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Eerie (2018)
A Classic Horror movie trope, the fractures between mental health issues and conventional faith.
A Seriously good local horror-drama in a long time, since mainstream bombarded us with trashy comedy robed as horror movies. Mikhail Red took the overused subculture stories of restroom suicide deaths into a smooth yet knotted mystery.
The film quickly builds up great anticipation, an uneasy atmosphere that wails unsettling imagery, all in just the first few gasps of its viewers inside the cinema. The bleak cinematic tonality of the sequences, in combination with James Wan-inspired visual language, works well in setting-up tension.
Red refinedly pulls off good suspense in some events, where notable music score reaches its disturbing peaks. As the mystery untangles, this suspenseful style became monotonous and formulaic for the whole movie. As good as it gets, those repetitions were contradicted by its fast-paced sequence of events - this fueled its smooth narrative and effective character building.
In the midst of the tension, the storyline introduces a contrast between conventional faith and modern approach to mental health. Subtly portrayed that the society even religion contributes to this looming, unresolved complication.
The narrative progression was presented intelligently with its balanced twists-concealment except for its conclusion where it became too spoon-feeding. Nonetheless, the ending relieved the film with its refreshing and fulfilling finale.
Ulan (2019)
A feel-good vibrant innocence reflected in a raindrop concept of love.
A whimsical childlike lucid dream felt by its equivalently colorful reality. Irene Villamor's masterpiece played with Philippine mythologies that surrounds the concept of "Ulan" dressed as childhood fantasy while unfolding a present timeline of its protagonist's tragic yet joyful conquest of finding true love.
In the film, Nadine's innocent idea of love is nurtured by her childhood beliefs on mythology and used it as a fuel for her enduring pursuit of happiness and contentment. It was presented in seamless jumps between nostalgia and the existing ordeal of repeating failed relationships.
It's raw and stylish production design danced well with its cinematography and music of presenting visually stunning sequences.
As the narrative progresses, Nadine's reminiscence is getting more surreal and intense, while the present arc is moving forward with realism and optimism - the space between the two timelines are getting larger but still linked and romantically fulfilling.
In her greatest ordeal, after various ballads and fairy tale-like romantic beliefs, the film showered the story with a striking and relatable authenticity and still manages to reach the peak of its established feel-good drama - that transformed rainfall occurrences into something to be celebrated and savor with delight.
One of the best local films of 2019 so far
Us (2019)
An ambitious scent, a metaphor-crammed comedy-thriller.
Jordan Peele's projected second blockbuster coup slowly distends with a puzzle of philosophical devices in a hall of mirrors disguised as your average thriller.
After the narrative crosses its crest, audiences might want to take time to digest and appreciate its bizarre concept that at first may appear funny, trivial, and difficult to follow. Give it time and let the brewing process happen, with its substantial hints in numbers of scenes that even in the eye of its characters' emotions is a thread that connects to the major plot details.
Lupita Nyong'o is eloquent with her extremely expressive and lucid acting. She portrayed two characters with a big gap on personalities and still manages to display intricately the distinctive characteristics of both. In addition, there is a conflict between her craft's subtle actions and monumental expressions that materialized two characters and appeared different but "tethered" or connected at the same time. Probably one of the best performance in a horror movie so far. 👏
In the midst of the film's note-worthy aspects, the cinematography is a stand-out. For instance, at the beach scene, there is a distinctive contrast between bliss and uncertainty - that establishes comfort, at the same time provokes hesitancy while building-up thrill. In complementary, the music score that circulates with style between classic jazz and modern music radiates emotions designed to establish intensity.
Too bad those thrills and intensity, were simply destroyed by the film's fillers and misplaced comedy. In every established thrill, there are snaps of fillers that breaks the anticipation. The nonessential comedic comments were designed to conjure relief and freshness from the film's already complicated narrative, but also consequently made it hard for the viewers to get back on track and follow its story-labyrinthine - an inferior move for a film that is full of symbolism.
Nevertheless, it was a decent movie, a great comedy-thriller, and does not scratch on Jordan Peele's Get Out-established name on pop-culture.
8/10
Captain Marvel (2019)
A NON-SPOILER REVIEW
Captain Marvel (2019) came immensely thrilling with its cosmic action and 90's tone at the beginning of the film. Its motion-fuelled punchy scenes will stimulate every visual nerve there is. It would be awesome if the adrenaline was retained, but it seems like the film ended in a "passable" scene.
The first half of the film was focused on Carol Danvers' character origin and arc, and the other half was Captain Marvel's development and actions towards her learned past.
As Carol takes progress on her initial mission from the Kree, she inevitably discovers her past and the film presented it in a visually marvelous cosmic robocop memory lane supported with its impressive cinematography and probably the most remarkable flashback editing in Marvel Cinematic Universe so far.
