Tuesday, January 08, 2019

7:20 AM | The Films of 2018, List 2: The Rest Outside of the Top 50

A General Introduction

Sometime early in 2018, I resolved to watch as many films as I could and duly rank them according to how I liked them, and briefly note how each one impressed me. It proved to be a herculean task, so much so that sometimes the ranking sufficed but the brief annotation did not; often it was because of some difficulty having to set my thoughts on each film right after viewing it: opinion, I quickly found out, was a flighty, restless bird, and a film I thought I liked after an evening's screening would somehow evolve to some lesser evaluation the next morning. The otherwise also proved true: I would have visceral hatred for a film, but once I started putting down my thoughts in words, I would surprise myself by actually possessing some admiration, often begrudging, over it. And the whole exercise proved to be taxing. How does one exactly find the time to watch at least three movies a night, just to keep up with the sheer volume of film being produced worldwide? I watched a total of 204 films last year; I barely cracked half the titles in my list.

But 2018, on the whole, has certainly been a fantastic year for film, and while Hollywood films consumed most of my attention this year -- it is simply because they are easier to access -- I have noticed that the rest of world cinema has been muscling Hollywood out in producing films that are not only excellent in terms of technical execution, it has managed to produce most of the dazzling and memorable films of the year. Take note of Alfonso Cuarón's Roma and Chang-dong Lee's Burning, which remained with me weeks after I watched them. On that note, I must make mention the fact that I have not seen many Filipino films this year. Philippine Cinema, without doubt, is one of the most vital national cinemas in the world, but it is one that has become the sole province of the Manila-based cineast, that privileged creature who has access to festivals and cinematheques. I have decided not to be bothered by this fact.

Please note that as of January 8, these are the major films I have yet to see, and are thus unranked: At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel, United States), Ben is Back (Peter Hedges, United States), Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton, United States), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, United States), Destroyer (Karyn Kusama, United States), If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, United States), On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder, United States), and Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, United States and Italy), as well as Ash is Purest White (Zhangke Jia, China), Ayka (Sergey Dvortsevoy, Russia and Kazakhstan), Birds of Passage (Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, Colombia), Border (Ali Abbasi, Sweden), Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, Lebanon), Dear Ex (Chih-Yen Hsu and Mag Hsu, Taiwan), Girl (Lukas Dhont, Belgium), Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany), Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan), and Tale of the Lost Boys (Joselito Altarejos, Philippines and Taiwan). On to the lists...





THE REST OF WHAT I REALLY LIKED

Every list has an end point, and one simply cannot accommodate everything in one's Best 50. The following titles are the ones who are essentially the runners-up in this game, all of them films I really loved. They entertained me and made me think, and any one of them could have made it to the Top 50, but one has to make sacrifices.

51. Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, United States)

What I admire about Drew Goddard is the consistency of his obsessions in film, at least in those he has directed, which includes the genre-wrecking meta-horror movie Cabin in the Woods: he is fascinated with surveillance, and he is intent on bending genres he loves. What he has done for horror he now does for film noir, and he does it with the twists, betrayals, and elegance of old but with a palpable subterfuge of undermining the entire exercise with loads of the ironic. Here he gathers several people with secrets into a lonely hotel somewhere in the borders of California and Nevada, and their collective encounter unleashes mayhem and bloodshed, much to our delight.

52. American Animals (Bart Layton, United States)

Bart Layton's American Animals would have been sad if it weren't also very funny. A stylish dramatisation of the botched University of Transylvania library heist -- where four privileged young men in an upscale Kentucky neighbourhood thought to steal rare books from the library's special collection, including first editions of Audobon's The Birds of America and Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, only to have everything fall apart for bumbling execution and sheer lack of preparation -- it is a gripping film that rips apart white privilege and youthful boredom, made the more engaging by talking head participation of the real culprits in the crime.

53. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)

54. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, United States)

Oh, the think-pieces this Marvel concoction has spawned, each one more elaborate and thought-provoking than the one preceding it. It is not puzzling, the pop cultural cache it has engendered; so much can be said about its relevance [some would also argue non-relevance] for our troubled times. What cannot be denied however is the film's pulse throbbing with pure entertainment. It is crafted to amaze, and what breakthroughs it has accomplished are just icing on the cake.

55. Malila: The Farewell Flower (Anucha Boonyawatana, Thailand)

Anucha Boonyawatana's Malila: The Farewell Flower is deliberately slow -- almost prayerful in its slowness, in its respect for the pregnant pause, in its contemplative pillow shots and close-ups. I take that as its way of being meditative with its themes, which cover death, loss, love, and farewells, all woven together like the jasmine blossoms they fashion into decorative bunches. Two men in the Thai countryside -- one about to be ordained a monk, and the other about to die from lung cancer -- reignite their passion for each other as they prepare to embrace what the rest of their lives entail for them. It is a lovely film, and Sukollawat Kanarot and Anuchit Sapanpong are lovely leads. And then in the second half, it turns into a surprising hallucinatory quest.

56. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (Ol Parker, United States)

All the material really needed was a better helmer, and Ol Parker directs Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again into one of those rare sequels that vastly improve on the original. What fun this was. All the old cast are in it doing their bit with equal measure earnestness and irony, mellowing into the ABBA songs with such ridiculous joy it is impossible not to be infected by it. And the new flashback cast proves equal to that infection, and as led by Lily James as the younger version of Donna, we get a movie that resonates with characters we are surprised to know we actually care about. And in Lily James, we are also treated to a star-turn that burns; she is a surprise, the human foil to Cher's glorified cameo -- which is still fun, no matter how unnecessary.

57. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, United States)

What a strange, lyrical, violent film that is at once both riveting and funny and repulsive. Lynne Ramsay never shies away from subject matters such as this, and this time she chooses to follow a man on a mission to free a girl from white slavery, anchoring it on the superlative performance of Joaquin Phoenix. A strong casting choice, because Phoenix always manages to combine gravitas with quirkiness. My favourite scene has to be the killing in the kitchen, which ends in such a remarkable way I still cannot get over it.

58. The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, United States)

Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers is the French filmmaker's first English-language film, and he carries over to this new effort the same intimate probing into human relationships he had sharpened in his earlier French films, but perhaps with a sharper eye for the picturesque. [It is truly a beautiful-looking film.] Here, Audiard delves into the Western genre, and follows two sets of men -- assassins who are brothers [the titular siblings], and a scout and his subject who are at first adversaries and then comrades, as they cross the Wild West in gold-prospecting territory. The story itself is nothing much -- it is simply a chase -- but such simplicity is perhaps what is necessary in a film interested more in composition, and mood, and relationships. And for a very violent film, it is also surprisingly tender.

59. On Happiness Road (Sung Hsin-Yin, Taiwan)

60. The Hate U Give (George Tillman Jr., United States)

61. Widows (Steve McQueen, United States)

I can see the appeal of doing a heist movie by Steve McQueen. It makes for perfect filmmaking exercise, especially if you want to put your own twist to the genre. Here, the twist is gender: a bunch of professional thieves die in an explosive accident, taking with them millions they have taken from a certain mob boss. Now that mob boss is after their widows to put up the missing sum -- or else. It's Ocean's 8 with grittier feel, and the performances here, especially that of Elizabeth Debicki's, make the story feel lived-in and vital. But the film overall just slips away from me, tempting to be unremembered.

62. Tea With the Dames (Roger Michell, United Kingdom)

The set-up for this documentary is simple enough: Roger Michell, of Notting Hill fame, has gathered together, for tea, four of the best British actresses who not only happen to be dames, they are also fast friends who have matured together in the teeming world of British [and also American] theatre and film. We are essentially invited to eavesdrop on an extended conversation between Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright, and Dame Maggie Smith as they reminisce over their lives and their careers, dropping delicious gossip about this and that, with the ghost of Sir Lawrence Olivier [Plowright's husband] being the most present. On the whole, this is a very slight film, but you're in the company of greatness and that's all that matters.

63. Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada, United States)

64. All About Nina (Eva Vives, United States)

65. I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Zambia)

66. What Keeps You Alive (Colin Minihan, United States)

I love that the lesbian relationship at the cold heart of this well-made thriller feels ordinary and matter-of-fact, and that adds greatly to the effectiveness of this story. Colin Minihan presents a story of a couple seemingly in love as they venture into a vacation in a nice cabin somewhere in some woods -- until one of them is pushed, literally, into the realisation that her wife is a psychotic serial killer and she is her next prey. Minihan stages all these with sterling editing and pacing, and while the motivations of the characters often feel contrived, she does everything with finely wrought tension that you are simply drawn into enjoying every murderous turn.

67. Museo (Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico)

68. The Clovehitch Killer (Duncan Skiles, United States)

69. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker, United States)

70. Fahrenheit 11/9 (Michael Moore, United States)

71. On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke, United Kingdom)

Ian McEwan's novella about a marriage gone awry gets a wonderfully realised adaptation in Dominic Cooke, which uses the story's conceit about time and memory as its basic narrative form: it hopscotches through time, going back and forth in memory as it contrives to tell the story of a young couple in love whose incapacities in sex renders have repercussions for their future together. Saorsie Ronan gives a committed performance as the young wife and talented violinist and Billy Howle as the historian husband is odious but I guess necessarily so. Are we prepared to make certain intimate sacrifices in the name of love? The film says we should, at the risk of future regrets. That it does a fine point doing that is the film's greatest achievement.

72. Science Fair (Darren Foster and Cristina Costantini, United States)

73. Colette (Wash Westmoreland, United States)

74. Alpha (Albert Hughes, United States)

This is really just a simple story of a boy and his dog -- only that in this conceit, the world is that long ago past when man was just slowly inventing society and civilisation and dog is really some primordial wolf, perhaps the perhaps of its kind that would become the modern-day domesticated dog. The movie is their relationship, developing from initial distrust to one of friendly alliance -- and the simplicity of the story is augmented by the grand vista of the film's cinematography, so lovely, so perfectly composed.

