I agree with some of what Lourd de Vera says (or asks) Vic Sotto in his open letter. I agree that Bossing Vic should aim to do better than a movie filled with product placements. I agree that he should do better than a film where he’s not stuck with a non-kiddie-actor Yap and his mother Kris Aquino.
I disagree that this was all Bossing’s doing. (more…)
The truth is that while we celebrate local films, especially independently-produced ones, it seems important to point out that many other things come into play at this point as far as declaring any movie a critical success. That is, there is the social media bandwagon, where “public perception” is deemed powerful, and no one is allowed to think differently about a movie lest one is pounced on like some enemy.
That not much happens in “Ang Kwento ni Mabuti,” is precisely its power. And while its premise is poverty as crisis and its context is the distance and removal that the poorer among us live with, not once did the film seem like poverty porn. Neither was it full of itself.
It would of course be easy to hate this film for not doing more, not being more, when it could’ve been less restrained. Yet, there is the fact that it didn’t need to be more than what it was, because what this movie has to drive this story is what most other films don’t have.
That is of course Nora Aunor. (more…)
The thing with a movie like this one is that it promises a kind of darkness. Con artist Greg (played flawlessly by Alex Vincent Medina) and his gay “handler” Marney (played by Joey Paras on painfully loud and angry mode) are preying on the more gullible gays and women on Facebook. The goal is to gain their trust, move from Facebook to mobile phone calls, make them fall in love, get some cash out of them, then conveniently disappear with the change of a sim card. (more…)
What does one do with a movie like Instant Mommy? It took all my will power not to walk out of the cinema, and I can sit through the worst of our local comedies and not care about the time I’m wasting. This film made me think of all the things I could be doing instead of watching it. And no, Eugene Domingo in the lead does not save it. (more…)