Author: Wanggo Gallaga

MOVIE REVIEW: Filled with so much heart, ‘When This Is All Over’ is a great showcase for Juan Karlos’ range

‘When This is All Over’ brings us back to the start of the pandemic and the early days of the quarantine. It puts into focus one condominium and the disparity between the quarantine experience of both its wealthy residents and the working class folks who keep the building running. It harkens back to the time of people breaking protocols and their overall dismissive attitudes towards what appeared to be an inconvenience to what is depicted as their empty lives. In the middle of these two is The Guy, played by Juan Karlos, a resident but not entirely of the upper strata as its other inhabitants. He’s a drug dealer, trying to raise money so that he can leave the country to be with his mother in America, with her new family.

Director Kevin Mayuga doesn’t focus too much on the pandemic as it is merely the backdrop of The Guy’s obstacles to reuniting with his mom. He’s more involved with establishing the milieu of the upper class characters, whose point-of-view is that the pandemic is more of an annoyance that is stopping them from being able to party. The party scenes is where Mayuga gets to have fun, playing out each trip from weed to acid to shrooms in a way that totally warps the film’s world and highlights The Guy’s inability to face his reality.

While selling drugs to other residents in the same building, he discovers that one of the girls, Taylor (Chaye Mogg), has connections to the embassy and can fast track his visa application. He tries to impress her by suggesting a place where they can hold a party, something which Taylor is missing so much. The Guy found a route to the building’s rooftop while looking for a place to smoke and there he meets and befriends Rosemarie (Jorrybell Agoto), an admin staff, who also uses the rooftop to get some air and find some space.

For The Guy to deliver on his promise, he has to trick Rosemarie and get the keys to the rooftop so that Taylor and her friends can hold their party and relive their wild drunken lives as an escape from the pandemic.

Mayuga manages the balancing act between upper class frivolities and working class anxieties rather well. While Taylor and her friends (played by Noor Hooshmand, Renee Dominique, and Aaron Maniego) are obnoxious and wholly immoral at a hyper-real level, it works because Mayuga plays off the tone of his film like an urban fable. In opposition, he presents Rosemarie and the rest of the building staff (which includes Lottie Bie and Zara Loayan) as grounded and real. Juan Karlos, as The Guy, manages to shift and transform depending on who he is with with such ease that it shows off his great versatility and charm. He’s the fulcrum that makes this whole movie work. The Guy is not a bad guy, he’s just desperate to be with his mom, his loneliness and inability to really take care of himself is evident in many scenes in act one. We don’t approve of what he does but we understand where he is coming from.

It’s what really makes ‘When This Is All Over’ work. The story is simple and can even be predictable but it’s done with so much care and earnestness that it carries through. Sure, Taylor and her friends are made to be despicable people (though Dominique’s Nicole manages to show layers and nuance in both the writing and performance of the character) but Mayuga still manages to treat them with love and care. The dialogue, the sensibilities, the attitudes are all coming from an authentic place. It’s not meant to ridicule them but show their darkest side of that class. And by not going to deep among the working class characters, he keeps them from becoming romanticized and allows them to be human. Filtered through the point-of-view of The Guy, the horrible things he does to them just to appease the rich folk and get his visa becomes even more cruel and inhumane and the life lessons he will come to learn by the third act becomes earned.

While the film has so much heart and has quite a great number of comic moments that lands their jokes, ‘When This Is All Over’ suffers from a lack of urgency or energy. It is as if the stillness of the pandemic has seeped into the pacing of the film and everything just seems to move one step at a time rather than at a frenetic speed, which the story sort of calls for: the energy of the party scenes, the caper that transpires for the secret rave, or the confrontation scenes at the end. The film never really hits peaks when it can except for one pivotal moment that is a trippy animated moment of self-realisation that’s wonderfully done and excellently timed for the narrative. It excuses the lack of urgency from the rest of the movie.

Great performances and a wonderful beating heart right underneath, ‘When This Is All Over’ is a joy to watch and an interesting reminder of what we went through during the pandemic and how it changed us, for better or worse.

My Rating:

This year, don’t miss Cinemalaya Bente: Loob, Lalim, Lakas happening from August 2-11, 2024! Witness another stellar lineup of Filipino stories that will move you and showcase the brilliance of Philippine cinema. Follow the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Cinemalaya for updates!

July 17, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: The Funny Thing About Truth and Lies: A Review of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’

Set in the late 1960s with the focus on America’s rush to put American astronauts on the moon to beat the Russians during the “space race,” ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ is a mainstream comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum and directed by Greg Berlanti. While the film intends to be an inspiring tale about the interconnectedness of marketing and branding with scientific progress (which may not always align ideologically) and the gung-ho attitude of Americans in how they were able to inspire the world to reach for the stars, the film may also unintentionally become an interesting examination of America’s dangerous marriage to capitalism and its own sordid image of itself. If it was intentional, then bravo to the director and Rose Gilroy, the screenwriter, because ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ navigates the advantages and disadvantages of lies, misdirection, and the truth.

Tatum plays Cole Davis, a former astronaut who is head of the NASA program in-charge of sending astronauts into space. He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy who deeply loves his job and the people who work under him. But under then-President Nixon and the growing cost of the Vietnam war, NASA is trying to survive with a diminished budget and with a deadline that is looming perilously closer every day. Enter Kelly Jones, played by Scarlett Johansson, recruited by the mysterious Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to use her expertise in marketing and PR to rebrand the NASA program and get people excited again for the space program.

Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) in FLY ME TO THE MOON.

