“Yung iba nadaanan ko lang, yung iba, dumaan sandali,” Shana (Rhian Ramos) remarks, as Lio (JM De Guzman) admires the sea of photographs on her wall. Meeting new people is easy but committing them to memory may prove to be more challenging, especially if they have caused you pain in the past. Such is the… Continue reading ‘Kung Paano Siya Nawala’: The Many Faces of Love
It’s no exaggeration when I say western coming-of-age movies directed by men broke my brain. It didn’t matter if it had a female protagonist that made it appear more relatable—it always centered on sex, the plot is rooted on sex, the characters are motivated by sex, the story is furthered by sex, the resolution is… Continue reading ‘An Easy Girl’: Gazing at Girlhood
Growing up is an experience that everyone goes through at different points of their life, and coming-of-age stories have always been there to document this process. This kind of film comes and goes, but when one creeps up out of nowhere and leaves an impact on me, I hold it in my heart forever. Greta… Continue reading ‘Lady Bird’ and Finding Truth Within Yourself
“After you’ve been in a war, you understand that it never really ends.” This line from the movie Da 5 Bloods perfectly encapsulates the idea that award-winning director Spike Lee wanted to portray in his new film. Never one to shy away from controversial issues and ideas, Lee has brilliantly woven a narrative made from… Continue reading ‘Da 5 Bloods’: Dealing with the Past and Facing the Future
Netflix, with its string of endless content, delivers a heartfelt documentary about two women, Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, and their secret relationship of nearly seven decades. Directed by Donahue’s great-nephew Chris Bolan, A Secret Love dives into these women’s love story, from how they met around the end of World War II to how… Continue reading ‘A Secret Love’: Seven Decades of Lesbian Romance
From the beginning of The Half of It, our protagonist, Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), warns us that this is not a love story. Or at least not the kind where everybody gets what they want. Ellie Chu, a Chinese immigrant and straight-A student, lives with her father in the small fictional town of Squahamish. In… Continue reading ‘The Half of It’: A Love Story in More Ways than One
“I believe that free will leads you to your destiny.” These were the words of Victoria Beckham in her interview with Vogue for their highly popular video series 73 Questions. I believe she simplified an age-old debate about what destiny really is: do we really have control over our own, or do we simply rely… Continue reading Putting Matters Into Your Own Hands: On Destiny and ‘I Lost My Body’
At first glance I didn't think I would empathize with Alan Yang’s Tigertail, a film about an immigrant father who has lost touch with his family, himself, and his purpose. As someone who grew up in a typical Filipino family and has lived in the same place almost all my life, Tigertail presents a story… Continue reading ‘Tigertail’: An Ode to the Forgotten
If you take a deep dive into Netflix’s catalogue, you’re bound to find some obscure movie that will make you ask why it never landed on your homepage. It has a decent cast, an interesting trailer, and a title you wouldn’t be able to make sense of before watching the film. So why did you… Continue reading ‘Earthquake Bird’: A Mild Mystery
It's always the pain in our childhood that defines us later in our lives. It's the weight of the memory in our hearts that we carry around, like ghosts. And then at times, it manifests into our own relationships and how we handle it. Eventually it comes to a two-way decision: do we exorcise it… Continue reading ‘Happy Old Year’: On Decluttering Ghosts