75. Jonathan (Bill Oliver, United States)

76. The Cleaners (Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block, United States)

Watching The Cleaners, the documentary by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck on the "gatekeepers of community standards" in Facebook who are mostly based in the Philippines, makes my blood pressure rise.

77. Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, United States)

78. BlackkKlansman (Spike Lee, United States)

79. Unsane (Steven Soderbergh, United States)

Steven Soderbergh on iPhone mode is still a genius. In Unsane, he follows a woman taken into the wards of a psychiatric hospital against her will, and descends to madness and paranoia when she finds her stalker among the staff. It is an effective thriller with a committed performance by Claire Foy, and I love how stripped down and DIY it feels: it makes the horror more chilling.

80. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, United States and Canada)

When Nicolas Cage tells the rampaging being bent on devouring him, "You're a vicious snowflake," I knew this was going to be my favourite Deranged Nicolas Cage Movie. What is going on in this film? Simply put, it is both deranged and beautiful, its bloodbath and mayhem interspersed with so much inexplicable beauty I simply have no words to describe what makes it work. But it does. Let's just say it's about a couple in love but terrorised by a demonic biker gang slash cult. But enough said of this film, the better. Part of the pleasure is surrendering to the ridiculousness of its premise, and finding it all very, very entertaining.

81. The Tale (Jennifer Fox, United States)

Is there a more wrenching film this year than Jennifer Fox's biographical investigation of her own sexual abuse in The Tale? The story begins with an older Jennifer [played by Laura Dern] who only has good memories of a childhood learning to ride horses, taught by a young couple who seems to only have her best interest at heart. Those memories were golden for her. Years later, her mother unearths an essay she had written as a girl, which points to some shady shenanigans from that childhood. And then the memory slowly unfurls. And the devastation mounts. It's a perfect study of repressed memories and the lengths we go to survive trauma, and it's a perfect testament to the #MeToo times.

82. Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, United States)

What else can one say about Anthony Russo and Joe Russo's ambitious chapter-ender for the second phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It's long and bloated, for sure, but it's also grand and dexterous, managing quite well the almost impossible task of juggling so many characters and storylines into a cohesive whole, and gives us a complex villain in Thanos who eclipses all the other half-hearted villains that came before this. The film, a coda in the series, ends everything in the rightful melancholic note that quickly reminds us how much we have actually emotionally invested in all these characters for the past decade. All that came before was build-up and intensive characterisation; this is the reckoning. This is the rare Marvel movie that made me think.

83. Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, United States)

Marc Forster has proven once more that he is the director to go to if we wanted reimagining the fantasy staples of our childhood. He did Peter Pan in Finding Neverland, and in Christopher Robin, he gives us a surprisingly heartfelt live action rendering of Winnie the Pooh and friends. It is a sentimental film, but it works just enough to skirt mawkishness. And Ewan McGregor as the adult version of the title character manages to underline the film's theme about the beauty of remembering our childhood sense of wonder and play. I was moved by this movie.

84. Aquaman (James Wan, United States)

85. McQueen (Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, United Kingdom)

What I love sometimes about fashion documentaries is how someone else is always bound to hijack the focus from the subject. The fearless Grace Coddington ran away with The September Issue, which was ostensibly about Vogue and Anna Wintour. Now, in Ian Bonhôte’s McQueen, about the iconoclastic fashion designer Alexander McQueen, I was more riveted by Isabella Blow, a fashion maven who ultimately becomes a tragic figure in the film [like McQueen, she also died of suicide, in 2007] — but she was somebody who we best remember as always having an unerring eye for beauty, although the industry she thoroughly loved paid her back by betraying her.

86. To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Susan Johnson, United States)

The rom com has seen its resurgence in 2018, thanks in large part to Netflix, and in this cute tale of a girl whose never-meant-to-sent love letters to five different crushes actually get sent, we get also a redo of our expectations. I have a feeling the film is actually a better take of the YA novel this is based on. It's an enjoyable confection, and I am thankful for its feel for the genre, enough so that it can remake it in its own way.

87. L'Amant Double [Double Lover] (François Ozon, France)

François Ozon is not new to the film of stylish mystery -- he is a capable master of many genres, and a prolific one at that -- but this is the first time I've seen him handle something approaching the noir. A disturbed former model seeks therapy, and ends up in a relationship with her psychiatrist. That relationship leads to the mystery of the film, and the conundrum of the title: her partner has lied to her about having a brother, and that brother is in fact a twin -- the total opposite of him -- and this unleashes in her conflicting sexual urges. To say more is to rob the film with its steady doses of surprises. But it is sleek and disturbing, and totally deserving of a place among Ozon's masterpieces.

88. The Price of Everything (Nathaniel Kahn, United States)

89. Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, United States)

90. Dumplin' (Anne Fletcher, United States)

91. Ideal Home (Andrew Fleming, United States)

I smiled a lot during the entire course of Ideal Home, Andrew Fleming's comedy about a very stylish, often bickering middle-aged gay couple -- one is a Martha Stewart type with his own lifestyle show, and the other is his director and collaborator -- whose lives are suddenly upended with the arrival of a grandson whose uncouth ways at first unsettles, but soon teaches everyone about love and kinship. It's so full of gay stereotypes but brandishes them with so much carefree, knowing abandon that I was just simply taken by it. Plus Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd always does gay so well.

92. 1985 (Yen Tan, United States)

There's something almost noble about this story, set in the titular year, about a young closeted gay man who returns to his childhood hometown and to his fundamentalist Christian family, to see them perhaps for the last time. He has HIV/AIDS, but he keeps it a secret from everyone, touching base with the people in his life, before getting back to the big city to live the rest of it. It's poignant and well-made, and the performances are emotional without being too earnest.

93. King Lear (Richard Eyre, United Kingdom and United States)

94. Come Sunday (Joshua Marston, United States)

95. The Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson, United States)

96. The Seagull (Michael Mayer, United States)

This is probably the most accessible cinematic rendering of one of Anton Chekhov's most famous plays. I did not care for Sidney Lumet's 1968 film, and my take on that film largely coloured my initial acceptance of this 2018 offering, despite its stupendous cast. But after a rough 20 minutes, where we also had to wade through the unapologetic American accents of everyone involved, the film does prove to have a good sense of structure, and a good sense of the tragedy that lies at the heart of this story. The cast feels mostly wasted in uninspired direction -- but the screenplay is good.

97. Quincy (Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones, United States)

Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones, Quincy Jones' actress daughter deliver a finely tuned biography of the music legend, which is occasionally poetic and frequently honest, asking us to consider Quincy Jones' rise to the top as a consequence of family tragedy, but also talent and grit, and ultimately a dance with mortality.

98. The Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird, United States)

I wish sequels didn't have to exist for our favourite films, and Brad Bird's first take to this super-powered family in 2004 is one of my favourite things in animation. It was just brilliantly conceived: the tug of the narrative especially, and the brilliant 1950s aesthetic of the animation made us sit-up all those years ago. We do get more of the same in this belated follow-up, but more of the same feels almost like an anti-thesis, no? I enjoyed the movie -- I enjoyed most of all the multi-powered shenanigans of Baby Jack-Jack, which alas did not have a pay-off -- and the gender twist of having ElastiGirl take on the world while Mr. Incredible does domestic duties is perfectly suited to our contemporary gender sensibilities. The villain the film introduces is truly heinous, too, but the reveal in the end felt like a disservice to its conceits, and also like a twist we somehow knew was coming. It didn't feel like a surprise, but it felt like a kind of let-down. I probably wouldn't feel this if the 2004 film was a bust, but it was brilliance. And how does one exactly follow up to brilliance?

99. Sid and Aya (Irene Emma Villamor, Philippines)

Sid and Aya bills itself as "not a love story," but of course it is. It is just that the film, Irene Emma Villamor's follow up to Meet Me in St. Galen and Camp Sawi, opts to frame the love story in grittier subtext, giving us two people of disparate economic circumstances [informed by such lived-in know-how regarding current class struggles] who choose to establish a transactional relationship, only to find themselves overwhelmed by how quickly it could blossom to something else real. Anya is a flighty barista with dreams of making it to Tokyo as an entertainer, beset with family responsibilities she cannot escape. Sid is a relentless stockbroker bent on making it big in the rat race and whose insomnia could be a metaphor for the deadly dullness of his ambitions. They meet, of course, in a coffee shop, the favourite haunt of Villamor's assorted cinematic characters, and both proceed to go about Manila late at night, in cinematography so lush and precise cinematographer Pao Orendain should be lauded. This could have easily been another Star Cinema confection the way the story promises to be on paper. But Villamor chooses to tell it in elegant spurts and ellipses that you are quickly reminded this is not your usual Filipino mainstream cinema. True, it dips occasionally to the needlessly histrionic, especially when we are in the company of supporting characters making up Sid's and Aya's extended families -- but it mostly even-keeled, and in the central performances of Anne Curtis and Dingdong Dantes, we get committed depictions of complicated lives. The film ends in an ambiguous happy note, but it left me devastated for some reason. That is a compliment.

100. Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard, United States)

I love two things about veteran filmmaker Ron Howard's take on the Star Wars universe in Solo, the charming rogue Hans Solo's origin story: [1] that it is an old-fashioned heist story, with twists upon twists of betrayals, and [2] that it is so far away from being any part of the whole family soap opera that is the Skywalkers, because caring for a universe that is determined for the most part by the emotional minefields of that family story has become such a stretch. The film does what it does, and executes it with panache and dispatch that is satisfying, and I don't mind very much that it lacks the quirkiness it promised to have when this film was still being directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. It's enough that we get the backstories of how Han came upon Chewbacca, and the Millennium Falcon, and Lando Calrissian, although new characters Val Beckett and L3-37 could have used more screen time for the delightful turns. It lacks the gut-wrenching end of Rogue One, the previous standalone movie in the Star Wars franchise, but I've learned to appreciate films for the accomplishment of what they set out to do, not to how they fit my expectations. Solo is all right: I grinned myself through it.

101. Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed, United States)

I love how Ant Man embraces whole-heartedly the fact that it is a "minor" film in the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, literally and figuratively, and thus goes about it knowing it is a palate cleanser after the busy, busy episodes of Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War. And so it could afford to feel small, and still be brilliant about it. Peyton Reed comes back to direct, and injects into the narrative some female-centered conceits of The Wasp and the search for Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne in the Quantum Realm. It's all good and fun in fits of snickers -- only to be reminded of Infinity War gloom right at the end credits. The movie is a filler, knows it is a filler, and does mighty things to being a filler. I hope people get that.

102. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley, United States)

103. Whitney (Kevin Macdonald, United States)

Is it difficult to separate the music legend from the cautionary tale? This is the second biographical film centering on Whitney Houston, one of the greatest pop singers of the 20th century, albeit the officially sanctioned one, and once more we are dragged through a tale of incest, sexual abuse, drug use, parental neglect, homophobia, and so on and so forth. Perhaps it is to justify the real life tragedy, and within reason, the film makes a convincing case for finding fault in certain people -- mothers don't fare well in this documentary -- but for once, I just want to focus on the music.

104. Studio 54 (Matt Tyrnauer, United States)

Matt Tyrnauer revisits the story of Studio 54, the legendary pop cultural mecca of the late 1970s, and does a fine job in assembling exquisite footage and wizened talking heads, in an effort to take a closer look into the behemoth that defined the excess and the glamour of that decade, which would soon fizzle out in the Raegan reckonings of the 1980s and the spectre of AIDS. In its straightforward, if nostalgic, documentation of those heady days, Tyrnauer demystifies the discotheque for our age, but at the same time ponders on the magical that made it happen in the first place.

105. Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral (Jerrold Tarog, Philippines)

This sequel to Heneral Luna takes a quieter tact than its predecessor, which has proven divisive. Some really like it, some really find it a disappointing follow-up. I was not in the least interested in the way the film tries to deepen our understanding of the life of the historical Gregorio del Pilar -- his subservience to a flawed leader for example, or his tendency to embody the playboy of the Katipunan set -- but once the film kicks into high gear in its depiction of the Battle of Tirad Pass, it drew me in. What a tense third act that was, what splendid direction, what awesome cinematography.

106. Meet Me in St. Galen (Irene Villamor, Philippines)

107. Alex Strangelove (Craig Johnson, United States)

Gay teen romance finally finds a John Hughes in Craig Johnson, and in Netflix's Alex Strangelove, we get a coming out tale about a likeable enough high school boy whose quest to have sex -- finally -- with the right girl, his best friend and fellow vlogger, gets derailed when he finds himself getting attracted to another boy. It's a simple enough tale that's not explored too often in mainstream cinema, but then again, it's difficult to present a nuanced story about two boys in love with a girl standing in the middle of that romance, and still remain fair to the girl's side of the story. Johnson, however, manages to balance everything, and all characters just go adorably towards their fate while still maintaining the complexity of the sexual identity in millennial times. That it has that bittersweetness John Hughes was popular for in his teen tales is the icing on the cake. This is an adorable film.

108. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant, United States)

This is Gus Van Sant's love letter to AA, done via the memoir of the late cartoonist John Callahan, who found hard-earned redemption from his alcoholism through iconoclastic art, the persistent love of friends, and a very good AA sponsor. Which all proved daunting, considering the devil-may-care nihilism of the anti-social Callahan in real life. Joaquin Phoenix gives his role his usual intensity, and manages to convince us of Callahan's humanity even through his worst excesses. Jonah Hill is effective in his role as a wise-cracking, no-nonsense AA sponsor, and gives the film an unexpectedly elegant gravitas.

109. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (Stephen Nomura Schible, United States and Japan)

Coda is Stephen Nomura's intimate documentary on the life and rumination of the famous Japanese composer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto, Oscar winner for the score of The Last Emperor. It has its own sense of urgency, defined for the most part by the Fukushima disaster that begins the film, and then the eventual diagnosis of cancer that the composer receives -- which leads him to reassess his life and his art. It is a little too scattered in places, not quite certain about how to shape this fascinating artist's story, but it goes about its randomness with style, and that helps us digest the film more.

110. The Old Man and the Gun (David Lowery, United States)

As reportedly Robert Redford's last foray into acting, it seems proper that the esteemed actor -- a Hollywood legend -- would mark his retirement with a role that calls to mind Redford's preference for playing the ordinary chap going against all odds, but doing so with charm and aplomb. In this case, it's a gentleman bank robber who finds meaning in his life by leading this kind of criminal life -- until a young police officer finds it in his best interest to pursue him to justice, and until a woman comes into his life seemingly ready to understand his life choices. It's a slight film, but enjoyable enough because of the charm of its performers. That this is Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek's first time to star together is astounding -- but at least we got this pairing, after all these years.


THEY WERE FINE:

These are the films that I also liked, but not as much as the preceding list. These are good and very admirable movies, many of them well made, except that they lacked something extra to truly move or engage me.

111. And Breathe Normally (Ísold Uggadóttir, Iceland)

112. Ramen Teh [Ramen Shop] (Eric Khoo, Japan and Singapore)

Eric Khoo's ode to ramen, memory, Japan, and Singapore feel heartwarming, and it is. It's just not a very good film. It's about a young Japanese man working in a small ramen shop in Tokyo who feel estranged from his distant father, both of whom are still grieving over the death of their Singaporean mother and wife. After the father dies, the young man takes it upon himself to go back to Singapore to learn how to make ramen teh from an uncle he has not heard from in years. So the film becomes a story of recovering memory. That's nice. But I was unmoved, because frankly it's not really a well-made film.

113. Gemini (Aaron Katz, United States)

114. Hearts Beat Loud (Brett Haley, United States)

115. Puzzle (Marc Turtletaub, United States)

Marc Turtletaub's Puzzle is a modern-day version of David Lean's Brief Encounter -- although in this case, the affair is not brief, it is more than an encounter, and it is certainly not chaste. Kelly Macdonald plays a bored housewife whose life is too-centered in the running of a house to be aware of the world outside, until the gift of a box of jigsaw puzzles turns on her curiosity, leading her to an illicit romance with another puzzle enthusiast, much to the chagrin of her husband. Perhaps in that sense this is a retelling of The Bridges of Madison County? Macdonald plays her housewife just right, but I am led to fully commit to the decisions she has to make in the story.

116. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Matt Tyrnauer, United States)

117. The Children Act (Richard Eyre, United States)

Emma Thompson gives a vivid portrait of a British judge who has to make a life-or-death decision over the case of a young man, still 17, debilitated by leukaemia and whose chances at life is complicated by the fact that he is a Jehovah's Witness. Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, it delves deeper into the ramifications of that decision -- but the twist feels a little too outlandish, and one wonders if the story dives into complication just for the sake of complication. It's still compelling story-telling, but the pursuit of its themes is a little too unbelievable, you come away from it curiously underwhelmed because unreal. But Thompson gives the story an electrifying performance, which redeems it.

118. Deadpool 2 (David Leitch, United States)

The sophomore effort is always the tricky thing: how does one top the high expectations brought about by the successful first outing? The simple answer is this: YOU CAN'T, and people will always be disappointed one way or the other, and not always over the same thing. The Pitch Perfect sequels imploded by doing the standard Hollywood way of stretching the formula: be more, no matter how ludicrous "more" is. [Thank God, that franchise is dead.] David Leitch's Deadpool 2 is "more" -- it has more blood and gore, more CGI, more humorous pop cultural references, and more cameos -- but it is Teflon in this regard: by being the meta monstrosity that it is, "more" is part of its cinematic genes, and thus the film works whether you wanted it to or not. I liked Deadpool 2. It had me in equal parts wincing and laughing, and I've approached it by understanding what it was trying to do and judged it by whether it managed to accomplish that. Well, it knew what it was, and it did what it did -- so what else could we ask for of it?

119. Beautiful Boy (Felix Van Groeningen, United States)

Beautiful Boy is directed so horribly, not even Timothee Chalamet's chilling performance as a young man spiralling into addiction hell and taking his family with it can save it from the mess it makes. What is even more galling is that you get a sense that Felix Van Groeningen feels he is going about things in the best possible way, and you cannot help but hate him for the audacity of his conceit and style.

120. Smallfoot (Karey Kirkpatrick, United States)

Who knew? Warner Brothers is not known for churning out animated feature films that stay with you, the way Disney and Pixar does it, for instance. But Karey Kirkpatrick springs a surprise, and gives us a film that is funny, and with songs that are begrudgingly brilliant. A yeti accidentally comes upon a human being -- his community of yetis call the "mythical" creatures "smallfoot" -- and his pronouncements lead to a banishment. Egged on by friends, he goes on a short quest to find an actual "small foot" to redeem himself. That's the story, but it soon proves to be able to go beyond the strictures of narrative to become something else. There is a problem with the third act, but then again I couldn't see any other way out for the filmmakers to deal with the moral conundrum they had to wrestle with. That we are actually talking about "moral conundrums" is one of the best surprises Smallfoot gives us.