The film manages its politics quite well. Jones is depicted as a woman who will always go where the money is but her assistant, played by Anna Garcia, is a progressive feminist who cautions against it, articulating the film’s politics that Nixon was bad, the Vietnam war was bad and that the methods employed by Jones throughout the film are also extremely objectionable.

Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) in FLY ME TO THE MOON.

But as Jones’ methods for building the Apollo mission and NASA brand succeeds – even if she uses actors to play the engineers because they don’t do interviews, or commodifying every aspect of the space mission making statements that are not true – it really puts a question on whether little embellishments and lies are what it really takes to make people care about anything.

Lance (Jim Rash) and Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) in FLY ME TO THE MOON.

The film makes fun of this. We are expected to laugh when Johansson, as Kelly Jones, convinces Tatum’s Cole Davis that the cereal marketing and branding helps even if the astronauts don’t really eat the products in real life; and we do laugh because Johansson is putting out all the charm and it works in this medium and Tatum serves as a wonderful counterpoint to her amoral marketing wiz. We laugh because we have heard and even know about “the truth in advertising” and to see it play out in this comedy where the results are beneficial to the main characters, especially the morally upright Cole Davis, that we forgive them and ride along.

Ruby Martin (Anna Garcia), Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash) in FLY ME TO THE MOON.

In-between the hijinks and the gags, there’s a love story blooming between Kelly and Cole but there’s also a big secret that Kelly is trying to hide and, through this job, hopefully erase; and when the lies get too big to handle, the film leads us towards the filming of a fake lunar landing (which involves the always-funny Jim Rash as the director of this production) to ensure that the Americans will win the space race, whether they really did or not.

Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) and Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) in FLY ME TO THE MOON.

While the film harkens about the power and importance of the truth, of how the truth gives value to any concept or abstract idea, ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ ends up highlighting the way America has always tried to portray itself to the world, where it’s image of being “the greatest nation of the world” is built upon so many wrongs. In this film, it’s the Vietnam War.

Interestingly enough, when the film positions Moe Berkus as the antagonist, the best way to beat him is through deception. The film, while advocating for the power and importance of truth, cannot help but leverage the power of lies in solving so many problems and issues. Despite its moral shortcomings, though, the movie means well and it’s funny and well-paced and its cast does a marvelous job of selling us the fantasy. It’s a completely fictional story that uses historical facts as a basis for some of its plot points, but it is really out there to just give us a good time, and it does that. The music is strong, Johansson and Tatum are wonderful together and it sort of shows us the importance of being able to sell an idea. No great advancement can be done without money and the games behind the scenes are given special attention by the plot points of the film. If anything, the film further proves that STEM is nothing without the humanities and the liberal arts to give it any real value.

My Rating:

Fly Me to the Moon is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.

July 10, 2024
REVIEW: Big Stars and impressive budget propel ‘Red Swan’ through its hazy first two episodes

Two big stars – Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji Hoon (more popularly known as Rain) – are some of the biggest and most established names in Korean entertainment. Working together is definitely big news, and you can see the Disney+ produced K-Drama has the budget to celebrate this artistic collaboration. ‘Red Swan,’ based on its first two episodes, is poised as an action/romance/thriller as Kim Ha Neul plays Oh Wan Soo, the wife of a chaebol heir whose high-profile global charities has put her in the crosshairs of terrorist groups. While on an important event in Manila, she is attacked and is rescued by a highly trained, former policeman, Seo Do Yoon (Jung Ji Hoon), who ends up joining her security detail. What complicates things is that it seems Do Yoon is following a trail of the murder of his friends which leads him straight into the chaebol family that Oh Wan Soo is married into. Adding fuel to the fire, Wan Soo has had it with her adulterous husband and may be attracted to her brand-new bodyguard.

‘Red Swan,’ written by Choi Yoon Jung and directed by Park Hong-kyun, is fast-paced and glitzy. It prefers to take short cuts in character building and development and is more intent in showing off its cast and its huge budget. It relies on archetypes and tropes to help set up the characters and their place in this world while impressing upon us the high stakes world of this reality. Oh Wan Soo is an impressive woman. Her foundation, The Now Foundation, has done what appears to be immeasurable good for the world. So much so, that she’s being targeted by Isis. She is unfazed, though, but what is more surprising is the way by which her husband’s family reacts.

Her mother-in-law, as early as episode one, is already being poised to take the mantle of the drama’s main antagonist, or one of them, at the very least. She’s an abrasive woman who is fond of shouting and throwing things around. She’s the typical feisty, rich, and sinister mother-in-law who looks down on our protagonist and will definitely get in her way. Oh Wan Soo’s husband, Kim Yong-guk (Jung Gyu-Woon), doesn’t get to show much of any layers other than his dismissive affair that’s revealed by the second episode but there might be more to him than meets the eye.

The break-neck speed by which the story unfolds makes it difficult for the creative team to juggle its storylines. It awkwardly juggles between Oh Wan Soo and Seo Do Yoon, whose storylines begin very far away from each other that when the show jumps from one to the other, it doesn’t quite make sense. Do Yoon is in Manila trying to find clues to the murder of a friend, also from the police force. While searching for it in Manila, he comes across Oh Wan Soo as she is attacked in Makati and the story finally comes together.

There are a lot of issues plaguing the first two episodes of ‘Red Swan.’ The most apparent is the way by which it depicts Manila. Sure, the drone shots that establish location was taken in the city but it’s shots of a commercial space that is meant to be Makati looks either somewhere in McKinley Hill (not a place I’m familiar with) or a completely different location altogether. It doesn’t help that all the crowd extras are primarily white or East Asian looking. It doesn’t look or feel like Makati at all (though it is nice that we are depicted as such a clean, orderly place). The storyline feels rushed to try and set up this world early to try and get the two main characters together and to start the romantic storyline up and running but also amping up the feel of dread and danger. It’s quite a lot to handle and the direction and writing isn’t holding everything up in this regard.

