Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Flying Embers and a Fortress 2024

  Watched 18 Sep 2024

  Unsurprisingly, the MTRCB is a martial law holdover, and it has long since deserved to be abolished. The history of film classification in general is rooted in censorship. It was never about looking out for audiences.

  Here is a film that simply presents as much truth as the filmmakers know, in search of a whole truth that they cannot know because of the pervasive rot that corrodes the institutions meant to protect and serve the very people they abduct, torture,…

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  Ballot 2024

  ★★ Watched 06 Aug 2024

  Blunt force satire. You can't write ACAB on the wall but say "...not all cops" with your chest. As a thriller, it’s low on thrills; as a political film, its best intentions can't stop it from coming across as muzzled. It's hard to imagine that it will offend the powers that be or rouse everyone else to anger. Even that final line, which should rightfully be laced with venom and spite for the people and institutions who do not hold the public's best interests in mind, is a resigned punchline, a cheeky wink and a nod to resistance rather than a cry for one.

Popular reviews

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  Manila by Night 1980

  Watched 12 May 2022

  Ishmael Bernal illustrates Manila through the night time odysseys of his characters, their lives intertwining in a city of queerness, sex, crime, and drugs. It's a transgressive world, the antithesis to the urban dream that the former first lady/governor of Manila and convicted criminal Imelda Marcos sought to project to the outside world.

  Imelda Marcos hates this movie. That makes it necessary viewing.

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  Spirited 2022

  ★ Watched 07 Nov 2022

  This movie broke me. First and last regal Monday mystery movie. Because of streaming, we can call this pile of horseshit a "movie". This is a five minute snl sketch at best. What are we even doing anymore. Shouldn't have fallen for Regal's Fabelmans-bait, but here we are. Generic, celebrity-fueled, low rent musicals and a lying theater chain, these are the things that are killing the movies. I don't care of it's a "mystery", it should be illegal to list…