SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     Alkitrang Dugo (N.V. Productions, 1976) is, in essence, a primal myth. It follows a group of young athletes stranded on an uninhabited island after their plane crashes, claiming the lives of both their pilot and coach. Luis (Eddie Villamayor) seems like a natural leader - he's smart, fair and good at planning, able to think not only about the immediate needs of the group but about the bigger picture, the importance of rescue. There's a rival on the island, however, and that's Andy (Roderick Paulate), who quickly wins the loyalty of many with his focus on hunting, feasting and dancing. Complicating the picture are socially unskilled Nilo (Toto Jr.), natural second in command Brooks (Efren Montes) and thoughtful outsider Lando (Zernan Manahan). Despite the fact that, between them, they have the skills needed to get by pretty comfortably in the short-to-medium term, the stage is set for conflict. From nowhere come disagreements and disputes. They do not realize the trouble is within themselves.The tone of the film is different, reflecting cultural changes that had taken place during that time. The notion of childhood innocence was beginning to fade from the public consciousness and has faded further since. Consequently, the boys' descent into savagery feels less like a comment on childhood; in its place, the metaphor that director Lupita A. Concio touched on at the very end resonates more strongly, with the children, unattended coming to resemble adults. Alkitrang Dugo could best be described as psychological horror, made more visceral by the sight and sound afforded by cinema. 

     To Concio, the children didn’t hit marks or try to construct their emotions in a role but rather if given the right circumstances would react with an unfiltered instinct needed for the story. The performances are remarkably organic with the trio of core characters standing out. Villamayor—who plays the mature pragmatist and elected chief, Luis—brings with him the right amount of sincerity as the one boy who tries to preserve a sense of democratic order. His opposite is represented by Andy (Paulate) who leads his fellow athletes—later rebranded in a fascistic manner as hunters—to the brink by reverting back to an anarchic primitive existence, fashioning spears and donning warpaint with fellow hunters and eventually forming a much more powerful rival tribe. In the middle of it all is Nilo (Toto Jr.), the four-eyed outsider who embodies the malaise of the outcast with the authentic awkwardness of a truly troubled adolescent trying to cling to some sense of morality amongst the chaos. This cunning corruption of paradise—a miniature Fall of Man—forces us to pit purity versus primitivism in the most direct manner of questioning our own nature and whether we would also be capable of such behavior. Concio embraces the illusion of vérité as a device to render expressionism with a sense of terrifying immediacy and palpability. There are many moments in Alkitrang Dugo that are unshakably beautiful and disturbing, allegorical yet weirdly real. Concio renders savagery with the despairing eye of a humanist and with the irresolvable ambivalence of an artist.

Screenplay: Nicanor B. Cleto Jr. Inspired By William Golding's "Lord of the Flies"

Cinematography: Joe Batac Jr.

Music By: Lutgardo Labad

Art Director: Ben Otico

Film Editor: Ben Barcelon

Directed By: Lupita A. Concio

     For the most part, Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa (New Sunrise Films, 2022) wobbles along while struggling to find a balance between the more heartfelt story of Ara Lumawig (Rita Daniela) and other characters central to the film and the determination of screenwriter Eric Ramos to paint a convincing story of the issues plaguing small town educational system and corruption. Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa takes on a serious topic, but fret not; the film is an absorbing, marvelously-acted piece of work that entertains without ever feeling like a school assignment. Director Joel C. Lamangan sees his characters as flawed people, but most of them are also inherently good.There is no question which side the viewer is supposed to be rooting for, though it helps that the protagonists are so easy to pull for as underdogs trying with all their might to make a difference in their children's and students' lives before it's too late. Ara's frustration leads her to befriend Ka Ambo (Lou Veloso) and together with Father Caloy (Jim Pebanco), they rescue a failing school and re-design it to foster effective learning. Obviously, Ara's educational reform is opposed by corrupt public official, Indang (Dorothy Gilmore). While it's a reasonable argument that Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa comes down pretty hard on its issues, Lamangan at least makes a decent effort to provide some balance for the film. It's clear that the real culprit here is the resistance to and fear of change, although it would be impossible to deny that Lamangan paints Lou Veloso's Ka Ambo as a man whose ideals remain uncorrupted over the years but, it's also acknowledged, mostly through the character of Pebanco's Father Caloy. Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa focuses on solving problems rather than assigning blame. The failings of the education system in the Philippines, for which there is plenty of blame to go around, are self-evident.

     Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa exploits an outrage that is experienced on a daily basis. But its clarion call is hampered by simplifications and distortions. The film’s heart is certainly in the right place not so, always, its head. But social-issue movies can have real societal impact. That’s why Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa deserves to be taken seriously and criticized seriously on its own terms. Lamangan has beautifully cast the film with actors and actresses who take average material and turn it into an involving and entertaining film. Pebanco for the most part is remarkable as the town priest. He gives a heartfelt performance that makes you wish you'd have someone like him to help you get through life. The film is stolen, however, by Daniela's magnificent turn as Ara, a public school teacher struggling with issues in the classroom. Her body becomes a cinematic vessel of apathy, frustration, sadness, grief and determination. As young Betchay, Felixia Dizon is simply wonderful with a performance that exudes both the innocence of childhood and the tattered edges of a child. Albie Casiño, who plays Teddy is able to see both sides of the argument being presented in the film. Jak Roberto is fine as Lt. Randy Meneses, but the romantic subplot that forms between himself and Ara is a non-starter that could have been excised with few changes made to the rest of the narrative even though it places them in an almost entirely predictable story outline. Lamangan proved that he's gifted at directing young people and he's also able to make complex subject matter accessible for a wider audience. Every aspect of a picture works in tandem to create a complete whole. Lamamgan does simplify the issues here, but he doesn't dumb them down. Madawag ang Landas Patungong Pag-Asa leaves a lasting impact because Lamangan beautifully weaves compelling characters into an intelligent and thought-provoking film that will tap into both your heart and mind.