121. The American Meme (Bert Marcus, United States)

122. Destination Wedding (Victor Levin, United States)

This is probably the most misunderstood film of the year, garnering terrible reviews when it came out. But something about it felt deliberate that I had to make myself see it on the level of what the film was trying to do -- and I think the film accomplished exactly what it set out to do, and did it with a side of charm that's strangely wrought, but then again, it involves Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, who play it hammy and do a marvellous job at it. It's a romantic comedy involving two of the worst misanthropes this side of the genre, two admittedly anti-social persons, and that's an initial difficulty for the filmmakers, given that we are supposed to feel that this two ultimately deserve love, and given that the film entirely surrenders itself to their banter, with a nary a line of dialogue from the cast that surrounds them. I took that as the film's way of making us feel the wholly interior, wholly removed from humanity existences these two inhabit. And so we get their diatribes against everyone else in the world, why life has no meaning, and why love is a trap. But of course that's just all preamble to the biggest irony the movie leads to: even misanthropes need love.

123. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, United States)

Much has been said about Steven Spielberg's return to form in Ready Player One, a blockbuster based on the nostalgia-ridden fanboy fantasies of Ernest Cline -- that this is the filmmaker rediscovering the old joys of E.T.-style pure entertainment and that this is a just treatment of the controversial [and often rabid] mindset of fanboy culture the Cline material was totemic of. Both are correct, but I am more satisfied of the film over one simple critical criterion: I enjoyed it, despite myself. I enjoyed its realization of a video game world, and I enjoyed its conceits, and I enjoyed the final act bathos I knew was engineered to move me. I'm a sucker for finely tuned sentimentality, and Spielberg is its primary genius.

124. Ocean's 8 (Gary Ross, United States)

This retread of the testosterone-filled heist trilogy should be a welcome thing: it's a film that takes actressing very seriously, and what a treat to have to witness a cast like this trying to do the men of Ocean's Eleven (and its sequels) better. Only that it doesn't really: it's fun enough (especially Anne Hathaway's glorious self-knowing performance), and it's good enough, but it doesn't live up to its promises. The eight don't really get to do anything, and we wish they did.

125. Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle, United States)
126. Mid90s (Jonah Hill, United States)

Crystal Moselle's Skate Kitchen and Jonah Hill's Mid90s are essentially the same story following the same essential beats -- lonely kid in a somewhat dysfunctional family finds friendship, with all its attendant camaraderie and challenges, with a bunch of skaters. And then we get that beyond the passion for skating, everyone has lives on the brink of some personal disaster. The only difference is the gender flip. Moselle's film follow girls -- which is a refreshing take. And Hill's follow boys, but gives it texture by setting the story in the titular timespan, and infuses it with a sensibility that reminds me of Larry Clark, minus the edgy stuff. They are very good films with very observant eyes, clearly made with autobiographical passions. They, together with the documentary Minding the Gap, make 2018 very much a year of the skater movies.

127. Won't You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville, United States)

This documentary on Fred Rogers, icon of children's television and moral voice for the transforming power of the arts, has become one of the year's most successful documentaries, which means it has definitely found an audience. It's a fine document chronicling the life of a pop cultural hero. And yet something about it plods, which leaves a sense of disinterestedness in its subject that I cannot shake.

128. Johnny English Strikes Again (David Kerr, United States)

129. Chappaquiddick (John Curran, United States)

I still do not get the appeal of Jason Clarke, but I can understand why he has been cast in the role of Ted Kennedy in his prime: perhaps because of the physical beefiness, and perhaps because of the quiet machismo both inhabit. But he does a fine job detailing the late politician's privilege and turmoil as he and Kennedy-adjacent friends dealt with the infamous Chappaquiddick accident where a young woman drowned while Ted was behind the wheels of the car that had plunged into the river. The film makes an epic over an incident.

130. Stella's Last Weekend (Polly Draper, United States)

Part of the pleasure of Stella's Last Weekend is seeing actual brothers Nat Wolff and Alex Wolff play siblings in a movie directed by their mother. It's the nuances they give off -- you could see they're performing with so much knowledge of each other's history, and a lot of that contribute to the success of the story, which is about dying pets, betrayal, and the lost love. The chemistry helps, given that most of the characters are simply unlikeable; yet by the time we get to the ending, we have learned to care for them, which is telling of the film's undercurrent of charisma.

131. I Kill Giants (Anders Walter, United States)

Anders Walter's I Kill Giants really is a retread of A Monster Calls, the 2016 dark fantasy directed by J.A. Bayona, but I don't mind the shared DNA of grieving child, fierce embodiments of psychological monsters, and dying parents. There is sincerity in the storytelling, and there is wonder in the raw performances of its young leads. It feels a little bit too stretched-out as a story, but never mind that.

132. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, United States)

The last film directed by Orson Welles -- arguably the greatest and most influential American film director -- has finally hurdled all its legal troubles and has been assembled, according to the vision of the late filmmaker. We rejoice of course. This film has become legendary for its unfinished status, and now that it is here with us, it is simply a gift. That is its sole saving grace. Because the film itself -- a thinly veiled self-assessment by Welles where he follows the travails of an ageing director [played by the great John Huston] contemplating his last film, also titled The Other Side of the Wind -- is not much to look at, and is incoherent in so many places, it becomes a chore.

133. Postcards From London (Steve McLean, United Kingdom)

Steve McLean took a long time to get his follow-up to Postcards From America (1990), but here he is with Postcards From London, and he retains his stylish take that reminds me somewhat of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) but minus its brazen sexiness and danger. Which is strange because he puts the glorious Harris Dickinson front and centre in this tale of naive boy from Sussex who finds himself in London becoming a special kind of male escort: someone who titillates you intellectually in post-coital bliss, and someone who aspires to become an artist's muse. It's a strange tale that should have worked, given how McLean stages this in theatrical soundstages and through tableaus -- but it is mostly lifeless. It's very pretty to look at though.

134. The Wife (Björn Runge, United States and Sweden)

Meg Wolitzer's novel never mentions that the literary prize at the centre of the story is the Nobel Prize; that's a detail original to the film. And that is its greatest strength. Because it gives exquisite detail to a ceremony we are not really privy to. But the film is not a documentary about the Nobel Prize; it is the domestic drama about a housewife who has to come to some reckoning when her novelist husband receives the prize -- and we soon learn he's not totally deserving of it, because of certain secret reasons. As essayed by Glenn Close, the film becomes a watchable drama of her character's inner struggles, and she is very, very good in the role. The film that surrounds her however is a failure in execution, constantly uninspired in its aesthetic choices and pacing.

135. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, United States)

136. Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, United States)

Take the absurd zaniness of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and mix it with the social message of Martin Ritt's Norma Rae complete with a hood vibe, and you will get Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You, an idiosyncratic comedy about a down-and-out black man who finds himself becoming a telemarketer, soon ensnared in the strange games of labor relations and slavery and climbing the ladder of success ... and human experimentation? It's funny in bits and pieces, but I'm not sure it holds up as a whole of a piece.

137. I Feel Pretty (Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, United States)

Sometimes you just wish a film didn't have to hit its predictable marks, especially given a strange dramatic development you just wished the film stayed in. But Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein wants a formulaic redemption story, so this is what we get. Amy Schumer is a New York girl working for a cosmetics company in the bowels of their online shopping department, and seriously plagued with a body image problem and crippling self-doubts. That is until she hits herself in the head in a freak gym accident, and suddenly sees herself in a new light: she finds herself very beautiful. The conceit of the film is that we never get to see what the character sees in her "new" body, and so it is abstractly fascinating to find Schumer going about her new life with such zest and charisma. But the third act calls, and you quickly lose interest.

138. Mercury 13 (David Sington and Heather Walsh, United States)

Mercury 13, David Sington and Heather Walsh's documentary on the women pilots tested for space flight in the 1960s but who were eventually denied their chance to fly by NASA, is eye-opening and saddening, giving us another potent document on male privilege and the fight against discrimination. It unfolds chronologically, offering us a taste of the earlier days of flying from the female perspective, and gives us the expected beats of feminist narrative. But it fails to give new insight, and engages only this much. I think it's a matter of framing.

139. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (Genndy Tartakovsky, United States)

This third entry in the Hotel Transylvania series gives us more of the colourful lives of the monsters we have come to love -- somewhat -- but transposes everything from a hotel to a cruise ship bound for the Bermuda Triangle, and also gives us a story where Dracula falls in love. It's all cute, and arguably unnecessary. But Genndy Tartakovsky of Dexter's Laboratory fame is an animation legend, and if he wants to continue with his Transylvanian monsters shtick, well, let him.

140. Peter Rabbit (Will Gluck, United States and Australia)

Ugh, fine. I was so prepared to hate Will Gluck's all-too-contemporary adaptation of Peter Rabbit -- I did not want another miscalculation like 2015's horrid The Little Prince -- but there's something about it that eventually won me over. Maybe just the general huggability of the CGI rabbits [with the titular character voiced by James Corden]? Maybe it is just the endless charms of Rose Byrne, and the unexpected pratfalls of Domhnall Gleeson? The movie is a tale about warring neighbours who soon unite for the common good, in this case love, and it can be commended for telling a story where there are really no villains. Which is refreshing. I giggled all throughout, always against my will, and in the end I just surrendered to it. Certainly not a film that will prove to be a classic, but it will do.

