photo borrowed from this site ]
Richard V. Somes’ We Will Not Die Tonight fits in the distinctive space that Pista Ng Pelikulang Pilipino holds, even if this festival is only two years old: good production values, unique plot, famous actors trying out new material. Erich Gonzales’ Kray is a stunt woman, working hard to meet both ends meet for her and her sickly father. Desperate to create her own luck, she agrees to do one last “raket” with her usual troupe of friends who are fellow extras and stuntmen, a job that is proposed by a former lover. Upon meeting their employers one evening, she realizes this is not the job she is looking for, which involves kidnapping street children to slice out their internal organs for some shady market. Shocked and feeling betrayed, Kray and her friends run away from the situation before they themselves would end up on the chopping block. This is a very strong premise, but unfortunately everything goes downhill from here. What starts as a story (seemingly) about a woman fending off every odd that comes her way, especially heightened by the fact that she works hard only to be in the sidelines, abruptly shits into a raucous and messy film that only drowns out everything it wants to say. It has a distracting soundtrack that sounds prepared by an overbearing hipster who worships punk and metal songs. We Will Not Die Tonight could have been our very own take on 28 Days Later [2002] or The Purge franchise but then it becomes a straightforward torture porn packaged as a hide-and-seek game. When a group of middle-aged men search for a little girl in an abandoned warehouse, with machetes in hand, and whisper words like “Do you want me to skin you alive?” with so much glee, you know something is off and unmerited. The film lingers on this type of violence for violence’s sake, relishes on the pounding, piercing, and slicing of the flesh. In short, it becomes exploitative. It is a huge waste because Erich Gonzales here does a better action film than Anne Curtis in the much buzzed-about BuyBust [2018] by Erik Matti. There is a genuine physicality and heaviness in her moves (or her double’s?), her pain onscreen so palpable it could make your palms sweat. Early on in the movie, a character criticizes Kray for her outdated moves on set. Like in the 80’s, too old, nothing new. It turns out this could be the movie’s own criticism.
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I am sorry but I am tired of seeing posts like this that put a (deceptively) positive spin on the suffering of many Filipinos because of our leaders’ inefficiencies. What Filipino Spirit? What resiliency? This is insulting. Nobody deserves to experience this, in the first place. Situations like this are not to be celebrated—they need to be solved.
If this is what they call “Filipino Spirit,” then I want to see the same thing, the same situation, for our barangay captains, councilors, mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, and even the president himself. These guys are culpable, through and through.
These days, proclamations of “resiliency” and “Filipino Spirit” have just become an excuse to shrug off and/or accept incompetency and the broken promises of our leaders. This only becomes problematic when the same leaders criticize anyone who seeks a better life by demanding more from them. Self-sufficiency should be enough, they would imply, as if we are forever immune to these calamities. Like a toxic lover who consistently takes advantage of you (and yet you keep welcoming that person into your life anyway), these leaders are the posterboys for abusive relationships on a national, political scale.
An acquaintance argued to me that our leaders have nothing to do with these disasters, even going further by stating that “no country is prepared enough for Mother Nature, no matter how deep their drainage systems are.”
Oh dear. Does this mean I have to put all the blame on Mother Nature for poor urban planning, undisciplined and ill-educated communities, inconsistent implementation of policies, substandard projects, absence of proper waste management, and government workers who do not do any work at all? Everything connects after all.
What this acquaintance of mine has forgotten or refuses to acknowledge is that the Philippines (and its leaders) is not equipped and just do not have the initiatives to handle situations like this, even if this country has been experiencing these situations regularly for decades now.
So yeah, I am tired of all this. If that guy in the photo is smiling, instead of praising it, I think we should all ask this question instead, louder than ever: “Why is this still happening?”
[ photo borrowed from this site ]
There’s always that instance when we chance upon something we don’t really need but we end up thinking it’s just what we need after all. One such instance is the premier of Ol Parker’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Nobody asked for a follow-up to the 2008 smash hit Mamma Mia! And yet, ten years later, as the subtitle implies, here we are, in this world of unease and uncertainty, about to witness a wild and colorful romp.
Here We Go Again is a strange prequel-sequel hybrid of sorts, and somehow it succeeds, considering it follows a film that is based on a theater musical that is loosely inspired by a bunch of songs from the Swedish pop group, ABBA. This latest installment traverses two timelines, with the present focusing on Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie, daughter of Meryl Streep’s Donna, and how she navigates a life trying to perfect, or at least capture, her mother’s ambitions. The past timeline, on the other hand, serves as a major performance showcase for Lily James (who is playing the younger Donna) and as a fleshing-out of the throwaway details that are mentioned in the previous film: How did Donna meet those three guys who become Sophie’s three fathers? How did she end up in that idyllic Greek island? Who is her mother?
Here We Go Again basically fills the gaps, and it does so with a balance of drama and comedy, and an excess of brisk and boisterous song-and-dance numbers. In here we get to see serious actors, once again, act like they are unsupervised and are just enjoying a break from the constraints that come with the label “serious actor.” Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, and Julie Walters reprise their roles, and they are joined by a talented and absurdly attractive cast that serves as their younger versions. In full display they all get to perform both famous and lesser known ABBA songs (but are there really lesser known ABBA songs?).
Meryl Streep is little seen this time (spoiler alert!), but her duet with Sophie of the song My Love, My Life near the end of film could easily put anyone’s heart in a blender. Be prepared to ugly-cry. She is by far one of the greatest living actors of any generation. As if she is not enough, this movie introduces characters played by Andy Garcia and Cher, with the latter’s presence concretely affirming the case that we need to see her in many movies, that seeing her in only one movie this year is criminally insane. Cher is Cher, you get the picture.
All in all, it’s a bright and ridiculous, highly-saturated, overly-convoluted kitschy fun, but you won’t mind. Even if you’ve left the cinema, the songs are still playing in your head. Again and again. And then you might want to watch it again
[ photo borrowed from this site ].