 

Screenplay: Eric Ramos

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editing: Gilbert Obispo

Production Design: Jay Custodio

Music: Von de Guzman

Sound: Christopher Mendoza

Direction: Joel C. Lamangan

     The parent-child relationship has been quintessential cinematic fodder for decades. Filmmakers have kept digging into it, but rarely have they engaged with the messy, unwieldy duality and thrusting complexity hidden and entrenched within it. To do that requires honesty that isn’t afraid to acknowledge the tight spots lodged underneath the façade of affection and emotional ties. When and how does a mother-daughter relationship hurtle into becoming something that threatens to cut off almost every other relationship? What are the niggling insecurities and the throbbing loneliness that mask that suffocating bid for possessiveness?  In Isla Babuyan (Solid Gold Entertainment Production, 2025), director Jose Abdel B. Langit demonstrates an audacity by being willing to plunge into such questions. When the film opens in Paraiso, we are hurled into Rose (Lotlot de Leon) as she gets ready for the arrival of her estranged daughter, Anastasia (Geraldine Jennings) from London. She immediately comes to recognize her mother's insistence on hovering over every aspect of her life. Anatasia’s sense of autonomy is intrinsically linked to her mother’s goodwill and the connection she has forged. The dynamics between the two are ruptured by Jordan (Jameson Blake). As he pursues an interest in Anastasia, Rose finds herself confronted with the unsettling possibility of losing control over her daughter. Langit captures the mother’s fear of witnessing her daughter being wrenched away. She struggles to come to terms with Anastasia’s perceptible curiosity in another person and doesn’t hide her resentment of Jordan. Rose crumples when her daughter seems to be looking elsewhere and not her way. Anastasia enjoys the short sailing expeditions with Jordan, but when Javier (Paolo Gumabao) comes into the picture, he is thrown into unease. 

     The scenes where the three are present together roils with undercurrents as Langit subtly etches the myriad shades in the relationships colliding with each other, chafing for more visibility and attention. Javier sparks disagreements and jealousy between Anastasia and Jordan, and one can easily spot the toxicity lurking in every aspect of their relationship. Resentment, passive-aggressiveness, a lack of respect for boundaries – they’re all there, but in a very relatable way. There’s friction and tension that shoot through the cracks in every exchange underneath the gauze of niceties. Soon even the pleasantries are skipped. It’s obvious that both Rose and Anastasia are characters of flesh and blood. That said, their world is effectively a gilded cage, even if they live on the margins of society. Isla Babuyan creates an atmosphere where the viewer feels as trapped as Rose. The film could easily have veered into telenovela territory, but the director mostly avoids sentimentality. And, crucially, Rose and David (James Blanco) have a believable mix of love and hate with memories, experiences and resentments always bubbling just under the surface until finally, inevitably, they erupt. When Langit lets the explosion rip through in a confrontational scene where Rose and David's second wife, Margaux (Nathalie Hart) go at each other with their misgivings and fury, it is bursting with raw, undisguised emotion bobbing up from the very pits of vulnerability where mean, hurtful words are tossed. Isla Babuyan is stunning in its uncompromising devotion to not cutting away from emotionally acute needlepoint-like moments, conceding gradual privacy and dignity for its characters to grow and forge selfhood through painful realizations.

Screenplay: Jessie Villabrille

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editing: John Anthony L. Wong

Production Design: Jay Custodio

Music: Dek Margaja

Sound Engineer: Paulo Estero

Directed By: Jose Abdel B. Langit

     Jay Altarejos' Huwag Mo Akong Salingin (2076 Kolektib, 2025) begins with an homage to Noli Me Tángere, a novel by Filipino writer and activist José Rizal. From the glossy visual elements to how outfits redefine women and the effectively sublime satire of an environment that Altarejos knew so well. In any case, analysis of the plot development or personality traits of its main characters is hardly the appropriate approach to a film like Huwag Mo Akong Salingin.  Even more than the pointed socio-political commentary, this is a playful exercise in ideas that hides its more serious provocations, but still retains the power to dazzle any viewer willing to just be taken in by the visual audacity of it all. The sets and costumes are absolutely gorgeous. They help influence the characters making the film worth watching. Through the beautiful sets and costumes, Altarejos gives audiences a visual delight and perfect representation of that. Both help tell the story and play an integral part in keeping the viewer invested. Its anarchic skewering of a fashion culture much lighter in tone on its surface but still wielding a bludgeon every bit as cynical and dismissive of wholesome mainstream tastes, puts us on the other side of the camera, posing the question How does it feel to be a woman? Altarejos is too savvy to just tell us how it feels, but he clearly has a fun time giving us some delirious imagery to stop and take a good long look at. 

Fearuring the Gowns of Rene Magtibay Salud

Jewelry By: Milagros Berboso Imson

Written and Directed By: Joselito Altarejos

Director of Photography: Marco Bertillo Mata

Edited By: Jay Altarejos, Marco Bertillo Mata

Sound and Music By: Arbi Barbarona

Production Design: 2076 Kolektib

     Mike de Leon's Itim (1976) is a quiet, delicate piece, one aching with loss and regret. It's the kind of film which demands patience, not least because of the static photography and the largely wordless storytelling he employs. The characters are established with quick, subtle strokes. There are prolonged stretches which unfold without dialogue with only flourishes of a score. His tendency as a director is to privilege images over dialogue. Sometimes he hangs on an image for minutes more than we’re conditioned to expect by most Filipino films, forcing us to contemplate what we’re seeing. The storytelling is conveyed through style over narrative, both in its lingering visuals and editing. You have to watch, feel and experience what’s onscreen in order to follow the story, which begins to play with our expectations in ways that are deeply satisfying, almost cathartic. He repurposes elements of horror and makes them melancholic. 