Fortunately, the two lead stars are a completely arresting watch. Kim Ha Neul adds a certain dignity to Oh Wan Soo that makes her a fascinating character study. She’s tired of all the BS and it seems she’s lost all track of what is keeping her moving forward. When Seo Do Yoon comes into her life, she gazes into him trying to decode him and discover what he is about. It’s that look that brings about the passion in this show. Jung Ji Hoon has a gait and a posture of a leading man. He has such a strong presence that even if the scenes play out so typically like any action series I’ve seen before, his swagger hits differently that it doesn’t get boring.

Hopefully, after all the stumbling around and trying to put all the story elements into place, the show will pick up and find its rhythm and pace because its stars can’t carry the whole show solely on their shoulders for the rest of the eight episodes to follow.

My Rating:

Red Swan is now streaming on Disney+. Watch it here.

July 9, 2024
Superstars Rain and Kim Ha Neul Talk About Their New Drama ‘Red Swan’ on Disney+

Last July 2, the cast and director of the new K-Drama produced by Disney+ ‘Red Swan’ held a press conference on the day before the first episode was released on the streaming platform. ClickTheCity was invited to watch as the cast – which includes Korean superstars Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji-Hoon (better known as Rain) as well as Jung Gyu-woon, Seo Yi Sook, and Ki Eun Se – talked about the show and showed off their vibrant personalities.

The drama promises to be an action-packed suspense thriller with a very healthy dose of romance. Kim Ha Neul stars as Oh Wan Soo, a former world champion professional golfer who marries into a chaebol family and becomes a UN Goodwill Ambassador whose work threatens terrorist organizations and has her at their crosshairs. Jung Ji-Hoon plays a former policeman who becomes Wan Soo’s bodyguard, but he has an agenda of his own. From the first two episodes, while Wan Soo faces a threat from the outside, her biggest threat may come from her husband’s mother (Seo Yi Sook).

Photo courtesy of Disney+

Like any press conference, the moderator invites each of the cast to come up on stage for photos and then asked the two leads, Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji-Hoon to pose together. Immediately, you can see their chemistry playing off of each other when the moderator asks them to pose as their characters, and Rain immediately imitates a security detail, complete with gesturing towards his ear as if he was wearing an earpiece. The two laugh at the gesture but are able to get serious enough for one good shot.

From the get-go, you can see how comfortable they are with each other which plays off well onscreen as the passion between the two characters are already evident as early as episode one.

On the flipside, when Seo Yi Sook joins the two on stage, they were asked to make “fatal pose” and Rain opens his arms for a hug to Seo Yi Sook, who also laughs. The irony is at play here as it seems that Seo Yi Sook may play the main villain.

Photo courtesy of Disney+

When it was time to answer questions from the press, the cast was joined by Park Hong-kyun. The first question was directed to the leads, and they were asked why they accepted to do ‘Red Swan.’ Kim Ha Neul opened up about how she had loved ‘The Bodyguard’ with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston so it was a chance to do her own version. But what really gripped her was how strong the script was. For Jung Ji Hoon, he had always wanted to work with director Park Hong Kyun and every time a project would surface, something always came up and the project never pushed through. So when this show was offered to him, he said yes immediately.

Director Park Hong Kyun is known for his action-packed style of directing and had always wanted to work with Rain in an action-led series. He knew what Rain could do as an action star and was very happy that Rain was always giving a lot of ideas in how to do certain action scenes. The two seemed like willing collaborators to make the show more thrilling. It also gives a glimpse of Rain’s experience and creative side. Jung Ji-Hoon is a very physical actor and likes to do his own stunts. “I like to be responsible for my action sequences,” he said. What shocked Park Hong Kyun, though, was Jung Ji-Hoon’s emotional strength. He was the last person cast for the drama and he was chosen because of his experience in action but his vulnerability became the show’s hidden strength.

Source: Disney+ FB

“My character doesn’t have a lot of lines,” Jung Ji-Hoon said. “So, I have to work a lot with just how I look and I have to act with only my eyes.” Park Hong Kyun was amazed and was not expecting this side of Jung Ji-Hoon’s range as an actor. He also shared that Rain had worked closely with their consultant on how to properly project and come off like a real bodyguard and Rain said that part of it was having to speak with a “cool tone,” which he had observed from his research. The moderator then asked him if he could try speaking with his modulated voice and the actor asked for a moment and he fixed his posture and then, with a totally new tone of voice asked the audience to please support the drama.

For Kim Ha Neul, she watched a lot of Goodwill Ambassadors and tried to capture their grace and poise. And while she golfs in her leisure time, she had to really train hard as her character “was the best in the world” and she knew she couldn’t just fake it. For Jung Gyu-woon, who plays the husband of Kim Ha Neul, he wanted to steer away from a stereotypical chaebol heir. While his character is problematic, he pushed for the character to be truly in love with Oh Wan Soo so that there would be a tortured nuance to the character. “He’s a complex character,” he said, “And I want to show him struggling that his wife, which he loves so much, has so much friction with his mother.”

Photo courtesy of Disney+

On the other hand, Ki Eun Se sees her character as a sort of comic relief. From the first two episodes, she comes off as a family friend, sometimes a nanny to On Wan Soo’s child but she has her own agenda and it’s to take Jung Gyu-woon for her own. “Her story is the one that breaks all the tension,” she says, laughing.