141. Psychokinesis (Yeon Sang-ho, South Korea)

For South Korea's first superhero movie, Yeon Sang-ho's Psychokinesis is absolutely bonkers, a kimchi-styled Hancock with a dash of Batteries Not Included for measure. Which probably is for the best. This is not your superhero movie of the Marvel or DC mold; this is an Average Joe finding out he has telekinesis and can fly, deals haphazardly with his newfound powers, and tries to use it for the good as he fights to save his relationship with his estranged daughter and aid her in her neighbourhood's fight against a mob-controlled developer eager to raze their neighbourhood to make way for a cheap commercial complex geared towards Chinese tourists. (Ha.) It's all bumbling comedy in the execution, and perhaps that's for the film's benefit. I enjoyed it, but it was a little too bumbling for comfort, hitting all the usual predictable dramatic notes I could see the ending from far away. I enjoyed Jung Yu-mi's brutal and ditsy Director Hong, however, a true delight -- which proved a satisfying counterpoint to Shim Eun-kyung's exasperating Shin Roo-mi. Perhaps that's the source of my ambivalence for this latest film by the director of Train to Busan -- Roo-mi's the emotional fulcrum that the story insists we must root for; I couldn't buy her awful, one-note characterisation, hence I could not root for the film's conceit. When you're rooting for the villainess instead of the damsel in distress, there's something wrong with the story.

142. Veronica (Paco Plaza, Spain)

A Spanish entry into the ouija board subgenre of horror movies, Paco Plaza's Veronica makes up for its too-subtle scares [frankly, it is not very scary] with its command of cinematic inventiveness. That it also immerses us thoroughly into the relationships of the siblings the demons of the film would soon be terrorising is also a commendation; their tribulation is our torture -- and for that, we are grateful.

143. 6 Balloons (Marja-Lewis Ryan, United States)

Marja-Lewis Ryan's 6 Balloons is one of those small films that thrive quite well in their smallness: without expectations attending it, it manages to surprise, and not just because it is effective filmmaking, it is a film that delves into a difficult topic and limns it well. Two siblings try to get through a day and a night, challenged by the fact that the brother is heroine-addicted, needs a fix, and can't seem to get into rehab, and the sister loves him but has had enough. It is affecting drama, with adequate performances from its two leads, and I liked it.

144. Ang Dalawang Mrs. Reyes (Jun Robles Lana, Philippines)

I hated her excruciating performance in That Thing Called Tadhana (2014), but when Angelica Panganiban does hijinks comedies, as she did in Here Comes the Bride (2010) and now in Jun Robles Lana's Ang Dalawang Mrs. Reyes, she shines as a talent -- which frankly unfortunately boxes her in, but what can you do? A performer is defined by her strengths, and she is a comedienne through and through. In this comedy of manners that crosses over to LGBTQ territory, she teams up with Judy Ann Santos, and both play hapless wives to two men who have suddenly left them for each other. Drama, and much hilarity, ensues. The film is a little too long, but it is an enjoyable romp.

145. Tomb Raider (Roar Uthaug, United States)

I found the reboot of Tomb Raider starring Alicia Vikander gripping and relentless, the caricature of old stripped away to give us an origins story, actually -- Lara Croft before her adventures, brave and obstinate and strong and vulnerable in equal measure. That bike chase. That endless action trying to escape from close calls. That delicious Daniel Wu.

146. Pacific Rim: Uprising (Steven S. DeKnight, United States)

Guillermo Del Toro's touch that made the first Pacific Rim film fun and idiosyncratic essentially is absent in this Hollywoodized update on the robots vs. monsters story, directed by Steven S. DeKnight. Forget Mako Mori -- the character from the first film, whose character arc defined a new way to view female roles in film [the so-called Mako Mori Test is an adjustment of the more famous Bechdel Test] becomes practically inessential fodder in this cinematic effort to sell merchandise. That very thing, Mori's irrelevance, becomes the new film's gaping hole where its heart used to be. For the regular popcorn crowd though, I doubt that would matter: the film -- which centers on a sneak appropriation by kaijus on jaeggers -- delivers on the action and the spectacle, and alas that seems enough for almost everyone. I enjoyed the film, frankly speaking, but I had to readjust my expectations to that of unthinking audience member, which spells "forgettable" for this latest entry in a franchise that could have been the epitome of being the "anti-Transformers."

147. Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, United States)

What is puzzling about Mary Poppins Returns is that Mary Poppins Returns is barely in it. Sure, she's in almost every frame -- but the story of this film, directed by Rob Marshall with so much reverence for the original the latter seeps into the frame, unfolds without much contribution by Emily Blunt's titular character. She mostly observes, prompts others into various instances of song and dance, embodies sly naughtiness in prim and proper casing ... and that's about it.

148. Green Book (Peter Farrelly, United States)

This is Driving Miss Daisy in reverse, but still retains much of that old film's problematic racial undertones. A slightly racist Italian-American man becomes the chauffeur and assistant to an African-American concert pianist as he tours the Deep South, and hijinks and an unlikely friendship occur, just as formula dictated it. It's charming enough and it works enough -- but one of the year's top best? I don't think so.

149. Lionheart (Genevieve Nnaji, Nigeria)

150. Early Man (Nick Park, United Kingdom)

151. The Oath (Ike Barinholtz, United States)

This is what happens when divisive politics enter the personal, ruining a family's Thanksgiving and generally leading to blood and mayhem. The President of the United States has issued some decree -- is this even legal? -- that all citizens must sign a patriotic oath, swearing loyalty to the Presidency, and the deadline is Boxing Day. The usual political divide sweeps the country, pitting everyone against everyone else. It's a comedy, of course -- but it also feels prescient. It is the dark comedy to define these times. I only wish it was better written, and better directed.

152. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce, United States)

I could see this as Jodie Foster's answer to Old Men Actioners, trending of late and mostly starring Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington and Sylvester Stallone. She plays an ageing, often heartless nurse with a secret past who somehow runs a special hospital, called the Hotel Artemis, which is dedicated to providing instant medical care for the city's wounded and ill criminal underworld. With the city in the throes of a deadly riot, the visitors to the hotel rise considerably, and deadly drama ultimately ensues with the arrival of a ruthless kingpin, and a wounded police officer. It's an amusing, if forgettable, exercise in style that has Foster enjoying her game.

153. A Cool Fish (Rao Xiaozhi, China)

154. Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa, Japan)

155. Intimate Strangers (Lee Jae-Gyu, South Korea)

156. The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (Yuasa Masaaki, Japan)

I love films that make me do work, that is structurally challenging, that do not easily give away their secrets to me -- but I must say that even Yuasa Masaaki's The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl is one animated film that went beyond my ken. I don't think it's bad -- I even like the unusual style of its animation -- but it's a little too idiosyncratic for me, and perhaps it may be due to not understanding cultural subtleties. It's about a girl who can outdrink anyone as she goes out to town with a couple of friends -- and some sort of mayhem occurs, one episode after another. It's quirky all right, but I wish I understood it just a bit more.



ON THE BRINK:

These are films that are seriously flawed in some fundamental ways, but they have something that exempts them from becoming total disasters. That something, or several somethings, made me enjoy them at some level, but they are in the long run, forgettable titles.

157. Bel Canto (Paul Weitz, United States)

Great books often do not make great movies -- even something as brilliant as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is still awaiting its appropriate cinematic rendering, although you will have to convince me that Baz Luhrmann's 2013 effort was already not that. This new film is adapted from the superb book by Anne Pratchett, a sinewy combination of opera and terrorism, a story that explodes when a bunch of rebels in an unnamed South American nation holds hostage the partygoers in the Vice President's palace. The party had been in honour of a visiting Japanese businessman who is being convinced to build factories in the country, and he has been led to attend because of the promised presence of a great opera singer, played by Julianne Moore, whose voice had been the one captivation in the Japanese businessman's life. The book is human and deliberate in its design, while the film is a collection of images without vision, gathered together in want of a better execution. But that final sequence though will break your heart. What is art and how does it humanise us? is the film's big question. Despite its many, many weaknesses, the film does manage to give us some answers.

158. Backstabbing for Beginners (Per Fly, United States)

I guess it couldn't be helped. How does one dramatise the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme scandal for film? Per Fly tries hard, giving the story a lot of fictionalised cloak-and-dagger sheen, helped for the most part by the committed performances of Theo James as a newbie diplomat suddenly caught in the crossfire and Ben Kingsley Jr. as a corrupted U.N. official, but the film ultimately slogs along, unable to fire up a story of a scandal that's really about high-level bureaucracy. But if you're in the mood for high-minded thrillers with realpolitik undercurrents, this film is tailor-made for you.

159. Bleach (Shinsuke Sato, Japan)

160. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Lasse Hallström, United States)

161. Down a Dark Hall (Rodrigo Cortés, United States)

Rodrigo Cortés takes on the YA novel by Lois Duncan, which posits that art and artists are haunted creatures [and enough said in that regard, lest we spoil the story's biggest conceit], and updates it a bit by giving the girls we follow delinquent pasts. Because of their transgressions in society, they are forced to enroll in a boarding school -- a good alternative to prison, they are told -- with only five of them as students, and just as many teachers. Strange, no? But what's stranger still is the way the students suddenly develop artistic and academic abilities they never possessed before -- and soon the story becomes a haunted mansion story. Cortés tries, and the film never relents with its craftsman pacing, but something is off about the film. We are never really terrified, and we never really feel for the characters. Only Uma Thurman as the French head mistress seems to be having a grand time, but she was Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin, so she knows what to do exactly in a story that amps up the visuals but falls short of the heart.

162. The Darkest Minds (Jennifer Yuh Nelson, United States)

Some time in the near future, an epidemic has killed 90% of children, including teenagers, rendering the survivors with enormous powers, the veracity of which a shocked society has divided into colours in pop-up concentration camps -- the relatively safe blues, greens, and yellows, and the extremely dangerous reds and oranges, the last two of which are always slated to be exterminated. The film follows an orange girl who has survived by pretending to be a green, and upon escape from camp, joins a ragtag bunch of superpowered kids in search of safety. It's forgettable entertainment, but passes the time well especially if you're just up to nothing in general. It's essentially YA dystopian drama with a touch of the X-Men, and while the film was ravaged by critics upon release, a no-expectations approach actually yields small pleasures, especially from the committed child actors. Plus I'll watch any film with Harris Dickinson in the cast.