     In Batch '81 (1982), De Leon guides us through Sid Lucero's (Mark Gil) initiation into ΑΚΩ (Alpha Kappa Omega), a prestigious campus fraternity, based around surviving hell as a rite of passage to entry into the fraternity that’s intended to build the bonds of brotherhood. The film is a terrifying look at this phenomenon – it’s about out-of-control male machismo, the sadistic pack instinct, hazing and its repercussions on vulnerable individuals. A sequence of a pack of naked young men silent, though they are clearly shouting or maybe screaming, explores in convincing detail the sadistic macho posturing that pervades such organizations. But as the hazing gets more and more psychologically and physically tormenting, the casual, almost unconscious one-upmanship spirals out of control. What’s almost worse is that these heinous acts of torture are mostly met with blind obedience. Batch '81 creates suspense, disgust and amazement, it’s resonant, thought-provoking and memorable. 

REQUIESCAT IN PACE…

MIKE DE LEON

May 24,1947 - August 28, 2025

     KANI Releasing’s Bona is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. The 4K Blu-ray is Region-free and the Blu-ray is Region-A locked.

     For more about the 4K restoration, see Bitter Revenge

     The following text appears inside the leaflet provided with this release:

Bona was restored in 4K by Cité de Mémoire from the 35mm original camera and sound negative reels.

4K Scanning: Cité de Mémoire

Film handling, image and sound repairs & Digital Image Restoration: Regis Desort

Negative scene by scene image scanning & color grading: Isabelle Barrière

CSI Negative sound scanning & digital restoration: L.E. Diapson

Project Management: Denis Garcia

     In native 4K, the 4K makeover of Bona can be viewed with Dolby Vision and HDR grades. I chose to view it with Dolby Vision and later spent time with the 1080p presentation of it on the Blu-ray. Please note that the screen captures included with this review are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc, including the actual color values. This is by and large a great looking transfer, one with good saturation levels and some nicely rendered fine detail. Reds in particular pop with considerable authority. It gives the film an all-around attractive and stable organic appearance, which is equally convincing in native 4K and 1080p resolutions. Bona features naturalistic colors and a relatively high dynamic range that creates a distinct separation between the subtle shades of browns that dominate the film’s color palette. Many different parts of the film easily convey far better density levels. As a result, virtually all of the darker footage boasts clearer, tighter and ultimately more pleasing visuals with wonderful organic qualities. Various primaries and supporting nuances have vastly improved saturation levels. I think that they are a tad warmer now, but the overall balance is right and there are no distracting anomalies. Also, in native 4K, the color palette is expanded, so there are some new ranges of supporting nuances, many of which help the darker footage quite a bit by further strengthening the dynamic range. The Dolby Vision grade is gentle and effective. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. The entire presentation looks spotless. I think those who have patiently waited for Bona to be restored will be enormously satisfied with its transition to 4K Blu-ray.

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Tagalog DTS 1.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame. The lossless track reproduces the qualities of the original soundtrack very nicely. The audio presentation boasts clean, crisp dialogue and it especially impresses whenever Max Jocson’s score is brought to the forefront.

Special Features and Extras

Jeric Soriano - in this new program, Lino Brocka's Assistant Director discuss the filming of Bona and its complicated production. The program was produced in 2025. In English, subtitled (11 minutes).

Nanding Josef - in this new program, Nanding Josef who played Nilo, Bona's suitor discuss the film and its unique qualities. The program was produced in 2025. In Tagalog, with English subtitles (22 minutes).

Q&A with Allan Brocka at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The program was created by KANI Releasing in 2024. In English, not subtitled. (22 minutes).

Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.'s short film, SUPERFAN produced in 2009. (SD). In Tagalog with English subtitles. (22 minutes). 

Trailer - presented here is the New 4K Restoration trailer for Bona. In Tagalog, with English subtitles. (2 minutes).

Booklet - a 25 page illustrated booklet featuring Perverse Defiance, an insightful essay by Professor José B. Capino, author of the book Martial Law Melodrama, as well as technical credits and acknowledgements.

     Bona attests to Nora Aunor’s remarkable versatility as an actress.  KANI's combo pack introduces a fabulous new 4K restoration available only on the 4K Blu-ray, that is guaranteed to thrill its fans.

 

     There was a time when most people didn’t know men sold sex and didn’t want to know. Now the cruising underworld is the stuff of movies and fashion ads that are easy to decode. Writer-director Petersen Vargas' Some Nights I Feel Like Walking (Daluyong Studios, Origin8 Media, Giraffe Pictures, TEN17P, Black Cap Productions, Momo Film Co., Volos Films Italia, 2024) dramatizes the lifestyle where the audience gets to meet the locals while keeping a safe distance. That’s because the hustling world is sentimentalized here, filtered through a lens of romanticism. Although the central characters are prostitutes, the movie is not really about sex. Vargas does a good job of capturing the unsprung rhythm of the street. Some Nights I Feel Like Walking offers a gritty, darkly comical peek inside the lives of these young men as they try to hustle their way off the streets. While the films' overall portrayal of the hustler milieu mixes surface realism with an undercurrent of romanticization, the tale’s early parts are winningly spiced with humorous moments. Things grow gloomy as circumstances begin to close in on Uno (Jomari Angeles) and Zion (Miguel Odron) and the latter sections lack the spark of what came before, largely because the story’s tragic arc plays out what the viewer has already learned. Still, the central figures remain compelling throughout, due to two exceptionally strong and well-meshed performances. Newcomer Odron brings a sweetness and skittish vulnerability to Zion. He holds our sympathies even at his most petulant. As for Angeles, it’s remarkable to note that this is one of his most confident performances, who commands attention with his charismatic yet subtle and searching incarnation of a strong-willed loner undone by his life’s contradictions. The performance is both appealing and authoritative, Uno doesn't expect much out of life and his low expectations aren't disappointed. 