With the many genres that are playing out in ‘Red Swan,’ the two leads were asked what approached did they focus on the most and while Kim Ha Neul felt that her character was more focused on the threats to her life, that as an actress, she focused on the mystery and the intrigue – the suspense genre that pushes the show’s plot forward – but for Rain, he felt that he wanted to focus more on the romance aspect of the story. Because he wanted to put the relationship of Oh Wan Soo and her bodyguard at the center, he opted to say the lines as written and to avoid from doing improvisations to help Kim Ha Neul work with him for their passionate scenes.With the show’s pedigree of great talent involved and the sort of camaraderie that they projected during this press conference; ‘Red Swan’ may be a show to watch out for on Disney+.

July 5, 2024
REVIEW: A Matter of Privilege: a review of the new original play ‘Patintero sa Ayala Avenue’

Full disclaimer: I am a founding member of CAST (Company of Actors in Streamlined Theater) and have been a part of their first two seasons before the pandemic. But I have not been an active member since the pandemic and I have no participation whatsoever in this latest season or in their latest production, the new original play ‘Patintero sa Ayala Avenue’ written and directed by Rafael Jimenez and starring Zoe de Ocampo and Teia Contreras. I sat down on the opening night as an audience member and a critic. I may be friends with the producer but had no idea what I was about to witness.

‘Patintero sa Ayala Avenue’ is a play written by Rafael Jimenez, his thesis for his degree in Theater from Mint and it is a powerhouse of emotions, almost entirely a monologue by its lead character, simply known as The Boy, except for a few scenes with The Boy’s 10-year-old sister Nora. The Boy is a high school student in a prestigious boarding school in Manila, but he is failing four out of his five subjects and faces expulsion. It begins pretty much with Zoe de Ocampo talking to someone named Mike. “Dear Mike” he starts, almost like he’s writing a letter. He talks about his current predicament and with a light change, he goes from an internal monologue into a real-world conversation – whether it’s his problematic roommate or the principal of his school – and we discover that The Boy is not in a good place.

Photo courtesy of May Celeste

He shares his observations about the bullies of his school and the effects it has on other students – one extreme case follows that someone tried to take his life – and what’s implied but never spoken out until much later is how he has a lot of issues with his parents, most especially his father, who is a director. It’s so bad that he decides to sneak out of the boarding house (it involves bribery) and walking around Poblacion. He shares his candid views about the red-light district that is Burgos street, mentioning more than once the number of foreigners (white folk) with a Filipina in their arms. He tries to stay the night at the hotel in front of Filling Station but can’t get a room because he’s underage and meets a woman who he tries to flirt with until he discovers she’s a sex worker. We follow The Boy through his traipse around Makati, constantly asking about where the Christmas lighting decor that adorn Ayala Avenue go when the Christmas season is over, while telling Mike about all his angers and frustrations about the world. Very quickly, we discover that The Boy is also unreliable narrator, because even his musings to Mike are also filtered by his own need to look like he’s in the right.

The Boy discusses family relations, memories of a happier, simple past, and his thoughts about suicide or running away to Baguio. We seem date girls and screw that up because he’s kind of misogynistic and overall toxic and what we get is a snapshot of the dark, inner world of the privileged youth.

What makes it hard to bear is while any suffering should be dealt with sympathy and empathy, The Boy is not without options. He’s wealthy. Who else gets to run away and tries to book a room at a hotel so he can spend the night. This is a kid who has run away from home and will book a Grab to go from Ayala Triangle to Glorietta. He complains that all Filipino movies are bad (he uses harsher terms than that) and all because his dad is a film director and he hates his dad. When he is with his guy friends, he takes on the posture of the toxic male and it bleeds into his dealings with the girls that he likes.

Photo courtesy of May Celeste

For one hour, all of the first act, we have to follow this boy’s misadventures and its hard to empathize when he has so many options that are available to him. There’s even a moment when he talks to a pares vendor and The Boy becomes the vendor, all hunched, smoking a cigarette, and talking about how life doesn’t mean anything because it’s all going to end. The vendor is the only other character The Boy interacts with that The Boy inhabits and voices out and this adds an extra layer of privilege that comes from the playwright and not just the character. These vendors who work under the neon lights of Burgos are some of the nicest, friendliest people I’ve come to know because I live in Poblacion. The working class don’t think about the world ending, they live in the moment. They are happy that they can work, that they can provide. They are the first to tell us stories about the things they’ve seen (and they’ve seen plenty) and it’s what I cannot stand about poverty porn because most of the working class, and even lower class know how to have fun, to laugh, and to take each day on its own merits.

Everything comes together by the second act, when the specifics of The Boy’s backstory lay out everything that the first act was just symptoms of his own lashing out. But by that point, I’m no longer on his side, and this play needs us to be on his side. He’s someone who needs a friend, an older figure (definitely parental) but there’s no one there. The audience can become that person, the only one who can care about him, but we don’t. The play didn’t give us that option. So, when we finally see him interact with his sister, Nora, the only person he loves and possibly loves him back, it comes too late for the audience to imbibe the message that the play tries to give.

What makes it a powerful debut, nonetheless, is that it felt very authentic to the milieu and the sensibilities of the character. The references, the use of language: all of these were unapologetically cued in to its zeitgeist and that’s not an easy thing to do. It’s a demanding work for both the audience and its cast. The playwright loves his character and while there’s nothing wrong about writing about privileged people, the writing must open itself up to larger perspectives that can make it inclusive to a larger audience who will not share these experiences.