163. Mary Shelley (Haifaa Al-Mansour, United States)

It's a paint-by-numbers biography of Mary Shelley, the writer behind Frankenstein, and how she survived her testy relationship with her husband Percy Shelley, anchoring that stormy relationship to the stormy night in the Swiss house where she first concocted her famous monster. The production is lush, and there are moments where the film struggles to become a better vehicle for the story, but it ultimately falls flat -- and largely because of the casting.

164. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, United States)

165. Blockers (Kay Cannon, United States)

This comedy -- about parents going to extreme comic lengths to make sure their daughters don't succeed in their pact of losing their virginity come prom night -- has its moments of delightful shenanigans, and the leads are fine in what the movies requires of them. But it's ultimately a forgettable effort, and you know the movie is aware of that. I wish American comedies are not made to be disposable, but there you go.

166. Mary Magdalene (Garth Davis, United States)

Garth Davis's sophomore effort is well-intentioned, and I very much wanted to like it: who doesn't want a proper reassessment of Mary Magdalene, victim of centuries' worth of character assassination in Biblical lore? This one promised to be a proto-feminist take on Jesus' great disciple, the only one who was there at his death and then at his resurrection, but denigrated to prostitute by a Church not keen on making a woman a major figure in Jesus' story. Davis tries hard -- but there is no gravitas to his version of the Gospel, and while Rooney Mara displays some strength as the titular character, she is much too contemporary to be taken seriously. Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, however, is a tougher pill to swallow. It's a film done in by its miscasting.

167. The Last Movie Star (Adam Rifkin, United States)

Somewhere near the end of Adam Rifkin's The Last Movie Star, Vic Edwards, the former movie star played with autobiographical undertone by Burt Reynolds, provides an interesting insight about life, correlating it to a film's narrative arc: "People will forgive a shitty second act if the third act moves them." Truth to tell, the first and second acts of this movie are quite shitty and banal, but something about the third act moved me. In Rifkin's film -- a sophomoric effort that needed a better screenplay -- Reynolds is offered a chance to examine his own film persona, that of box office king, sex icon, and famously assholic actor, and what results is a searing reckoning of a life either well-lived or squandered. That the film does this by pitting the old and greying Reynolds in actual "conversation" with his famous [and younger] movie roles in Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance adds a certain gravity to the effort. It's easy to dismiss this film as being too minor, too much wastage of the stature of the actual movie star starring in this, but if we're generous enough to accept this as Reynold's confession, we will see that perhaps we have been given a privilege of a movie star baring his soul.

168. The Polka King (Maya Forbes, United States)

Jack Black always does well playing characters who are endearing and untrustworthy in equal measure. School of Rock is the epitome of that precarious balance, and he does it again in this biopic of an infamous Polish emigre who has translated his polka music fame into an elaborate, if silly, pyramid scheme. That it is based on a true story is simply one of its brazen characteristics. As a commentary on the American Dream, it is a sharp rebuke. As a vehicle for Jack Black, it is a well-conceived comedy that makes you laugh and makes you sigh in resignation at the same time.

169. Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence, United States)

The Atlantic is right in calling Francis Lawrence's Red Sparrow as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as directed by Paul Verhoeven. It is Cold War drama -- but terrifyingly set in the contemporary -- that follows a former Russian ballerina as she ascends the ranks of the espionage world as a "sparrow," the name for agents who are trained to seduce marks, and it is executed with the panache of a burlesque. As a spy thriller, it lacks the tension of a cat-and-mouse game; instead it substitutes that expectations with vigorous sex and violence that only serve to mildly titillate. But Jennifer Lawrence's commitment to the title role elevates the film somewhat. The most powerful scene in the film -- during a training class where she is made to undress and provoke a fellow trainee to have sex with her in front of everyone else -- illustrates that commitment: this is clearly the actress' way of getting back at all those men who ogled her naked photos when her phone was hacked a few years back. When the classmate, who had earlier tried to rape her, failed to "rise" to the occasion, she finally answers her instructor's question and directive at the start of the class. What does he want? "Power, that's what he wants," she says, and demonstrates that she can take it away from men when she is in-charge of her own body. Alas, the scene has nothing much to do with the rest of the film's story. But good on Jennifer Lawrence.

170. The Nun (Corin Hardy, United States)

The Nun -- an expansion of The Conjuring cinematic universe which traces the origin of Valak, the evil entity from The Conjuring 2 that takes the habit as part of its corporal form -- knows what it is, and delivers just as much. Which means there is no real disappointment in this schlocky by-the-numbers horror film. It does what it does, it doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it gets its job done.

171. Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani, United States)

Ramin Bahrani contemporarizes Ray Bradbury's classic by making it a reflection for our latest foibles in the world, tantalisingly played out as harbingers for a future without books, and with a hatred for critical thought. I admire it for sharpening the book's argument that the book burnings did not actually begin with the censoring fire men; it began with the people themselves complaining too much of the things that "offend" them in literature and popular culture. It lacks some of the book's subtlety and complexity as it jettisons some of its narrative elements -- and perhaps that's what makes the new HBO film a bit too much of a lowkey affair, curiously lacking bite, even as it deals with heavy issues.

172. Book Club (Bill Holderman, United States)

I really expected more from a film that stars the combined star power and actressing gusto of Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. They are a quartet of successful women whose humdrum lives get a charge from reading 50 Shades of Grey for their titular book club. The banter was fun, and the promise of what it could be kept this from becoming too much of a bore, but even the sheer enjoyment of the actresses on screen cannot elevate the flimsy material, and it ultimately becomes forgettable even halfway through. The film is as bad as the Photoshopping of the actors' faces in their younger photos together.

173. The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Eli Roth, United States)

It feels like a throwback to the Amblin titles of yore, which is fodder for nostalgia. And that can be good. It's also a surprise to find Eli Roth of Hostel infamy behind the wheels of a children's movie, which is about an orphaned boy sent to live with an eccentric uncle, who turns out to be a warlock, and sets about learning magic from him. Eventually, it boils down to a confrontation with an evil but dead warlock who has nefarious plans to erase the world via magic, connected somehow to the mysterious ticking of a clock hidden somewhere in the house. Lots of cute stuff, too, including a topiary lion that goes about its business in the most random way. But I cannot get fully behind a story where many of the plot points move along simply because the boy central to the story makes a lot of stupid decisions.

174. Venom (Ruben Fleischer, United States)

There's a buddy comedy bubbling beneath this unlikely superhero movie -- plausible since this is from Ruben Fleischer, the director who gave us Zombieland, who infused the horror movie with comic chops. Whether this was the intention for Venom we don't exactly know, but then again, it's a film that doesn't know what to be, and seems designed to be completely forgettable. Tom Hardy is a hero for trying to make this material work, and he wins us over with his commitment to this role, and when the movie indeed limns towards the comedy of living with an alien monster inside of him, it can be a chuckle and a half. But this is very much Marvel's equivalent of DC's Catwoman, that misbegotten Halle Berry project.

175. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (Ari Sandel, United States)

I am not a child. It has been a long time since I read a Goosebumps novel by R.L. Stine. I am not the audience for this movie. I cannot tell whether this is a good film or a bad film -- I remain indifferent to it. Does it engage? I don't know. Does it have some modicum of charm? I don't know. Did I at least enjoy it? I don't know. I am not the audience for this movie.

176. Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, United States)

Game Night has an ingenious premise: fun, game-playing couple and their friends go through a suddenly all-too-real-and-with-such-bloody-high-stakes "game night" courtesy of a brother and his shenanigans with the elements of the criminal underworld. But the laughs are flat, and the performances are phoned in, and the film endures twist upon twist upon twist, it might as well be a game of Twister. A disappointment of no real consequence.

177. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Casey Wilder Mott, United States)

Casey Wilder Mott transports one of William Shakespeare's most famous -- and most engaging -- comedies into contemporary life with all its sensibilities. The lovers and the fantastical creatures of that play suddenly become denizens of Los Angeles, going about Hollywood like its some enchanted forest. The line readings by some of our favourite television actors are bad. It is a charming mistake of a production, but still very much a mistake.

178. Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (Wim Wenders, Germany)

179. Maineland (Miao Wang, China and United States)



Next: The Best 50
Previously: The 25 Most Disappointing

Labels: film, review

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Monday, January 07, 2019

9:27 PM | The Happy City

Part 1 of the Dumaguete Heritage Series



A place is only as good as the happiness we derive from it. We stay for the most part, wherever we are, because we are fulfilled in some fundamental way by the place we have decided to call home. It becomes mooring and anchor, refuge and sustenance, for better and often even for worse. And it may not always be a perfect place—sometimes other places beckon with siren songs that can prove irresistible; but we stay anyway because, in the final analysis, this has been where our happiness have been most thoroughly defined.

Over the holiday season, the New York Times decided to run a slew of archived articles that was meant to guide readers seeking a way to better themselves especially in the wake of another year, which invariably meant finding a comfortable measure of happiness to define a life. There was something in that overview about exercise, and something about surrounding yourself with people of positive thinking, even something about finding meaning in old age.

One particular article, written by Tara Parker-Pope, provides a thorough rundown of what contemporary behavioral experts have come to agree as definitive factors that can lead to personal happiness. And this was what struck me the most: a crucial ingredient to personal happiness, the Times concluded, was “community,” citing a study made by the Knight Foundation and Gallup, which had interviewed 43,000 people in 26 disparate communities to find out exactly what entailed a “happy” one.

It boiled down to three things. The first was “openness,” and the article explained that people were generally happy “when they live[d] in a community that [was] welcoming to all.”

The second one was “beauty,” which meant that “living in a scenic, picturesque, or charming community, with lots of trees and green space, [made] people happier.”