     Vargas' adroit work with his cast is matched by an assured visual sense and Some Nights I Feel Like Walking benefits enormously from the richly textured images that cinematographer Russell Adam Morton achieved on a low-budget, location-heavy shoot. As much as Vargas wanted to heighten the utopian thrill of Uno's circle and the environment in which they’re free to be themselves, there is also enough of a reservoir of restraint to keep things solidly clad in social realism. While Vargas' film lacks depth and well-paced narrative, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking does offer characters whose only salvation is a world in which trust and tolerance are absent. In trying to run away from the trappings of a tragic queer story, the movie ends up running right into some of its own tropes. Zion is shown to be rather isolated, very much in his own head and keeping others – as well as the audience – at bay. When he’s left alone, he is at his most vulnerable, sometimes crying but we’re not entirely sure why. What Zion wants is love and by love what he really means is someone to hold him and care for him. They have fallen into a lifestyle that offers them up during every waking moment for any passing stranger. Minor appearances by solid performers such as Argel Saycon as Bayani, Tommy Alejandrino who plays Rush and Gold Aceron’s Miguel round out the film. With varying effectiveness, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking chronicles changes to individuals who wander the streets of Manila. In the end, however, the film gets caught up in trying to tell a grandly melodramatic tale, when a simple, down-to-earth story of broken dreams and lonely characters would have been more engrossing. Too often, the naturally-effective elements of Some Nights I Feel Like Walking are swamped by the forced, scripted ones that curtails the movie's power and appeal.

Music: Alyana Cabral, Moe Cabral

Sound Design: Eddie Huang (Nien Yung)

Editor: Daniel Hui

Production Designer: Remton Siega Zuasola

Director of Photography: Russell Adam Morton

Written and Directed By: Petersen Vargas 

     It’s a testament to director Chito S. Roño’s Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan (Regal Entertainment, Inc., Black Sheep, CSR Films.Ph, 2023) that it manages to incorporate so many of the visual and storytelling elements from lesser movies to create something compelling. Roño has executed the most effective, most rewarding horror film by exploring a demanding scenario that is all the scarier because he has constructed a dramatically tense situation to draw our emotional involvement. What’s more, the experience is grueling because the imposing imagery employed is truly the stuff of nightmares. There’s an emotional cause behind every horrible turn. Joshua Garcia plays Galo Manansala with amazing intensity—the kind that makes you wonder how the filmmakers incited the volatile performance, making his character's state so believable. Garcia’s slow transformation leaves room for Bob Ong’s screenplay to find new ways of highlighting Galo’s uneasiness to relinquish the past. Most viewers, if they’re honest with themselves, will probably hate Mama Susan (Angie Ferro) and they’ll be uncomfortable with the extent of their hatred and what that says about their capacity for empathy. This discomfort is conditioned by the shrill soundtrack dreading Mama Susan’s whimpering or all-around act of invasion. Roño's treatment is masterful in how he uses our imaginations to build up Mama Susan's "friends" and delivers them in expert cinematic reality. 

     Moreover, he creates a highly stylized mise-en-scène constructed as a contained environment from which Galo, Niko (Yñigo Delen) and Jezel (Jewel Milag) are exposed to a frightening blend of psychological and real horror. Equally vital are cinematographer Eli Balce’s shadowy interiors, as well as Roño’s enveloping sense of mood and attention to detail. Every piece of furniture has a deliberate placement, best of all, the treatment avoids strict adherence to genre rules; he refuses to make this a typical supernatural yarn and instead uses his supporting cast—Aling Delia, played by Vangie Labalan and church caretaker Mang Narcing (Soliman Cruz), to deepen his central characters. Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan takes great care to sharpen the details in Galo’s life so that when trouble comes along, it magnifies his anxiety. Perhaps the only elements that compare to Roño’s approach are Ferro and Garcia’s performances, especially the latter, since the young actor fully commits to his role with a mercurial presence, sending us further into the story. But it’s how Roño balances the film’s unnerving quality, genuine scares and its deep-rooted psychological impetus that leave us in full awe of how well Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan has been assembled and how it walks the fine line between reality and nightmares with skilled footing. The unexpected ending finds a rare emotional realism in what could have been a run-of-the-mill creepshow.

Directed By: Chito S. Roño

Screenplay: Bob Ong

Director of Photography: Eli Balce

Production Design: Jerann Ordinario

Editing: Carlo Francisco Manatad

Music: Andrew Florentino

Sound Design: Albert Michael Idioma, Jannina Mikaela Minglanilla

     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

     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

     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.

     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. 

     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

     Right from the start of Chito S. Roño's Espantaho (Quantum Films, Cineko Productions, Purple Bunny Productions, CSR Films.Ph., 2024), Lorna Tolentino as Rosa emotes substantially with expressions alone, but is also wholly capable of delivering her lines convincingly – her voice and guarded body language is exactly of someone who has a terrible secret. This is her film and she makes it work. Tolentino also nicely complements Judy Ann Santos, who takes on a more subdued, contemplative persona as Monet. There is poignancy in her bewilderment. Chanda Romero plays Adele with every nerve frayed, every emotion on the surface of her face. In context, young Kian Co's performance as Keith, works beautifully. Fortunately, there are no weak links here, even in the minor, supporting parts, which is essential in a horror film – especially one with supernatural elements. Espantaho is a horror picture on the outside, but it also does a striking job of how people cope with tragedies and disquieting attitudes. But more than anything else, the crux of the story – is unforgettable. It’s a creative, haunting attribute that sets the stage for numerous, expertly crafted sequences of terror. But just as scary, or at least as unsettling, is the film's presentation of human existence as an endless series of tragedies and agonies, relieved only by foolish distraction. The heart of Espantaho is in the conversations between Rosa and Monet, as well as between Monet and the frazzled Adele. Roño builds and sustains an eerie mood made up of equal parts tension and despair. Unlike ninety percent of films, Espantaho gets better as it goes along. I have to admit I was blind-sided by the ending. 

