Baby Ruth Villarama’s Sunday Beauty Queen is set in the urban landscape of Hong Kong, with its high-rise buildings, four-lane roads, and modern walkways. We witness Filipino domestic helpers gather on a Sunday—their usual day-off—for a beauty pageant they organized. With glittery make-up, expensive-looking costumes, and a noisy audience, they seem to be having the… Continue reading ‘Sunday Beauty Queen’ and Their One Day of Freedom
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’
All crime stories have similar components: questionable characters, secrets kept, and a hero dedicated to stopping it. Establishing these parts look easy enough but watching any bad crime film quickly reveals how hard it is to execute. Such is the case for The Silence of the Marsh. The film focuses on the life of a… Continue reading ‘The Silence of the Marsh’: A Hollow Attempt
Pixar and Disney are prone to repetitive, formulaic storytelling. That’s why seeing last year’s Oscar for Best Animation be taken by Sony Animations is so refreshing; until Disney took back the prize this year. Dan Scanlon’s Onward, from the surface, appears to be another feature that follows the same formula, but with mythological creatures this… Continue reading ‘Onward’: A Heartwarming Family Adventure
JP Habac’s I’m Drunk, I Love You tells the story of two friends on a journey, albeit separate and unaware of it. Carson (Maja Salvador) has been in love with her best friend, Dio (Paulo Avelino), for the last seven years, and in three days, she was graduating—both from college and from her feelings for… Continue reading ‘I’m Drunk, I Love You’ and the Inevitable Sting of Growing Up
Films have always been something we have clung to, perhaps even more so in a time of such uncertainty. Since the onset of community quarantine, many directors and production companies have released titles online. A group of filmmakers led by Carl Chavez even initiated a Lockdown Cinema Club, where film lovers can watch short films… Continue reading 9 Local Films to Stream Right Now
Sine Liwanag 