It was graphically stunning with its madness on cosmic particles as if captain marvel's power was covering the whole cinema, and civilization design that were intricately detailed and focused. It may be paralleled to the guardians of the galaxy when it comes to space cultural tones, but this one does not pull much away from human concept of subsistence. The debut of Kree civilization of the planet Hala where Carol Danvers initially trained to be a noble warrior hero can be viewed as a far-fetched human advancement. It makes fans more even hyped for what MCU can do on its future cosmic-space movies.
The thrill was even more highlighted as the narrative moves through 90's earth conflict as Danvers was on the verge of discovering her origins. Supported with slightly focused location-wrecking fight scenes, and detective-chases, it inevitably gave a pleasure of Terminator (1984) undertones.
Even if the film was Kree and Skrull war-centered, the movie did not fail to deliver human values of nobility, and cultural references from different scenes that serves as a nostalgic device for 90's action films. The war even more highlighted Captain Marvels' human virtues and resilience as she made difficult decisions throughout the narrative.
There is a great character dynamics between fury and danvers and was even more highlighted with funny scenes and events that connects the film in marvel cinematic universe. The movie also used an advanced de-aging process through visual effects, that made Samuel L. Jackson looked like a bad-ass came out of Pulp Fiction (1994). Oscar winner, Brie Larson perfectly embodied the comic version of Captain Marvel with its character idiosyncrasies, expressions and her enjoyable personality. She provided us a direct contrast of persona between Captain Marvel and other MCU superheroes.
Everything was great except the flick's absence of compelling villains. There is no build-up towards it supposed to be main villain at the end, instead it focused on multiple villains that lacks dynamics. The narrative jumps from one ineffective villain to another, and ended the ordeal with an average scene.
Nonetheless, it doesn't diminish the fact that the film was extremely enjoyable, visually stunning and a great watch in 3D.
The film will evidently provide some answers to a lot questions that avengers infinity war post credit scene left, like where captain marvel have been during infinity war.
Make sure to stay unlit the post-credit scenes as it is a direct connection to Avengers: Endgame.
Alone/Together (2019)
Emotion-grabbing lines and scenes
Alone/Together (2019)
The movie caught me off guard with its impressively dramatic lines, as other mainstream movies always do. A relatable story between two what-ifs romance, that also tapped into historical revisionism issues in a light emotion-grabbing process. 🙌
Sadly, dramatic lines wouldn't be enough to band-aid a bad formulaic screenplay. As the film jumps between two timelines at the beginning, a non-linear narrative became its matchstick for my underdeveloped attachment to liz-queen relationship. The introduction to our characters' relationship was cut short, and non-distinctive if you compare it to other Jadaone or star cinema films. They had the chance to be distinctive with their UP-UST cultural relationship, but the film did not delve into that and choses to have generic-advertisement-type of cheesy connection.
The absence of character background, and arc on Enrique's role contributed to shortfall of the romance that film wanted to establish in the first place, as if the whole movie is solely about Liza.
It would be a great movie if the story was marketed and developed in focus of Liza's ordeal, and not a story of romance rushed, cramped, confined, and forced to ''appear original''.
Do not believe me, it was a great watch for valentines season, if you are for good soundtrack and heart-breaking lines.
and the movie trailer was really great.
Kingdom (2019)
World-setting was brilliantly played out!
Netflix's Kingdom (2019) spent most of the first season's time setting up semi-dystopian world, which was brilliantly played-out by its cinematography and screenplay with some game of thrones undertones.
Exhibiting its hierarchical society's problem on health, politics, and poverty in a way that the "Undead" became just a complication of their kingdom's failure. Pretty awesome that the head of state was the patient-0 as if an ant queen was killed and we were just watching its colony to collapse.
The origin, design, and mechanism of the undead, appeared quite distinctive and iconic among present zombie genre. Thanks to its proper direction each episode reveals something about the undead in a satisfyingly-paced story.
The whole season went well with its intense climax per episode, presenting storylines that filled-out my world-setting cravings.
Altered Carbon (2018)
Sci-fi classics into one!
There are numerous speck of sci-fi philosophies and ideas floating around left by our classics (blade runner, the matrix and the likes). Altered Carbon manages to reshape a number of it into 10 binge-able episodes. A series that may fall between Blade Runner 2049 and Ghost in the Shell. A collection of mini-films that exhibited raw and detailed philosophies of our possible future construct. A great contrasted narrative between being an organic human and gods that struggles to follow their own rules to make them feel humans.
fck what a great season! beautiful character development and everything. 😂😂
should've picked a picture of Poe reciting an Edgar Allan Poe's but that would be too much of a spoil.