     The solution to many of the film’s puzzlements is right there in plain view and the movie hasn’t cheated, but the very boldness of the storytelling carried me right past the crucial hints and right through to the end of the film, where everything takes on an intriguing new dimension. Chris Martinez's screenplay is a perfect example of misdirection. The way he frames the story and the interactions characters have with each other are subtle enough on a first watch, but clever and obvious on subsequent viewings. Once Roño reveals the reason for all this, Santos' performance takes on a sense of poignancy. Monet's love for Rosa is a crucial facet of Espantaho and she demonstrates it flawlessly. It has a kind of calm, sneaky self-confidence that allows it to take us down a strange path, intriguingly. Roño's main concerns are isolation and the strains and tensions of family ties. Espantaho is an attention-grabbing fusion of minimalism and overstatement. The horror story is shot as Andrei Tarkovsky might have shot it, with briefly glimpsed figures on the fringes and with constant ambiguities of action and attitude. Setting the mood persuades us that an unseen intruder is about to pounce. Here, Roño is in top form. The camerawork by Neil Daza is gorgeous and shadowy, making much use of Roño’s expert framing and camera blocking. Plus, the music by Von de Guzman adds to the chilling, mysterious effect that the director wants to create, but the movie lays realistic groundwork for the supernatural events to come. And when they come, they are all the more unsettling for being rather matter-of-fact. Espantaho is an impressively well-rounded, triumphant thriller, full of unexpectedly positive themes that transcend its typical classification as a mere horror flick. 

A Film By:  Chito S. Roño

Screenplay: Chris Martinez

Director of Photography: Neil Daza, LPS

Production Design: Angel B. Diesta, PDGP

Editor: Benjo Ferrer

Music: Von de Guzman

Sound: Alex Tomboc, Lamberto Casas Jr.

 

     Fandom comes in many forms, whether you’re talking about the different subgenres of the pop-culture obsessed or the types of fans themselves and how they choose to express that devotion as individuals. It’s no wonder that after decades of pop culture obsession gradually morphing into a globally recognized phenomenon, we’ve taken to documenting fandom on film, through both fictional and nonfictional accounts of people willing to go very far, maybe even too far, for the things they love. Infused with a fresh, crowded sense of community, Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.'s Faney (The Fan) (Frontrow Entertainment, Intele Builders, Noble Wolf, AQ Films, 2025) is anchored by an emotionally wrought yet effective turn by Laurice Guillen. She etches an unforgettable screen character in Lola Milagros/Bona, a woman whose complexities and eccentricities match her dignity and willpower. While Althea Ablan is authentic and funny as Bea, Milagros' great granddaughter, Gina Alajar's Babette is the real lynchpin, the part that truly holds the film together. It is too easy to overlook what she does because she plays daughter to Guillen's mother, but she is arguably the most important character because Babette embodies the kind of innate decency to which all the other characters must aspire. Of course, fandom can get out of one’s control, which is what happens in Faney’s most entertaining subplot involving Pacita M. (Roderick Paulate). Added to this, we find it exploring themes of family – particularly the challenges of mother-daughter relationships and how they can usually be softened by speaking from the heart. 

     The film is more nuanced and it points out that nostalgia lies and simplifies, but it's also yearning and swooning enough that it doesn't mind us being nostalgic. It wants the viewer to be more sensible and objective, so we're thinking about the characters as characters. Loss is something that everyone processes differently and much has been written about the fact that no two people mourn in the same way, which is precisely why no one has been able to craft the definitive text on grief, despite it being one of the most common philosophical and artistic motifs across all of human history. Because of its strong sense of character development, Faney touches a plethora of emotional chords. It is unabashedly sentimental with tear-filled scenes, plenty of hugs and moments of downright existential angst. Yet there are also moments of lightness sprinkled throughout and, deep intimacy and exceptional believability, as well as a dash of full-on humor, that makes things far less dour than they otherwise easily could have been. The poignancy of Lola Milagros’ visit to Nora Aunor’s gravesite is calculated to make the audience join her in regretting that she’s come to the end of her devotion. We too can feel a palpable absence, ready to believe that she’s really gone. It’s hard to imagine another director doing a more loving, thorough job with this material. Through the extraordinary grace of Alix’s filmmaking which revels in the transmutational power of filmmaking itself, Faney renders it larger than life. The film lives on Guillen's performance and she once again shows, as she did in last year’s Guardia de Honor that she’s up to the task of shouldering such a complex character with seeming ease. Faney is a celebration of a pop culture phenomenon. By the end, we're looking at Lola Milagros and the world, through Nora Aunor's eyes. It does work off the conventions that rule more ordinary movies, but only to enrich its own singular voice. 

Sound Design: Roy Santos

Production Design: Jhon Paul Sapitula

Editing: Xila Ofloda, Mark Llona

Music: Mikoy Morales

Director of Photography: Odyssey Flores

Written and Directed By Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.

     Greatest Performance (NCV Films, 1989) gambles its entire first half on lead actress, Nora Aunor playing Laura Villa being able to simultaneously present a character who is enormously, unquestionably gifted, but sufficiently insular and self-doubting that she needs to have someone intercede with the world on her behalf. Aunor ticks all of those boxes as easily as breathing, while also showing that Laura's talent is sufficiently undisciplined to justify keeping Cholo (Julio Diaz) around. Despite how inextricable Aunor’s personal pain is, the arrival of catharsis twenty minutes in feels audaciously premature. At this point Aunor’s character, an unknown singer has been established only in broad strokes. The voice exposes interiority, the inside of a body and self, the very things that get obscured in a genre so invested in surface beauty. But if ever a narrative movie could be said to fulfill some sort of ideal of a singer’s film, Greatest Performance is it, in the way it visually mythologizes the singer in the act. Where most emotionally driven musical numbers serve as outlets for what’s being felt in the heat of a given moment, the anguish surging through Iisa Pa Lamang exists independent of any apparent catalyst. Aunor’s voice becomes all the more compelling for having wriggled out of contextual constraints, for stopping us in our tracks without the justifications of narrative or character development. It’s Aunor’s voice that makes it difficult to hear the song as anything other than an authentic cry of pain. And it’s their sharing of this same inimitable sound that makes actor and character impossible to disentangle. The scene assumes that, in Aunor’s hands, any sad love song is inescapably personal. Without her, such an unseemly outpouring would lack all credibility. Iisa Pa Lamang lingers like an aftertaste, an agonizingly short-lived moment of clarity that the rest of the film feels all the more poignant for failing to recreate.