Photo courtesy of May Celeste

Zoe de Ocampo is a promising powerhouse, who is able to capture and engage the audience all by his lonesome up on that stage. I think what he needs is more experience as the demanding play asks him to immediately shift from internal monologue (his letters to Mike) to the one-man dialogue with characters in the play (who are not present). There are nuances and shifts that need to be more refined because it’s so subtle that the delivery can come across as monotone through the whole play. The way he talks to the sex worker should be different from when he talks to his guy friends, his abusive rommate, or a pares vendor in Burgos. It’s most prominent when he speaks to Nora, played effectively by Teia Contreras. That’s where the shift becomes really clear. With more experience – both on stage and off stage – De Ocampo is going to do very exciting things for Philippine theater.

‘Patinteto sa Ayala Avenue’ is a strong debut, regardless of what I think about its politics, and brings in a fresh new voice in Philippine Theater in English. Most original Filiipno plays I’ve seen are in Filipino and most English plays I’ve caught are revivals of Western work. New voices like these should be heard and these are important steps to their growth. With all the success recent theater productions have been getting, ‘Patintero sa Ayala Avenue’ is proof that Philippine theater is blooming.

My Rating:

‘Patintero sa Ayala Avenue’ last week runs from July 6 to July 7 at The Mirror Studios. Tickets details are found on CAST’s Facebook Page and Instagram.

July 5, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: Highlighting the Need to Scream: a review of ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

I really felt that ‘A Quiet Place’ was a complete movie all on its own so when the sequel came out, I was very resistant to it. When I saw it, it was enjoyable but it’s been four years since its release and I barely remember anything about it. I still remember how ‘A Quiet Place’ made me feel, though, and quite a number of sequences from that movie. So, when I saw the trailer for ‘A Quiet Place: Day One,’ I wasn’t sure how to feel. Casting Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff definitely help but how does a prequel to the movie really help the lore? What new thing can they say about these aliens and this invasion that the first film didn’t tackle so beautifully already? I was very resistant to this movie.

To my utter surprise, the film directed and written by Michael Sarnoski (on a story by Sarnoski and John Krasinksi) finds completely new ground and takes the setting into a completely different direction. Set in the same universe as ‘A Quiet Place,’ the film happens at the time of when the hearing-dependent aliens arrive on Earth, with the film’s focus on what it calls “one of the noisiest cities in the world,” which is New York City.

Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

In this movie, we follow Lupita Nyong’o, who plays a cancer patient Sam, who is staying at a hospice. She has a service cat (named Frodo) and she is generally very bitter about life and her condition. She’s constantly lashing out, even at her nurse (Alex Wolff). On a trip to the city with other patients at the hospice, Sam finds herself in the middle of an alien invasion. As the world meets the horrors of this vicious, brutal alien species, the terminally ill Sam decides a different path than that of safety.

Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” and Joseph Quinn as “Eric” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

Surprisingly, ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ ends up becoming a character study. What is a terminally ill person supposed to feel or strive for in an apocalyptic setting? Her outlook in life is already poor, and things just got worse. Nyong’o imbues Sam with a strong determination despite her calm and clear mind about her present reality. It makes her character so compelling, considering she’s not the nicest person in the world. Sam is in so much pain that she struggles even to walk without her medication. Her outlook is dim but now she’s being forced to keep quiet or else she’ll meet a violent end at the gaping maw of the alien species.

Alex Wolff as “Reuben” and Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

It’s from her perspective and that of Eric (Joseph Quinn), a man with anxiety, who follows her because of his attachment to Frodo. Together, they navigate the ruined city streets of New York – find their way underground and in empty buildings in an effort for Sam to reconnect with the things she’s lost because of her condition. Throughout this odyssey, the film highlights our own need for release, for catharsis. It is so wonderful dramatized in one scene that involves the rain. The ways by which Nyong’o and Quinn manage that scene completely removed all my hesitation for this prequel. Somehow, ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ managed to contextualize the noise and the silence and our very own need for catharsis and release.

Djimon Hounsou as “Henri”, Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” and Alex Wolff as “Reuben” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

While the film has its beautiful, tender moments and a wonderful existential exploration of one’s mortality, the movie isn’t without its thrills and spills. There’s a lot of destruction here as the aliens rampage through the city and ravage most of the people onscreen. Part of the film’s DNA are the scenes when the scene goes completely silent and there’s only live sound of what is happening onscreen and the whole cinema just slips into silent attention. Our breaths are all held hoping that our silence will help the characters on screen. Tension is created as we see potential objects that can cause noise appear in sight. It’s a magical back and forth created by the film for the audience and it’s lovely.

Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

The film has one unnecessary jump scare, though, but other than that, everything else works marvelously for the narrative.While the film isn’t particularly profound, it is surprisingly touching and heart-warming. ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ carves a space for itself to be a lovely story about one woman’s determination to taking charge of her life in a time of doom. It’s inspiring. It’s hopeful. It’s realistic. It’s a good time in the cinema.

My Rating:

A Quiet Place: Day One is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.

June 28, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: Focused on the laughs, ‘Fruitcake’ forgets to land its punch

Comedy is a tricky genre to execute. The subjectivity of humor is one thing, but as the joke goes: “the secret to comedy is timing.” Joel Ferrer’s ‘Fruitcake’ is a big ensemble comedy with a great big cast – Joshua Garcia, Ria Atayde, KD Estrada, Victor Anastacio, Alex Diaz, Enchong Dee, Heaven Paralejo, Dominic Ochoa and so much more – and a big story of a group of people whose lives are at the crux of a great big change. There’s some inspiration taken from the three stanzas of the Eraserheads song of the same name (and you can tell because Yeng Constantino sings a cover at some point in the movie), and the film tries to present a myriad of characters who are struggling against the ebb and flow of life and the film tries to find the humor in these stories. And this is where it gets tricky because while some are a laughing matter, others are not, and the ways by which this film unfolds makes it a little difficult to find something that grounds all of this together.

