QUIET AND REFLECTIVE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     There's the type of being familiar with a body other than your own in a cramped space in Jay Altarejos' Sa Panahong Walang Katiyakan (2076 Kolektib, Studio X, Full Post Asia, 2025). They wake up. They are a couple at peace. And yet they are not. Mark (CJ Barinaga) is reticent, stuffing all those uncomfortable emotions as far down as they will go. His lover Joaquin, played by Jonathan Ivan Rivera is all levity. These two have more chemistry with each other within the first five minutes than most other acting duos have in their entire run times. With such an intimate and voyeuristic look at the two men, the film instantly begins with an unsurpassable amount of restraint. Storytelling and narrative are somewhat secondary, with little to no drawback in favor of giving the audience the privilege to just spend time with Mark and Joaquin. We have a sense of where the lovers have come from, but not too much. Their interactions carry anxious, even bitter, overtones at times. Their exchanges are so natural that they seem able to read each other’s thoughts just through small movements and changes in body language. Because the events of the plot are so mundane, there is an authenticity to this world and those who occupy it that only enhance the emotion woven into the text and subtext. Altarejos' formally stripped back direction suits the material perfectly, which feels rather like a play at times. Sa Panahong Walang Katiyakan is a reminder that we aren't merely watching a series of random urban scenes but entering a densely imagined cinematic city filled with subterranean connections. 


     Altarejos' screenplay lays this groundwork nicely, but Barinaga and Rivera take the material to even greater heights. The tenderness and sincerity in their affections and especially for each other is utterly addictive. Stylishness in cinema is definitely alluring, but restraint can be nearly as compelling if made up to high standards. Such is Altarejos' quiet and reflective film. One will find themselves in admiration of the refined splendor of Sa Panahong Walang Katiyakan. This is a film that dwells in scene beats. It’s written with so much trust in the viewer to find the devastation through the glances and quiet moments of words unsaid. Altarejos' direction is both confident and astute, while remaining fervently empathetic to his characters and their plight. This is poised, unhurried filmmaking and all the more affecting as a result. We watch the couple joke, eat, drink, sleep. And it is in the things they don’t say that we find their pain and love. Nevertheless, Altarejos' film does achieve beauty not only through its heartbreakingly anguished dialogue – which feels subtly heightened but never enough to diminish the emotional truth. The desperation to try and be there in every moment, an impossibility for sure, is palpable. Sa Panahong Walang Katiyakan doesn’t try to do anything too ambitious narratively or formally, but tells its story with searing emotional authenticity. The later turns won’t be too surprising to many, but the film handles them with the necessary gravitas without devolving into slushy, saccharine melodrama. Conventional on the surface but uncommonly affecting in approach, Sa Panahong Walang Katiyakan is a low-key, painfully human drama.


Production Design: 2076 Kolektib

Music and Sound: Paulo Estero

Editor: Joselito Altarejos

Director of Photography: Manuel Garcellano

Written and Directed By: Jay Altarejos

FANTASTIC AND OVER-THE-TOP

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Richard V. Somes' Topakk (Raven Banner, Nathan Studios, Fusee, Strawdogs Studio Production, 2023) is a non-stop crescendo of vicious, mean-spirited brutality. Somes puts his horror background to good use, delivering more gore and splatter than any slasher you’re likely to find. We’re talking bone-breaking, machete-wielding mayhem. And in addition to being the boldest, craziest action movie maybe ever, the story adds up to much more than a delivery system for fight choreography—though there’s plenty of room for that as well. The plot follows Miguel Vergara (Arjo Atayde), an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD after a mission he was leading went horribly wrong. Now employed as a security guard, he encounters Weng (Julia Montes), a young woman on the run, who breaks into the property with her wounded brother, Bogs (Kokoy de Santos). They are hunted by a corrupt police death squad. Miguel can either hand them over or fall back on his soldiering skills and battle them and his demons. But Topakk never feels unbalanced, offering layers of competing interests meshed together to create a much deeper, more nuanced picture than initially expected. Somes, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jimmy Flores and Will Fredo, rarely spells out things in explicit fashion. Instead, they dole out just enough information to propel the narrative. Yet Somes knows how to load different action beats with varying levels of intensity (visually and aurally) so as not to perpetually exhaust the viewer. There is a focus on spatial coherency and a rhytmic ebb and flow punctuated as sequences build and release tension. Somes calibrates each of these beats to execute the desired effect whether it be to establish menace or convey emotion for every moment of bloodlust, there is a recognition of the immense toll this violence takes.