     It’s the self-knowing and effortfulness of the acting, the moment-to-moment decisions moving it forward, that foreground the song’s seemingly inevitable candor. Aunor played the part with such raw emotion that it was often painful to observe. With Laura's talent as the driving engine for the whole movie, Greatest Performance does trade pretty heavily on Aunor's star power, but it's never just red meat for the fans. The single most obvious gesture in the film is Iisa Pa Lamang.  We catch glimpses of a shift in her acting style that becomes more pronounced. Aunor, the filmmaker, in her detached authorial power, has captured what she needs while Aunor, the performer, is left with all that emotional excess roiling inside her. It’s a brief moment, one that evokes its obsessive chronicling of the singer’s transformations in and out of performance and its cold observation of everyone else’s indifference toward the toll it must be taking on her. Greatest Performance honors the chameleonic dexterity and creative agency of the performer whose constant self-making may exist within another’s vision but is never any less her own. Laura becomes a palimpsest of the actor’s accumulated public self and because we know the beauty of the singing originates from the depths of a life lived, we are led to acknowledge an offscreen Laura who for all we know may have suffered a pain that likewise preceded the camera. Laying her soul bare, Aunor articulates the plight of a singer with such raw agony that it transcends the art form of acting and registers on a level that is real. The endless days of cheering strangers while harboring private pain remains one of the most powerful stretches of cinema ever conceived. Tirso Cruz III holds his own dramatically with Aunor, but while he pulls off the big scene of a dressing-room breakdown, its effect is inevitably informed by our knowledge that he lived his own life, not the character, Briccio. Aunor's public life sheds light on the places where her character has been granted relative privacy and mystery. For all her personal problems, Aunor shows on the screen why she’s a star. As a melodrama, this real-life presentation is roaring with intense fierceness.

Sound Supervision: Rolly Ruta

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr. (FEGP)

Musical Director: Danny Tan

Production Design: Merlito 'Len' Santos

Cinematographer: Johnny Araojo

Written & Directed By: Guy

     There’s certainly no doubting the fact that Nora Aunor was a major star of the 1970s, with a string of box-office hits behind her and a legion of die-hard fans. She also had a distinctive star image of an unconventional woman. I’ve often asked myself if we neglected to fully recognize the extent to which Aunor’s celebrity beyond her film roles provided her fans with greater access to her personality. And so the time has come to revisit this question by considering Nora Aunor not only as an actor and a star but also as a celebrity. Looking at the final decade of Aunor’s career certainly reveals that she was a major celebrity consistently profiled in the press, magazines, on television and social media. Now I’m wondering if celebrity was a major facet of her work as a star at a much earlier stage of her career. It’s something that I need to pay more attention to. Aunor gained a considerable amount of publicity and sympathy among moviegoers and movie magazine readers, significantly raising her profile.Throughout her film career, Nora Aunor was to draw repeatedly on many of the expressive techniques most often seen in the way she concentrates her performance specifically on the movements and tensions of her shoulders, torso, hips and arms. Aunor in 'Merika (1984) demonstrates her greater finesse and subtlety but also her greater reliance upon the technology of cinema. The camera’s ability to register and project minute movements and expressions is used to maximum effect here. What has gone is the attempt to project thoughts and feeling via elaborate physical action. It is not that she ceases to use physical movement to express her character’s every thought and feeling but rather that muscle tension and tiny movements of eyes and fingers convey as much (indeed more than) an arm thrown out from the body or a writhing torso, all of which are registered and revealed by the camera. Under restraint, Aunor produced a much finer and more affective screen performance in 'Merika. Aunor had proven herself not only capable of quiet restraint on the big screen but also of sparkling, ironic and witty comic playing in order to secure what is called a "smash hit comedy." However, she would attain the very highest levels of stardom and praise for her performances in a string of heavy duty dramas widely referred to as  “melodrama." As one of the country’s biggest stars, Aunor is regularly featured in movie magazines, often appearing on the covers, but also featured in photo-spreads and appeared in advertisements for products such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Dial soap. Her marital breakdowns were regularly cited in the papers, and there were sometimes intimations of relationships with co-stars. 