Joshua Garcia plays Cardo, a young man who is going to Manila to work and to reunite with his ex-girlfriend Diane (Heaven Paralejo), who has gone ahead to study. But Diane has moved on and she’s now with an older man, Senator Sam (Dominic Ochoa), who is the target of some student activists Chad and Dax (Alex Diaz and Markus Peterson). Dax sells weed to Jolo and Jagson (KD Estrada and Noel Comia Jr) so that the two boys can get to hang with some rich girls. Jagson is the brother of Ospret (Victor Anastacio, who is working hard to support his brother and his father, who is suffering from dementia (or Alzheimer’s). While Jenny (Ria Atayde) has just discovered she got pregnant with her co-worker Poch (Empoy Marquez) after a one-night stand.

The stories themselves are loosely interconnected and the first trouble they have is finding a thematic line to jump from one story to the other. Since each character’s struggles are thematically different from any other character, there’s no real easy transition from one story to the next. Oftentimes, director Joel Ferrer stays too long on one character before moving to the next that it creates a disjointed rhythm to the movie.

And the way their stories get complicated are uneven but at some point, we are all made to find humor in them and then later, to take them seriously, which is hard balancing act to juggle. Jenny considers abortion and enters a debate with her brother Diego (Enchong Dee), who is a priest and is against it. Jolo freaks out because he’s scared that he’ll be caught with the weed he just bought while Chad and Dax get high, kiss, and freak out that they might be gay. Diane is in a relationship with an older man who is married while Ospret discovers all the work he’s doing has taken a dangerous toll on him.

Source: Cornerstone Studios FB

The film opens topics like abortion, homophobia, drug use, filial obligations, depression but never really gets deep into any of them to really give any satisfying exploration of these topics that are brought up. Some treatments can be a little uncomfortable like the way Chad and Dax deal with discovering that they may be gay. These are rich kids and activists and, if anything, they’d be the first to not sweat the possibility of being queer. As a teacher, most of my students are open to that possibility and they fit the demographic that Chad and Dax fall under. Of course, there are exceptions to the rules, but without any real sufficient backstory, their story ends up portraying gayness as something so awful without intending to.

On the flipside, Cardo’s story is the one with the least heavy stakes. It’s such a shame because Joshua Garcia really shines here as the probinsyano (where I feel that his thick probinsyano accent is used for comedy when a provincial accent isn’t really a funny thing?) with the big dream of getting back with his ex and working in an office in Manila. His charm shines through in every scene but the things they make him do just feels off. He brings a chicken to the MRT and it feels reductive.

The others who end up stealing the show are Victor Anastacio, Ria Atayde, and Enchone Dee. Anastacio manages to infuse Ospret’s world with pathos and the way his story shifts from comedic to dramatic is grounded by Anastacio’s great performance. It’s when he does these subtle jabs at his brother – when he’s not playing for comedy – that he elicits some of the funniest jokes in the movie. Atayde takes the typical story of a woman discovering she’s pregnant and elevates from being a stereotype and she has an interaction with Dee that is so well done and so well performed. It’s a scene in church when Jenny tells her brother she’s pregnant and he shifts from loving brother to strict priest and the interplay between the two cinematic gold.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t manage to have that for each character and set-up. Sometimes, jokes are drawn out too long and could have ended earlier and snappier. Others don’t seem integrated too well into the story, so it feels like a gag that is out of place in the entirety of the movie. And when all is said and done, the film finds an inorganic way to put everyone in the MRT for a finale that feels forced and contrived. But humor is a tricky thing. Some people in the cinema where I was watching were laughing at jokes that I did not find funny (I even found some problematic) but the jokes I was laughing at were met with silence from the rest. At the end of the day, the film sets out to make us laugh but my biggest issue is that the movie is trying to say something too and it feels like the film was too busy making us laugh that it forgets to show more scenes that supported its ending message.

My Rating:

Fruitcake is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.

June 18, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: Beautifully Familiar: a review of ‘How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’

There’s a subtle, quiet quality to Pat Boonnitipat’s ‘How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’ that allows its magic to seep in. It’s about the little details that its lead character, M, played by the exceptionally natural Putthipong Assaratanakul observes about his family while he tries to scam his grandmother for an inheritance. The film never puts the focus on the narrative conflict. It’s not just character-driven; the narrative highlights and amplifies the culture of these characters and puts it on display so that we can judge it the way that M does as his character comes to an awakening about people and family.

M is a college dropout and has failed to earn a living as a game streamer. His mother, Chew (Sarinrat Thomas), nags him about getting a job as he once bragged that he would give his mom an allowance from the earnings he’d make as a content creator. Penniless, he gets an idea from his cousin, Mui (Tontawan Tantivejakul), who has earned a huge house after spending most of her life taking care of her rich grandfather as his nurse. M then goes to his grandmother, Mengju or Amah (Usha Seamkhun) and moves in with her to take care of her after she suffers a fall and hurts her leg.

M discovers that living with his Amah is not easy. She has a rigid work ethic and she’s set in her ways. The generation gap is huge but when he discovers she has a severe medical condition and she might not have long to live, he pours in all he’s got in an effort to win her over and inherit her house.

But M has a lot of obstacles in his path. He has his uncles to contend with: Kiang (Sanya Kunakorn), who is the eldest and clearly Amah’s favourite, but he’s well-off and has a family of his own; and then there’s Soei (Pongsatorn Jongwilas), who is out of his luck, a bit of a drunk, and in-between jobs.