      This toll is internalized by Atayde, his face quaking with dismay and anger, regret and determination until they all erupt outwardly. Atayde's facial acting is phenomenal, recalling silent-era stars as he conveys emotions on a collosal scale. These displays extend to his entire body, as the acts of violence and motion are at their core in all action cinema, the most raw physicalization of these feelings. Topakk packs an emotional punch, as the relatively few dramatic scenes feel relaxed and familial. I was also transfixed by Sid Lucero's Romero, the film's conflicted antagonist. He's a compelling figure just in general. It's truly astounding the way he dials in his intensely physical acting as Romero grows tired, sustain injuries and feels desperation, anger or sadness. He shifts or maintains momentum and externalizes each beat with force. But action is the main draw and it delivers. Somes' visual grammar combines fluid takes of slaughter imbued with the nervous energy of improvisation. Gun fights, knife fights, slabs-of-meat fights — Topakk has it all. Bodies crack and bruise, and the word punishment finds a new visual definition. Indeed, the physical toll is so jaw-dropping it almost completely eviscerates the purpose of the journey. Somes films it all in unique style that showcases the remarkable martial arts talent on screen and creates a raw immediacy that places the viewer smack in the middle of it all. There’s a pulsing, primal sensation that captures the anger, rage and anguish, transmitting it to the audience. As fantastic and over-the-top as the action is, the film maintains a grounded connection between its audience and the players. Somes does an absolutely magnificent job of transforming such moments into kinetic and often shockingly brutal instances of pure cinema. The brutality of these interludes cannot be understated, ultimately and it’s difficult to easily recall a non-horror picture with this much blood and gore. Topakk is a sheer ballet of brutality, the grace of movement in service of grotesque violence.


Production Design: Richard V. Somes

Music: Jose Antonio Buencamino

Sound Design: Albert Michael Idioma, Jannina Mikaela Minglanilla, Andrea Teresa T. Idioma

Director of Photography: Luis Quirino

Editor: Jaime Dumancas

Screenplay: Jimmy Flores, Will Fredo

Written and Directed By: Richard V. Somes

SIMPLY, FOLKSY

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Like the heroine of a silent movie melodrama, Angel (Aliya Raymundo) suffers more than her share of tragic events. But even if director Roman Perez Jr. is sympathetic to the plight he’s chosen for the protagonist, his film never burrows deep enough under her skin to make the string of miserable scenarios connect in a meaningful way. Kalakal (VMX, Pelikula Indiopendent, 2025) casts its lot with simply, folksy, down-in-the-dirt indie realism. All of this is a ruse. Angel is a young woman whose optimism drives the plot and her own life, into numerous ditches. If this fails to immediately communicate the level of misery porn that the viewer is about to be subjected to, the film makes sure to remind everyone of Angel’s hardships at every turn. She is shaded in the most hyperbolically innocent terms possible. Even when performing sex work, Angel has a kindly, almost uncomprehending nature to her, doing the job almost absentmindedly.The film drills down on the ambiguousness of Angel's ability to conceive the sadness of her life when she is with Dario (Gold Aceron). Her relationship naturally dredges up tension from her brother, Gelo (Jero Flores). Kalakal is a drama that examines how society relegates economically disadvantaged women into sex work to survive. The film generates sympathy for its hard-luck protagonist, however, there aren’t many fresh angles to a familiar story of emotionally wounded loners. Perez takes Angel’s inherent sweetness so far that not even Raymundo's performance can keep this character seeming remotely realistic. As Angel's life falls apart, she allows other people to exploit and demean her rather than speak up for herself and once our empathy slips away, Kalakal is minimized to a show of female suffering rather than a human drama or institutional indictment. 