     Television certainly proved more lucrative for her, with many of the fans that had flocked to see her movies watching her on the small screen in their homes in episodes of the weekly drama anthology, Ang Makulay na Daigdig ni Nora and her Sunday evening variety show, Superstar. Yet Aunor was struck down by ill health in 2022. Little regard was given to the effects that it might have on Aunor’s now precarious health, career and image. In fact, it couldn’t have been better calculated to jeopardize her recovery and destroy what remained of her career and public persona. Yet, once again, Aunor revealed a remarkable resilience and rather than withdraw from public view, she took whatever work was available to her, often in the full glare of the celebrity spotlight. Earlier the same year, Aunor completed work on one of her most remarkable films, Adolfo Alix's Kontrabida. This touching portrait would have made a fitting end to Aunor's illustrious film career. Aunor and her films have shown no sign of being forgotten. Nora Aunor is remembered as a great actor, an independent spirit and a gay icon. This is partly because she was a huge star and a remarkable actor but also because she maintained her celebrity profile during the troughs of her film career. Although she earned a place in film history during her lifetime, she repeatedly insisted on maintaining her cultural visibility by whatever means she could. Aunor's long and distinguished career demonstrates many of the classic hallmarks of film stardom: the rise to success and the fall from glory; the peaks and the troughs; the adjustments to accommodate age and changes in the nature of the Philippine film industry. Aunor's career illustrates the restrictions of the contract system, while her career delineates the consequences of the break-up of the studio system and the shift undertaken by stars as they were transformed from studio-owned and controlled properties to freelance agents responsible for their own choices and publicity. Her career after 1973, provides a case study for how studio stars survived in the post-studio era by appealing predominantly to marginalized audiences, while continuing to move between mainstream and more marginal productions. Meanwhile, her posthumous career is instructive in terms of how and why some stars are remembered while others are forgotten. At this moment in time, it looks very unlikely that Nora Aunor will ever be forgotten. For there is so much to remember and admire about this woman who subsequently became one of the greatest screen performers and one of the most respected celebrities. It can certainly be claimed that she is one of the most fascinating and accomplished women to have lived and worked on this planet. In short, her’s is a great story that deserves to be told and told again. As I’m sure it will.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE…

NORA AUNOR

May 21, 1953  - April 16, 2025

     It was that heady moment when movies had become cinema and were being recognized as art, with fierce critical battles underway. In the Philippines, critics suddenly had disputes and followings, while serious film books and even collections of reviews were coming out from trade publishers. The URIAN Anthology 1970-1979 landed in 1983 where a number of critics wrote essays on their chosen films, many of them prefacing their essays with a distinction between favorite movies and greatest films. My life stretches back to when we casually went to the movies, walked in at any point, stayed through the coming attractions and left where we came in. The New Frontier Theater in Cubao, in the late ’70s and ’80s, Coronet, Remar and Diamond Theaters on Aurora Boulevard, ACT Theaters and Ocean Cinemas along EDSA, and lost myself at The Manila Film Center of course. But we’ve been writing obituaries for movie theaters almost as long as we’ve been mourning the death of cinema and of cinephiles. The latter two are alive and well and yes we miss the physicality of theaters and audiences, but perhaps we should think of this not as a zero-sum loss but as a transmogrification, a metamorphosis. The where and how is not as important as the what, the thing itself. 

     There was a crusading fervor to the arguments. It was a fanaticism unique to moviegoers born of a conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern, distinctively accessible, poetic and mysterious, and erotic and moral. For cinephiles, the movies encapsulated everything. It was the moment when cinema became conscious of itself. There are not enough hours in the day to make a dent in my ever-lengthening watchlist. I pursue whims and passions as I never could have done years ago: I went through an Ishmael Bernal phase and watched Sugat sa Ugat (1980), revisted Pagdating sa Dulo (1971), Nunal sa Tubig (1976), Manila by Night (1980) and Himala (1982). We all have favorite movie years or decades, often having less to do with the quality of the movies than with our own age and susceptibility, who we were and were about to be, at the time. For someone who formed an early addiction to transactions between grown-up men and women, my favorite theaters where my cinema education and my adulthood really began—screens that, in retrospect, seem both smaller and larger than the one in my bedroom. On the latter I watched all or most recent Filipino films. And I began to think about the idea of spectacle being as much in the beholder’s eye as on the screen.     

     When VHS was introduced in 1977 and DVDs burst onto the scene 20 years later, consumers were presented with the first viable alternatives to a movie theater. Though seen as revolutionary then, watching movies at home and bypassing theaters continues to grow. Streaming services have been available since 2005 when YouTube burst on the scene and its pickup continues to increase sharply, particularly in the past few years. Over the last decade, movie theater attendance has declined and the list of streaming services seemingly grows every day. However, COVID-19 devastated theaters due to closures and the apprehension people felt about returning to theaters after the lockdown. Streaming services facilitate the production and distribution of more diverse and niche content. In addition, because they are not as limited by the traditional studio system, streaming services can take more chances on relatively unknown filmmakers and projects, which might have a more challenging time securing funding or distribution through conventional channels. A broader range of voices and perspectives are now represented in film. It is easier for underrepresented groups to find content that echoes their experiences. Streaming services are now challenging traditional studios as prolific producers of films. Should they continue investing in original content production, this could lead to an even greater diversity of voices and perspectives represented in the entertainment industry. As these services grow in popularity, their impact on the film industry will continue to evolve, requiring traditional distribution channels to adapt and find ways to coexist.

     Because we are people with real lives and infinite similarities as a people, an audience or a country for that matter, movies of realistic fiction settings, spanning from comedy to drama and romance constantly earn their rightful piece of the artistic spotlight. They are personally engaging. These films move us. Chalk it up to the "human condition." Focusing on film as an audience, we constantly compare our own lives to what we are watching. Since life is hard no matter the setting, we often take stock in watching a film that either reminds us how good we had it or by contrast, offers relief that others had it just as hard or worse than we did. This is almost an automatic response for us as an audience and we are drawn to that feeling. Joel C. Lamangan's Fatherland (Bentria Productions, Heaven's Best Entertainment, 2025) avoids the linear and oscillates between Alex’s (Inigo Pascual) memories of his father Ipe (Allen Dizon). Lamangan and screenwriter Roy Iglesias know real-life events don't play out or turn out like they do in the movies. They aren't announced with inane plot-descriptive dialogue by supporting characters. Real lives move in moments and operate in nuances. Fatherland is about men and Lamangan weaves his narrative from two temporal threads. One is the story of how Alex begins the search for his father. The other is the story of Ipe, as lovers and family members remember him. The entire film is filtered through Alex’s consciousness, rendered in a way that affirms the basic condition of cinema—that every image is as present on the screen as every other image. Dizon has a seemingly impossible task of playing three different personalities, convincing us all that they’re in the same body and having them all come across as sincere and non-gimmicky. He is especially amazing to watch. There’s enough nuance in Dizon’s demeanor for you to really read into them and it’s fascinating to observe such intricate dynamics play out within a single person. He also plays Ipe’s alters, Fayez and Teban, performed with the same manic quality Dizon brought to his role in Abenida (2023). As we meet Ipe’s alters, the film becomes a stage for Dizon to unleash a repertoire of personas. 