The movie is just a little above two hours, but you don’t feel the time pass because every little moment shared between M and Mengju are full of charm and heart. While M’s intentions are not the best, he’s genuine about taking good care of his Amah. The things that he notices about her and about his family opens up his eyes and the film show us this young man growing right on screen before us.

The film takes its time and builds the world of M and Mengju. As a Chinese-Thai family, they have customs and traditions that can be familiar to us Filipinos. The ways by which they hold family sacred and the way that these bonds have shifted in the younger generation, to which M belongs to, become points-of-interest that the film lets us peek into. We never feel excluded from this culture, from this world, from these characters. We are brought in and we are reminded of our own relationships with our own family members.

Source: SM Cinemas FB Page

The film manages to find humor in the looming death of one of its main characters and Assaratanakul gives a moving performance as a person who seeks to benefit from it but, as the story unfolds and his relationship with his grandmother deepens, he begins to resist it. Suddenly, the cluttered house where the two live loses its monetary value and the film’s narrative imbues all of the visuals with such striking heartwarming sentiment. Director Pat Boonnitipat directs the film with very little fanfare but brings his camera really close when he has to catch his characters in a thought and then brings it out for a full shot to show his characters against the backdrop of their surroundings to situate them in the larger scheme of things. With a beautiful score that allows the emotions to flow, Boonnitipat creates a rhythm to the movie that just lets life unfold. You never feel like anything is scripted or manipulated. The film just feels so real, allowing the familiarity of the story to just get under our skin so that when the film’s resolution hits, it hits us hard.

No one in the cinema I was in had a dry eye. We were all crying, touched by such a charming, heartfelt story about a young man coming to terms with growing up and realising the kind of decisions adults make that are never easy to understand but you do anyway because you love them. The film has such amazing restraint that it never leans into the dramatic. It never goes for histrionics. It keeps things subtle, everything just under the surface unless it absolutely must explode. It’s a touching film that transcends cultural boundaries because it understands that love and family relations is not a thing that needs to be translated.

My Rating:

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is now showing! Check showtimes here.

June 18, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Inside Out 2’ is unafraid to grow up

It is absolutely incredible to me that Pixar could make an animated film about our emotions and what goes on in our heads that catered to both children and adults alike. ‘Inside Out’ was a monumental feat of imagination and excellent world-building and, to no surprise, the team of director Kelsey Mann and screenwriters Meg LaFauve and Dave Holstein were able to capture lightning once more because ‘Inside Out 2’ is just as powerful and moving as the first without losing any of the laughs and thrills that made the first one so endearing.

Riley is older now, a teenager, and that means puberty is going to hit her and it comes with new emotions. The original crew in Riley’s headquarters – Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger – must make room now for Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui. As a teen, Riley is experiencing great changes and when she and her two best friends, Bree and Grace, are invited to join a hockey camp, all these changes will come to a head as she starts to grow up and face the teenagers first major life hurdle: how to belong and fit in with society.

As Riley is growing up, the creative team behind ‘Inside Out 2’ worked to expand the world building started in the first movie. Now that she’s older, Riley is forming her core personality, which is made up of core memories that her emotions put into her consciousness. All of this comes into play as Joy and Anxiety battle it out for dominance over Riley’s big decisions now that she’s approaching high school and she has a chance to be friends with a cool upperclassman, who is also the best hockey player in her school.

BELIEF SYSTEM – In Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Riley’s Sense of Self is made up of all of her beliefs, each of which can be heard with the pluck of a string. Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith) and Joy (voice of Amy Poehler) deliver key memories to this formative land. “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

There’s an intricate way by which the Mann, LeFauve, and Holstein manage to work out the story that allows us to see how our minds react (or reacted, when we were that age) to the world around us and how these actions have serious repercussions to the way we thought about ourselves. As we see in the trailer, the film dramatizes the ways (and reasons) why Riley would bottle up her emotions, how she develops sarcasm at that age (and what it is used for), and the importance of being able to manage our emotions. The first movie was able to turn our inner world, our innermost thoughts as the setting of a great adventure. This time, that world is made even bigger that includes a huge vault of secrets and the changing landscape of a teenager’s mind.

NEW EMOTIONS — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as new Emotions show up. Embarrassment (voice of Paul Walter Hauser), Anxiety (voice of Maya Hawke), Envy (voice of Ayo Edebiri) and Ennui (voice of Adèle Exarchopoulos) are ready to take a turn at the console. Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

And at the heart of it all, despite all the hilarious gags and jokes that are woven seamlessly into the fabric of this narrative, is a wonderful coming-of-age story for Riley and for each of her emotions, most notably for Joy and the new emotion, Anxiety.

Amy Poehler does a wonderful job at making Joy all that her name embodies but it’s when she reaches her tipping point and finds a moment of vulnerability that everything just clicks for the whole film. Maya Hawke does a spirited job at making Anxiety such a powerhouse and a scene-stealer. While everyone does amazing at bringing their characters to life, it is Liza Lapira as Disgust who managed to shine. Her dialogue and her delivery were so sharp and precise that she managed to stand out.

INSIDE OUT 2 – WHO’S IN CHARGE? — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley, where her Emotions Anger (voice of Lewis Black), Fear (voice of Tony Hale), Joy (voice of Amy Poehler), Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith) and Disgust (voice of Liza Lapira) must make room for new Emotions, including Envy (voice of Ayo Edebiri), Anxiety (voice of Maya Hawke) and Embarrassment (voice of Paul Walter Hauser). Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Equally important is the way by which ‘Inside Out 2’ visualizes and dramatizes an anxiety attack. I have friends who have major anxiety attacks and I’ve always wondered what it feels like when they get paralyzed in that manner. This movie managed to show it without being preachy. It comes organically in the story and makes full use of cinematic language and the dynamism of the animated medium to fully realise the effect of it. I’ve always empathized over people suffering from anxiety attacks but now I feel like I have a grasp of what’s happening.

