2013 was the year when Erik Matti released On the Job, showing the world that there was more to the Philippines than the suffering and dolor most of its films so valiantly depict. It was also the year when filmmakers Siege Ledesma (Shift), Jerrold Tarog (Sana Dati), and Whammy Alcazaren (Islands) broke away from the usual mold to tackles various facets of love that would be too complicated for commercial cinema. Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History), 2013's best film, even had Lav Diaz breaching his trademark aesthetics of monochromatic long takes to deliver a narrative that is comparatively easier to digest but still powerful like no other.2014 saw Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals, the Philippines' most reliable fund granters, actively seek out...
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- 1/1/2015
- Screen Anarchy
The easiest thing to do is to either stop at faulting or praising Whammy Alcazaren's ambition in mounting Islands, a deeply personal meditation on the complexities of loving. The film is hardly about the director's ambition. It is more about his humility in communicating how imperfect he is as a person in love. The film, despite its visual elegance, has the affecting awkwardness of a juvenile poem. Like a poem, it is replete with obvious metaphors, from the solitary spacemen to the despondent hunter, that pertain to one nagging idea: the inability to communicate love. Its stanzas are all beautifully composed. They are fragile sequences, all carefully designed to evoke a somber mood. In a forest, a hunter longs for the love of a princess...
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- 11/20/2013
- Screen Anarchy
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