     That Angel’s quest for self-discovery is obtained primarily through interactions (sexual and otherwise) with men is a tell. She delights in becoming a sex worker, though she only shallowly interacts with women employed at the club. Neither screenplay nor direction illuminates the shape of the patriarchal forces that brought them there and given the detail put into the visual components of their world, the lack of material context is glaring. The film no doubt thinks it has its heart in the right place, it just felt like another opportunity to see a young woman get burned at the stake of ignorance and public opinion. There are fascinating stories to be told, but not when the burning serves as the main draw. Like Angel's clients, everything Perez wants to convey is obtrusively front and center, leaving little room for the viewer to have any interpretation for themselves. Sex scenes aren’t worthwhile merely for existing. They should be sweaty and yearning and intrigued by the flesh as much as the personalities within. Perez's lens is not interested in the sex lives of women as much as the ways in which a young woman’s body can be positioned and used. Which isn’t to say sex scenes need to move a plot along or provide narrative purpose for a story. But in a film like Kalakal, where interiority is subsumed by exhibition and sexual expression, they simply carry more burdens. The stark compositions with which Perez frames Angel's suffering add nothing but the thinnest symbolism at the expense of valorizing her pain. Kalakal certainly doesn’t mock its protagonist, but it does trivialize her, reducing Angel to a passive force who can only react with bafflement to the obvious escalation of her misery.


Screenplay: Quiel dela Cruz

Cinematography: Neil Derrick Bion

Production Design: Junebert Cantila

Music: Dek Margaja

Sound Design: Lamberto Casas, Jr., Alex Tomboc

Editing: Aaron Alegre

A Film By: Roman Perez Jr.

QUIETLY RADICAL

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     A deceptively simple romance doesn’t take away that there is something quietly radical at work in Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.'s Siargao set love story, Unconditional (BR Film Productions, 2025). There’s a leap of faith you have to go with in its narrative. In a central scene when Anna (Rhian Ramos) comes to realize that Greg (Allen Dizon) is transgender, you understand that Greg is coming from a place of vulnerability, where the basic idea that any woman will enjoy his company is a surprise to him, perhaps he’s dizzily blinded by attraction. And perhaps the film is pointing out that these labels, while relevant and necessary for an expression of identity, are artificial in a spiritual or psychological way. In most movies about heterosexual women who fall in love with transgender men, the woman in the relationship usually wants to keep the man’s transgender identity a secret, out of fear that she will be shunned by her peers and/or society, Unconditional is no exception. Trans stories where the trans experience isn’t central to the unfolding action are hard to come by. The aim of this film seems to reframe the reaction we typically see when characters reveal themselves to be transgender. Greg and Anna's romance is very sweet and doesn’t move too quickly, punctuated by a passionate and intense love scene. Dizon and Ramos share a chemistry that sizzles. Greg is generally quiet and introverted. He might have had a lot of experience with life’s hardships, but it soon becomes apparent later in the story that he doesn’t have much experience when it comes to love and romance. It’s not spoiler information to reveal that Anna eventually finds out that Greg is transgender. How she finds out won’t be revealed in this review. It’s enough to say that Anna finds out that Greg is a trans man after she’s already fallen for Greg but they haven’t had sex yet. 

     Unconditional is not the type of movie that keeps the same pace throughout the story. There are ebbs and flows, just like there would be in real life. However, there’s some melodrama in the last third that could make or break the romance between Greg and Anna. How it’s resolved is kind of rushed into the story in a way that could happen in real life. The biggest strength lies in the chemistry between Dizon and Ramos. Alix portrays the film’s protagonists with palpable empathy through naturalistic dialogue. Dizon with cagey finesse and Ramos with captivating elegance. Toss in some fantastic supporting work from Elizabeth Oropesa as Greg's mother Dolores, who shifts from one state of body and mind to another without being forced while Lotlot de Leon as his sister Terry is strong and understated. Unconditional is a simple story, but not a simplistic one, with performances that make all the characters seem fully dimensionalized. It eschews melodrama arriving at a lovely, unforced sense of acceptance.There is naivety and acceptance from Greg that makes the film different. It’s a sincere effort that feels earned and in its modest way, a deeply romantic gesture. The movie looks at the big picture through intimate lens. Ultimately, the film’s love story largely succeeds on its strong sense of place. Alix and screenwriter Jerry B. Gracio carefully and respectfully manages the different characters’ points of view, plunging us into a unique world and its inhabitants’ challenges in navigating their place both with and without their respective circles. Together, Allen and Ramos shine. Beautifully realized, Unconditional makes Greg work for what he wants and by the end, both he and the movie have fully earned the reward of our fascinated attention. Unconditional is never in a hurry. But if you’re looking for an immersive love story that takes you places you might not know, that challenges your conception of what romance looks and feels like, Unconditional is a great place to stop.


