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Seksi: Pantasya at Pelikula (2024)
Seksi‘s initial attempt to merely present the “rise and fall and eventual return” of sexy movies is easy to do — especially if the one’s making it is literally located within the center of the activity. What made the documentary meaty are the talking heads from people involved in making them — to see their…
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Maid in Malacañang (2022)
At first look, Maid in Malacañang has the makings of a hugot film it is easy to mistake the film being directed either by JP Habac or Jerrold Tarog due to its dullness and dumb dialogues. If we speak strictly about its director, Darryl Yap’s past works at least were interesting spectacles that oftentimes lag…
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Karmalink (Cambodia, 2021)
Karmalink attempts to bridge science fiction speculation and religious beliefs. It presents the rather weird idea that there will be a time when science will be used to validate religious spiritual dogma, like karma, in the pursuit of “spiritual” knowledge. This speculative imagination makes us observe how such marriage between science and religion may affect how…
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Ip Man: The Awakening (China, 2022)
In recent memory, Wing Chun master, Ip Man, may have already surpassed the mythical status of his student turned famous screen actor Bruce Lee. Adding to this mythification is Li Xijie and Zhang Zhulin’s Ip Man: The Awakening, set in the period that all the other Ip Man films have skipped – the master’s brief stay…
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Autohystoria (2007)
Autohystoria (2007) was released at a time when earlier forms of digital feature filmmaking are gaining attention and, at the same time, getting more suspicion. Part of the suspicion came from exactly what Autohystoria’s filmmaking stands for: “long-takes” and “contemplative shots” are often conflated to “lazy” filmmaking. But it was admittedly a very novel take…
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Funky Forest: The First Contact (Japan, 2006) & The Warped Forest (Japan, 2011)
Third Window Films’ Blu-ray release of Funky Forest: The First Contact and The Warped Forest is a cause for celebration for fans of Japanese cult cinema. For a very long time, Funky Forest was only available on DVD, which did not do justice to the experience of watching the film, considering that its running time of 150 minutes challenges the limits…
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The House of the Lost on the Cape (Japan, 2021) [JFTFP 2022]
On March 3, 2011, the Oshika Peninsula of the Tohoku Region in Japan became the site of one of the most devastating earthquakes in recent history, what is now referred to as the Great East Japan Earthquake. The region was hit by a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake which later resulted in a tsunami. Add to…
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Gensan Punch (Philippines/Japan, 2021)
Let me cut to the chase, Gensan Punch is Brillante Mendoza’s best work to date. It seems that years of practicing an interrogative approach to realism has honed Mendoza’s style and lead him towards the moment to shoot a boxing match. And the best thing about this movie is that it does not pretend to be anything…