The final one was “social opportunities,” which was closely tied up to urban design and how it influenced social interaction: “When a community is designed to foster social connections—restaurants, community spaces, sidewalks, trails, and other public spaces—people are happier,” the article posited.

The article also considered other studies that tackled the impact of community on personal happiness, citing for example the famous ranking of “happy countries” by the World Happiness Report, which utilized the so-called “happiness ladder” as a tool to quantify and contrast the relative perception of happiness of people from across the world, which invariably reflected the strength of each country’s economy and their people’s quality of life, skewing the list to favor the nations of the First World. As of 2018, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, in that order, are apparently the happiest countries in the world, with the Central African Republic at the bottom of the list. [The Philippines is 71st.]

The World Happiness Report is exhaustive and thorough, its results culled elegantly from statistics and economic numbers—but ultimately, for me at least, it was a top-down assessment of personal happiness. I was more interested in the results that the Knight Foundation and Gallup came up with, because it gave a matrix of perception that people themselves provided, defining for themselves the factors of what made a place happy.

Is Dumaguete a happy place then? Let’s see.

Are we a city known for “openness,” of being welcoming? Perhaps we are. The idea that this is indeed the case has long been “institutionalized” in various ways—and for a start, our popular moniker of being a “city of gentle people” points to that perception we have of ourselves as being open, as being friendly. Then there is the way we have come to ritualize our history, famously through the Sandurot Festival, which is essentially a story of cultural convergence—that of several waves of settlements coming together in Dumaguete to make a common culture and heritage. A large part of this mythologizing comes from the fact that we are a “university town,” perpetually a community composed of students—many of them langyaw, or strangers, who come to our shores for the basic purpose of matriculation, and often staying for good, or nadagit, completely taken by the city. A new chapter to that mythologizing is being written as Dumaguete has come to find itself being positioned as a prime destination for retirement—something banded constantly about in popular media, resulting to a significant [and growing] community of expats which is slowly becoming a huge part of the community’s makeup. Expats in Dumaguete have become such a normal sight that locals don’t even see the phenomenon anymore for what it is, only to be reminded of it when we get visitors from other places in the Philippines and their first comment about Dumaguete is a perplexed question: “Why are there so many white people here?” We answer as best as we can, of course. But is this narrative we have of ourselves truthful and honest? Are we truly “open” and “welcoming”?

Next: Are we a city that values “beauty of place,” defined by the scenic and the picturesque and the charming? Do we have lots of trees and green spaces? Perhaps we are. A quick look at Dumaguete from above the air, as our plane lands at the Sibulan Airport, convinces us that trees are indeed plentiful, and green is the dominant color of a city filled with foliage of all sorts. The view of the Rizal Boulevard is always breathtaking, and the city itself seems blessed by cradling land that embraces readily mountain and sea. One minute you can be snorkeling off Tañon Strait or the Bohol Sea, chasing dolphins and turtles, and the next minute, you can decide to hike the foothills of Valencia to bathe in the soothing chill of Casaroro Falls, or to Sibulan to canoe across the calm waters of Lake Balinsasayao. Within the city itself, the acacia trees loom large, ancient with knowledge of a growing city. But our acacia trees are dying—and almost no one cares. We cut down other trees to make way for unnecessary widening of roads, and we have no discipline with our trash. A few days after the New Year, I walked down Perdices Street, and on that stretch between Po’s Marketing and Lee Super Plaza, I found the decorative plant pots along the sidewalk becoming receptacles for discarded bottles of water, junk food packaging, and cigarette butts. The way we feel for our city is always reflected in the way we care for its public places. We cannot claim “beauty of place” for Dumaguete if we are so thoroughly, if mindlessly, engaged in trashing it.

And finally: Are we a city of consummate “social opportunities”? Let’s break it down.

Do we have restaurants? We have plenty, and Dumaguete is fast becoming known as a food lover’s mecca.

Do we have community spaces? Quezon Park remains a draw for many in the community—although it can stand a thorough rehabilitation and beautification. Rizal Boulevard remains our best showcase, and as a place for the community to mingle, it has become venue for people doing exercise, or for people engaging in heated religious debate, or for concerts, or for people just hanging out eating street food. One end of the boulevard is punctuated by the new pantawan—or “window.” And indeed this is the very “window” of the community, a brick square lit up by the city signage, embracing of whatever. I’ve seen magicians doing tricks there; I’ve seen people walking their pet rabbits; I’ve seen a bagpipe player give an animated concert of Scottish tunes.

But we don’t have a cultural center yet, or a cinematheque. We lack a good bookstore—which is ironic for a university town. And the public library needs help.

And what of our sidewalks? Why are sidewalks important? Contemporary urban planners have long defined a successful city as one that is “walkable,” and certainly not a city defined by its use of cars. [In fact, many modern cities are ditching cars as definitive of urban living, and are transforming many highways to pedestrian walkways and parks. Of course, it has to be said that this is feasible in cities with good transportation systems.] A walking population actually improves the local economy: people who walk on sidewalks are more likely to enter shops than people who drive by in cars. In Dumaguete, we largely walk because the city is still small enough to do so—but we are increasingly plagued by the number of cars infecting traffic in our streets. And our sidewalks are laughable in their narrowness; sometimes they become the parking spaces for motorcycles, rendering them impassible; and more often, there is no uniformity in design to them—the city’s sidewalks are transformed in parts according to how the establishment behind it deems necessary, resulting to uneven stretches that sometimes recall climbing a mountain range. Dumaguete is a city where people walk, but it is not really a “walkable” city.

All these—sidewalks, restaurants, public spaces—are indicative of a community in constant interaction with itself, which is how we can come to define ourselves as people of a place. A city thrives when people manage to talk to each other, when people are able to walk together, when people can do all manner of activities together. We are still small enough that there is no strict regimentation of what areas in the city constitute “residential” and “commercial”—and that is a blessing we need to continue and foster, because strict zoning actually kills the vibrancy of a place. Think of the big city whose business centers embrace only the commercial: they are alive in the daytime, but become dead at night. Think of these big cities and their surrounding gated suburbs which are only lived-in at nighttime but are mostly deserted during the day. Dumaguete is not there yet—and hopefully we will never reach that kind of deadening.

The New York Times article cites Jay Walljasper, author of How to Design Our World for Happiness, who once said that “the key [to a happy city was] to [have] a place where neighbors can encounter each other spontaneously.” This means a city with “neighborhoods with a green commons, sidewalks, parks, street festivals, and community gatherings.” This means having a city with “apartment[s] with shared backyard[s], or [along] street[s] known for [their] Halloween festivals or community newsletter[s].” A happy city is a place where “people are connected and [who] create opportunities to connect with each other on a regular basis.” Are we a happy city then?

We seem to be, and if we aren’t, it’s 2019—a new year where we can strive to be.

To be continued…


Photo by Marc Caen Aricheta

Labels: dumaguete

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Saturday, January 05, 2019

10:43 PM | The Films of 2018, List 1: The 25 Most Disappointing

Revised 8 January 2019


A General Introduction

Sometime early in 2018, I resolved to watch as many films as I could and duly rank them according to how I liked them, and briefly note how each one impressed me. It proved to be a herculean task, so much so that sometimes the ranking sufficed but the brief annotation did not; often it was because of some difficulty having to set my thoughts on each film right after viewing it: opinion, I quickly found out, was a flighty, restless bird, and a film I thought I liked after an evening's screening would somehow evolve to some lesser evaluation the next morning. The otherwise also proved true: I would have visceral hatred for a film, but once I started putting down my thoughts in words, I would surprise myself by actually possessing some admiration, often begrudging, over it. And the whole exercise proved to be taxing. How does one exactly find the time to watch at least three movies a night, just to keep up with the sheer volume of film being produced worldwide? I watched a total of 204 films last year; I barely cracked half the titles in my list.

But 2018, on the whole, has certainly been a fantastic year for film, and while Hollywood films consumed most of my attention this year -- it is simply because they are easier to access -- I have noticed that the rest of world cinema has been muscling Hollywood out in producing films that are not only excellent in terms of technical execution, it has managed to produce most of the dazzling and memorable films of the year. Take note of Alfonso Cuarón's Roma and Chang-dong Lee's Burning, which remained with me weeks after I watched them. On that note, I must make mention the fact that I have not seen many Filipino films this year. Philippine Cinema, without doubt, is one of the most vital national cinemas in the world, but it is one that has become the sole province of the Manila-based cineast, that privileged creature who has access to festivals and cinematheques. I have decided not to be bothered by this fact.

Please note that as of January 8, these are the major films I have yet to see, and are thus unranked: At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel, United States), Ben is Back (Peter Hedges, United States), Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton, United States), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, United States), Destroyer (Karyn Kusama, United States), If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, United States), On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder, United States), and Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, United States and Italy), as well as Ash is Purest White (Zhangke Jia, China), Ayka (Sergey Dvortsevoy, Russia and Kazakhstan), Birds of Passage (Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, Colombia), Border (Ali Abbasi, Sweden), Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, Lebanon), Dear Ex (Chih-Yen Hsu and Mag Hsu, Taiwan), Girl (Lukas Dhont, Belgium), Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany), Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan), and Tale of the Lost Boys (Joselito Altarejos, Philippines and Taiwan). On to the lists...


THE DISAPPOINTMENTS

This is the first of several lists I've prepared, and we shall begin with the disappointments. Probably not the worst -- because I have not seen everything, and I have also chosen not to watch the regular debacle that is the Metro Manila Film Festival, and thus cannot rightly say whether many of its entries, savaged thoroughly by critics I admire and trust, have their place in this initial list. And I have no desire to find out either. But these are the films that thoroughly disappointed me for the waste of resources and talent, and often good will.