     In the Digital Age, an era dominated by rapidly evolving information technology, it is hard to imagine how pieces of our cinematic legacy could disappear forever. After all, audiovisual materials can be digitized and saved using a cloud-based online video storage provider or for those of us who prefer tangible, local data storage to servers in off-site locations — on DVDs, external hard drives or flash drives. And once you have a digital copy, it will last forever, right? Well, not exactly. Digital archiving is not the answer to this ongoing problem of deteriorating film stock and lost titles. Digital storage media, none of them last a fraction as long as celluloid negatives and prints kept in cool, dry, cared-for archives. The “cloud” isn’t the answer and the pie-in-the-sky possibilities suggest that the process of migrating preserved digital copies of historically significant material will be ongoing as technology evolves in ever faster cycles. Much of our filmed history and cinema has already been lost forever. Estimates on the number of lost films vary, most of the films made roughly 100 years ago are lost. The number of films currently in need of preservation is overwhelming, particularly when considering the complexity and cost of professional restoration. If moving images survive, live on and remain accessible in our days it is due to the efforts of dedicated individuals who have worked against time, trying to rescue films regardless of their commercial value. Film degrades. If it’s not provided continuous maintenance and stored at a target temperature, the celluloid will degrade and become unwatchable.  

     Besides preserving decaying film before it disintegrates and tracking down lost movies, archivists have broadened the perception and the scope of the accepted film canon through the discovery of lost treasures. For restorers, preservation too often involves the difficult decision of what can be saved. In the Philippines, the humidity and the lack of funding pose formidable challenges, making restoration of existing work a luxury. Loss is the foundation of archiving. If you’ve experienced the loss of a cinematic gem, the fervent goal is to prevent such casualties. With every lost film, there’s more lost history. And what’s been found and restored opens our eyes. All restoration projects start with research like finding the best elements that still exist whether the original camera negative or the best generation available. The copies are compared, frame by frame and the restorer takes the best essence to make a hybrid. Physical repairs are made frame by frame using digital technology. The original filmmakers, if still available, are always consulted. The film may be restored digitally but it will be preserved on analog. The goal is to restore, not to perfection but to what the film probably looked like when it first came out. Film must be preserved, saved, and above all, shown. The influence of old films on new filmmakers is incalculable. If we’re ever to learn from the past — a big if, but perhaps it’s still too early to surrender to despair then their work matters and in the purest sense, its preservation is of the deepest political consequence. Through films we bear witness to atrocities and wonders, crimes against humanity and everyday joys. We learn where we came from and see what we dream of. 

     Made in low-key, vérité style, writer/director TM Malones favors an austere approach that relies on long, unblinking takes, uses no music that doesn’t occur within the action itself. Remote lands are often treasure boxes full of local lore. Set in Gigantes Island, an island chain within the larger Western Visayas archipelago in the Visayan Sea, Salum (Dark Media Productions, Bonfire Productions, Filmpost Studios, Puregold Cinepanalo Film Festival, 2025) uses complex aesthetic combinations of camera and light to infuse its beauty by combining poetic imagery with diegetic conversation. Malones' living tableaus seem almost expressionistic, capturing informal portraits of Kasko (Allen Dizon) and daughter Arya (Chiristine Mary Demaisip) through gesture. Salum locates the richness in its simplicity, offering such tender moments as the living treasures Kasko finds in the ocean depths. The underwater scenes play with a bloc of soft muffled tones, often bestowing a preternatural sensuousness to the lush, rippling images, both instinctive and carefully considered. Salum’s washed-out palette pop against the deep blue, almost as though one were looking through a viewfinder. Malones' light seems veiled and diffused, at times overwhelming in its beguiling intensity. Rather than the clichéd pinscreen of the tiny human figure dwarfed by nature, Malones favors closer shots that align humans and the environment challenging romantic notions with his camera. Isolated with the father-daughter pair freed from worldly concern or by the image of a frustrated Kasko diving into the murky depths of the ocean, Salum produces such resonant images at a pace that belies the more relaxed rhythms of its story. 

     The director has a keen eye for blocking, carefully composing some shots so we have to rely on reflections and background figures. Dizon's magnetic performance brings to life one of the greatest depictions of flawed fatherhood in recent memory, as he brims with both an ineffaceable warmth and an endearing ruggedness. Dizon’s Kasko is far from the perfect dad, but we are drawn into his concerted effort to not only be a great parent but a best friend to his daughter. Demaisip’s Arya radiates with an innate curiosity, as her expressive, yet understated performance perfectly captures the sheer multitude of what Kasko means to her—and the profound impact it will have on her. Simply put, it’s one of the strongest performances in recent years. Salum excels off its two dynamic performances, taut direction and lush cinematography. It’s no surprise that it all beautifully coalesces in a cathartic swell of emotions that crashes down on its audience with immense power, unearthing all the faint and fleeting images we have of the people who mean the most to us. It truly is an astonishing achievement. Events play out at an unhurried pace, but the film certainly leaves a lasting emotional impression. Salum is left open-ended and that’s a perfect conclusion to this portrait of a father and daughter relationship. Deftly constructed and utterly heartbreaking, Salum announces Malones as an eminent storyteller of prodigious powers.

Director of Photography: TM Malones

Production Designer Kyle Fermindoza

Editor: Tara Illenberger

Sound Design: Fatima Nerikka Salim, Immanuel Verona

Music By: Armor Rapista

Written & Directed By: TM Malones