It’s really amazing that a movie can manage to do this, to bring us into something so abstract as an anxiety attack but without sacrificing the writing or the direction of the movie. ‘Inside Out 2’ is an eye-opener but it’s also engaging, funny, thrilling, and heartwarming in all the right places and tone.

In the cinema, all the kids were laughing and enjoying themselves while all the adults were holding back tears. It’s a wonderful balance that they’ve managed to do again.

My Rating:

Inside Out 2 is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.

June 14, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: Unapologetically celebratory, ‘Glitter and Doom’ is a post-modern romance perfect for Pride Month

I love the Indigo Girls. As a kid of 80s and 90s, I grew up to their music and while ‘The Power of Two’ would be their most famous song in the Philippines, it wasn’t my favourite. I found the song so sweet and sentimental in comparison to Emily Saliers other songs, which are more melodically clever and more profound or any of Amy Ray’s more passionate songs. A jukebox musical of their songs sounds like a complete joy (even if I hate jukebox musicals, on principle), added to the fact that the story features a gay love story makes it even more appealing. I was very intrigued by director Tom Gustafson’s ‘Glitter and Doom.’

What I was not expecting was a post-modern musical that plays out more like a queer fantasy than a traditional, conventional movie. My pretentious classic movie leanings made me resist the movie at the start. Every scene feels like a set – the way Gustafson and director of photography Cristian Solano uses the backdrop of Mexico City to make everything feel so magical and dreamy – and even the character designs of his two protagonists feel completely fictional and unreal. Their names, after all, are Glitter and Doom. Glitter (played by an extremely charming Alex Diaz) is a rich kid, flirtatious, and, of all things, wants to go to Paris to clown school. While filming an audition in the streets of their unnamed city, he meets Doom (Alan Cammish). Doom is a budding singer and songwriter, who is trying to audition to play a regular gig at a bar called The Fountain. They bump into each other and there’s an instant attraction. But while the bubbly, optimistic Glitter comes off too strong, Doom quickly builds his walls as a dark cloud seems to be floating over his head.

I was resisting the film at the beginning. ‘Glitter and Doom’ is unapologetically a musical and takes a more atmospheric and thematic approach to storytelling rather than centering the movie with its plot. The love story of Glitter and Doom doesn’t take the normal story beats to develop. They see each other, Glitter hits on Doom, Doom backs away, they sing a song – a mashup of ‘Shed Your Skin’ and ‘Touch Me Fall’ by Indigo Girls – and all of a sudden a understanding is formed. The film, written by Cory Krueckeberg, prefers to make impressions than to hunker down and tell a cohesive story.

Adding to the fantasy, Glitter’s mom (Ming Na Wen) is a high-powered executive, who wants the same for her son. But she used to be a circus performer (which is where Glitter probably gets the fascination to be a clown) and her home is constantly on party mode with hoop dancers and jugglers and members of the queer community. She’s open about her son’s sexuality (such a breath of fresh air) but she seems less enthusiastic about her son wanting to be a clown (understandable). While Doom is constantly surrounded by drag queens and queer people in full regalia. These supporting will suddenly appear when any of the cast members burst out into song (which is often).

It wasn’t until a good 20 minutes when I finally realised the film was taking a post-modern approach to cinema. The film’s structure and style were in conjunction to the non-traditional world of its characters. The moment I accepted the film for what it is rather than what I wanted it to be, I began to see the moments of beauty this film had to offer.

First of all, the new arrangements and mashups of the Indigo Girls songs used in the film is wonderful. It helps that Cammish and Diaz are excellent singers. They are not just singing, but acting through it so it really adds a depth to the songs. Secondly, Cammish is wonderful at portraying the tortured artist, afraid of not realising his dreams of becoming a singer and falling in love. As the songwriter, he gets to do a lot of the singing and he does it perfectly. But the real star here is Diaz, whose Glitter is so free spirited and spritely but there’s a fear that is hidden underneath that Diaz manages to portray in very subtle ways. Glitter is constantly taking videos and often, Diaz has to look straight into the camera and perform a monologue and he manages to do so with all the emotions both external and internal in full view. It requires a nuanced measure of fragility and verve that he articulates with his whole body. It’s a revelatory performance that’s quite difficult to do in a film that is so tonally whimsical.

And while the story flits from its neurotic romance between Glitter and Doom, it’s also about realising your dreams and facing your demons (in this case, it’s also related to both protagonists’ mothers). By not focusing on narrative beats but instead painting impressions of moods and emotionally charged moments, amplified by the gorgeous music of the Indigo Girls, the film manages to creep in and twist on your heartstrings. I was absolutely gob smacked, while watching this movie and falling in love with it, that at some point when Cammish starts singing a new version of the classic Indigo Girls hit ‘Closer to Fine’ (with a interpolation of ‘Everything in Its Own Time’) I just started crying.

There’s a beautiful way by which this film imagines a world where the biggest problems a queer person would have been whether their dreams can come true and if their own fears and demons won’t get in the way of making a sure play at love. It’s a beautifully shot fantasy world that’s tender and sensitive and, sure, it’s easy and it never sweats the hard stuff. But in the landscape of queer cinema, it’s wonderful for a film to just be so unapologetically celebratory of queer lives. As the film leans into its formalist aesthetics, it revels in its fictional tone and just allows the characters to navigate through the darkness of their lives to try and reach that which makes them happy. And for that, on Pride month of all times, is just what is needed.

My Rating:

Glitter and Doom is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.

June 11, 2024