Rocky Ibarra

Rocky Ibarra Patron

Favorite films

  • Until the End of the World
  • Vive L'Amour
  • Children of Paradise
  • Heart of Glass

Recent activity

All
  • Water and Power

    ★★★★½

  • Battleship Potemkin

    ★★★★

  • Lisa and the Devil

    ★★½

  • The Last Movie

    ★★★★

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  • Too Old to Die Young

    Too Old to Die Young

    ★★★½

    The All-American™ vengeful man, birthed from the neon-soaked recesses of the City of Angels’ searing underbelly and raised by its urban exterior’s deific charlatans, will be no more; he who wears the banner of his forefathers wears their legacy of bloodshed, and it is necessary that the spread of his disease be ceased before it brings upon the world’s annihilation; I shall take away his wrath and make it mine, and as he rots on the sands of barren ground,…

  • Melancholia

    Melancholia

    ★★★★½

    This review may contain spoilers.

    “I now realized the lyrical madness of this struggle. It is all about sadness. It is about my sadness. It is about the sorrow of my people. I cannot romanticize the futility of it all. Even the majestic beauty of this island couldn’t provide an answer to this hell.”

    What is the Philippines but an elusive truth?

    It is a prostitute, a nun, a pimp – nothing more. It is nothing more than a prostitute,…

Recent reviews

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  • Water and Power

    Water and Power

    ★★★★½

    (WORDS, WORDS, WORDS)

    David E. James: "When you think of your work – Water and Power or the shorter films of the early 1970s – do you feel yourself to be part of any tradition? I ask because your films are not like any other films in the avant garde. Except for the people you influenced at CalArts, you’re really a school of one. Do you perceive yourself that way or do you perceive yourself in an ongoing tradition?"

    Pat…

  • Battleship Potemkin

    Battleship Potemkin

    ★★★★

    This review may contain spoilers.

    (Good/Great) Propagandist cinema ≠ spectacle. The best (/the first) have an understanding of this, that none in the human anatomy can generate as much emotion as the face, from which every part of the body depends on to act out a will. The will is in the close-up, while a righteous cause is in the medium/wide; a sailor dishwasher reads the words, "GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD," on the edges of a plate…

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  • Leaving Las Vegas

    Leaving Las Vegas

    ★★★★

    It’s never occurred to me that Leaving Las Vegas is a film that revolves around depression, alcoholism or prostitution; you’ll have to include scenes where the hardships of coming from those backgrounds are the matter but the film struck me for a couple of reasons that are not associated with any of these things. Mainly, it is a touching story with realistic people in it in real-life relationships. It is about people with those backgrounds but the backgrounds don’t really…

  • Hunger

    Hunger

    ★★★★

    This review may contain spoilers.

    Hunger wasn’t among those kinds of movies where the politics is all over the place. Steve McQueen is one hell of a talent in our era whose body of work tells us right away what the angle is taken, what the gist is. Hunger is like 12 Years A Slave in its explicit content, but has less to offer in its narrative. The politics is easy to digest and can reach a wider audience.

    Take…