Direction: Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.

Screenplay: Jerry B. Gracio

Director of Photography: Rain Yamson II, LPS

Editing: Xila Oflada, Mark Llona

Production Design: Jhon Paul Sapitula

Music: Marco Morales

Sound Design: Immanuel Verona, Fatima Nerikka Salim


JUST A FUTILE EXERCISE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Dan Villegas' Uninvited (Warner Bros. Pictures, Mentorque Productions, Project 8, 2024) has a big curious twist. The twist is Vilma Santos, the person herself, that the most becalmed and cognitive of movie stars would chose to appear in a revenge flick, that most crass of exploitation genres. Moreover, Villegas has followed behind. They have taken a long look at exploitation revenge pictures and have decided their pedigree alone could elevate such material, literally. They may be right. But that's somewhat unfair. Uninvited is never cheap - righteousness is complicated here. Uninvited, which was refashioned with a major hand from Santos, is a thinly veiled retrospective of her career. The tale is told in jumbled flashbacks, as if nonlinear narrative were a reward in itself. It's not. Uninvited squanders plot impetus and even with constant crosscutting it's lethargically paced, slogging through soap-operatic back stories and maddening irrelevancies. I was eagerly awaiting the chance to watch this film. It seemed a decidedly eclectic mix of action hero with a dash of cerebral stimulation thrown in. Santos’ character, Lilia Capistrano/Eva Candelaria for the majority of the film, is aloof from the viewer. Her reluctance to communicate in anything other than tormented expressions (it seems odd on the stern face of Santos, who has always looked old) and stone cold staring means that at no point do we ever connect with her in a way that will make us care for her like we probably should. Santos, it must be said, delivers another performance that is controlled, but it’s the frustrating lack of intimacy with her situation that, for me, makes this film feel flat. Give her credit for stepping into an exercise this provocative, but an exercise is what it remains, the itch to blast away too easily steadied by the itch to reassure. 

     Villegas seems to have relied more on the audience's perception of the situation than trying to give us any kind of real meaning. The fact that we know how we would act in this situation, will predispose us to feel one way or another about Lilia's own predicament; it provokes ideas in our own memory that stand in the way of anything in the film being fresh or new. And Villegas seems unable to redress that imbalance. By being biased to the situation, we are unable to see past the actions of the protagonist as anything other than simplistic, clichéd emotional churlishness. Unfortunately, the plotting is rather pedestrian and often flawed, undermining this film’s potential for greatness. By the time the big moment arrives when Lilia faces Guilly Vega (Aga Muhlach) who raped and murdered her daughter, Lily (Gabby Padilla) and irreversibly changed her life, it’s clear what kind of movie Uninvited ultimately wants to be. Without giving anything away, let’s just say that the film is completely drained of any remaining irony at this point, abandoning intellectual honesty in favor of giving the viewer what they want. It elicits no real sympathy for Lilia, who in the revenge process turns into a cartoonish character. And even though it ends with some hope that our heroine can find redemption, it all seemed like just a futile exercise in grandstanding for Villegas who seemed to care less about the justice system. What Uninvited tries so hard to deliver and what it ultimately fails at, is generating sympathy for our main character. With top class production values, Uninvited should have been a cut above your standard revenge thriller. Lilia should get revenge and we should feel satisfied vicariously. Yet while the story does conclude more or less the way it ought to, it doesn’t have the feeling of catharsis that a revenge thriller needs. Somewhere over the course of Uninvited, most of the flavor has gone out.


Directed By: Dan Villegas

Written By: Dodo Dayao, FSG

Director of Photography: Pao Orendain, LPS

Production Designer: Michaela Tatad-King

Film Editor: Marya Ignacio

Musical Scorer: Len Calvo

Sound Designer: Allen Roy Santos


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