25. Little Italy (Donald Petrie, United States)

Obviously made with the best of intentions, the film features two pizza-making families [one is famous for its dough, and the other one is famous for its sauce] who used to be the best of friends, until a mysterious tiff breaks them apart. But here comes their scions, a son and a daughter who suddenly find that they love each other, somewhat. There are other plot elements, too, and what we eventually get is the colour and texture of this Little Italy community somewhere in Canada, their denizens all quirky. Emma Roberts and Hayden Christiansen try their best as the young lovers, but there is no chemistry to their romance, and the film overall is riddled with too many hokey elements that derail what works, although what works drown in this mess.

24. Church and State (Holly Tuckett and Kendall Wilcox, United States)

This documentary feels like a derivative of the much superior The Case Against 8 from 2014, which chronicled the fight for gay marriage in the U.S. Supreme Court. This one is about a much earlier victory in that fight, done in the impossibly homophobic wild lands of Mormon-controlled Utah. But it lacks The Case Against 8's wit and its tension, blandly unfolding the motivations behind the proponents, as well as the infightings. But it does zero in very specifically on the religious motivations behind institutional homophobia: it targets the Mormon religion, taking it to task since it had gone over a huge challenge to their original conception of marriage, specifically polygamy, changing it to be accommodated as a component state of the U.S. -- but could not do the same for a more contemporary challenge.

23. Gutland (Govinda Van Maele, Luxembourg)

I love slowburning films, I love secrets and mysteries, and I often love films that are stingy with answers -- but it took me a while to appreciate Govinda Van Maele's Gutland, and only barely, I guess it was because it meandered too much and promised too much, and was barely giving me anything, except that a stranger wanting shelter and work has stumbled into a Luxembourg town of farmers, who first fends him off, but soon embraces him with kindness and consideration, but for what? What sinister thing lies behind all these? What are those pictures of naked women in his trailer all about? Who really is Lucy, the girl he finds himself having a relationship with? What it offers is a violent climax and a kind of reveal, but never enough to justify the slog we had to go through.

22. Love, Gilda (Lisa Dapolito, United States)

Something is off about this documentary about the comedian Gilda Radner, original cast member of Saturday Night Live and ambitious funny woman who somehow accidentally found herself in comedy stardom. She narrates her own story, gleaned from hours of tapes she had recorded before she died of cancer, as well as abundant material gleaned from numerous TV shows and movies. But the whole thing just doesn't stick, somehow. Her own narration seems off, or perhaps imperfectly recorded or edited, and the resulting story feels disjointed bordering on the uninteresting, even the unfunny. It feels totally undeserving of the subject.

21. Billionaire Boys Club (James Cox, United States)

What has The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short wrought? More tales of Wall Street types behaving badly. In the case of Billionaire Boys Club, it's crossed with the beefcake of The Covenant. And if you let that all sink in, you get essentially the appeal of James Cox's new film -- a film now buried under the post-Kevin Spacey tsunami. The young cast tries hard, especially Ansel Elgort, and in many ways they sell this film about a Ponzi scheme ensnaring the sons of Beverly Hills billionaires, which ultimately ends in violence and tragedy. Frankly, I have no taste for films like this.

20. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (David Yates, United States)

I watched and finished David Yates' Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald -- the latest instalment in the new Wizarding World franchise that Warner Bros. is trying to build -- and I still have no idea what any of it was all about. The problem I think is J.K. Rowling's script, which is an original. She should have written the novel first, to later have some talented scriptwriter adapt it with better structure suitable for cinema. It worked for Harry Potter, where her lengthy novels were handsomely pared down to their essences.

19. The Cloverfield Paradox (Julius Onah, United States)

Why is Cloverfield a franchise? The original 2008 movie -- an attempt to marry the found film genre to the monster film -- was only mildly interesting. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), while engaging, felt like two movies fused to one unsteady creature. The latest, Julius Onah's The Cloverfield Paradox, attempts a kind of explanation for the world the franchise has created -- a planet suddenly engulfed in deadly monsters -- but it feels half-baked despite the efforts of an all-star cast. The series of films feels a little too loose to belong to one universe [the backstory of each one, where a totally separate film production suddenly becomes reconfigured to become a Cloverfiled entry, lends credence to that observation]. At least with 10 Cloverfield Lane you got a film that somehow knew what it had to be; this new one doesn't know what it wants to be, and it leaves us feeling we couldn't care less for anything.

18. Bird Box (Susanne Bier, United States)

M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening was the better rendition of this apocalyptic story -- about unseen monsters causing people to commit suicide -- and that alone gives you a perfect understanding of how bad Susanne Bier's film is. Not even the ever dependable Sandra Bullock can save this film from its enormous plot holes and agonising twists. This is a film better seen with a blindfold.

17. The Cakemaker (Ofir Raul Grazier, Israel)

There was a reason why it took me a long time to get into Ofir Raul Grazier's The Cakemaker despite its "gay film" label, something I usually have no problem tearing into with glee and anticipation. What's not to like about this story about a Berlin cake maker who goes to Jerusalem to find the truth about the death of his Israeli lover -- only to find himself enmeshed in the life of his dead lover's widow? Sounded very dramatic and promising. Until it turned out to be a creepy, creepy drama that I was so eager to get over with.

16. Westwood: Punk Icon Activist (Lorna Tucker, United States)

Most documentaries about artists -- especially when they're done well -- will have you marvelling at their talent, and their process, if not their colourful lives. Lorna Tucker tries hard to do just that, but the iconic fashion designer Vivienne Westwood turns out to be a lousy subject -- a lousy human being with questionable ethics whose art cannot redeem her lousiness. I went into this film with such high respect for Westwood, and came away from it detesting every single thing about her.

15. Halloween (David Gordon Green, United States)

David Gordon Green tries hard, but he is unable to bring back the visceral terror of the 1978 John Carpenter original, even if they have gone to such extreme extent as rebooting the entire franchise by forgetting the sequels happened, by basically going back to the original's template, by bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis as a PTSD survivor. The first sequence set in the prison was tense and promised a breakthrough, but everything else that happens later felt tired, including a twist in the story I could smell from a mile away, as well as the standard stupidity of characters that get them killed. One such sequence late in the film completely upends the gravity of the sequence that came before, and you are left to ask, "Why did that just happen? Oh, right, they just need a reason for the killing." I am generally frazzled by horror movies -- but this one left me bored.

14. Flavors of Youth (Haoling Li, Yoshitaka Takeuch, and Xiaoxing Yi, China and Japan)

This China-centered anime, which is really an anthology of three short films that have nothing to do with each other save for the flimsy promise hinted at by the title, feels all of awkward and emotionally unrealised. Also forgettable. There's something about a soup shop, something about fashion and a nervous breakdown, and something about ... I can't remember exactly, but no matter. It was a chore to get through this.

13. Call Her Ganda (PJ Raval, United States)

The murder of Jennifer Laude deserves a better documentary than this. The transgender Filipina woman who was found dead in a motel room in 2015, with a U.S. Marine as the lead suspect, inspired considerable grassroots activists in the Philippines to demand accountability from the United States -- and her story is gripping. In putting together a lackluster film in need of better shape, and better research, PJ Raval finds a way of murdering Laude all over again.

12. The Happytime Murders (Brian Henson, United States)

I was rooting for this film. An adultish romp whose use of puppets makes you think this is a Sesame Street production gone amuck? The glorious Melissa McCarthy in the lead of a police procedural story like no other? Puppets having rambunctious sex? What's not to like? It turns out, everything. The film just doesn't execute any of its conceit well, leaving you grasping to draw a smidgen of laughter from its lame idea of comedy.

11. Macbeth (Kit Monkman, United States)

Kit Monkman's adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy is all sound and fury signifying the depth of a film school reject. God, how much I hate this staging with its over-earnest actors and their laughable deliveries, who go about their action and cues like grown people trapped in doing a third grade classroom play. That it tries to blindside us with aesthetics borrowed from 300 does not speak well of its direction at all.

10. Life of the Party (Ben Falcone, United States)

In an interview, comedian Melissa McCarthy swears that one of the funniest people she knows is her husband, Ben Falcone. Which is probably why she keeps going back to him to direct many of her films, all of them without doubt unfunny and are certified misfires. Which proves a point: you may be the best at your line of work, but you are blinded by the merits or lack thereof by the people you love. Life of the Party, which retreads Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School premise of a parent going back to college, lacks that 1986 film's sheer manic genius, and wastes McCarthy's comedic chops once more.

9. Sierra Burgess is a Loser (Ian Samuels, United States)

There are certain storytelling tropes that no longer land the way they used to. Cyrano de Bergerac may be a classic, and Steve Martin's take on it in Roxanne may have been a 1980s treat, but in 2018, in Netflix's Sierra Burgess is a Loser to be exact, it's just catfishing. And it's just creepy. Noah Centenio may be the Internet's crush of the moment, but even his charms can't save this lousily-written film.

8. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J. A. Bayona, United States)

They should have left this franchise alone long ago, when it was starting to show its tattered edges even when Steven Spielberg was still helming it. But nostalgia for the 1990s is currently powerful, which catapulted Jurassic World into T. Rex territory of box-office bonanza in 2015, although it wasn't much of a film. A follow-up was of course only to be expected. It would have been so easy to top the 2015 mediocrity, but for some reason J. A. Bayona, who has done better work before, feels overwhelmed by the studio expectations of a Hollywood blockbuster. So we get the island of dinosaurs in Costa Rica suddenly on the verge of a volcanic eruption -- thereby promising another round of extinction for the dinosaurs in one go. But to quote Ian Malcolm from the first movie -- and he makes an unnecessary appearance here, a cameo that is also the film's bookends -- "Life finds a way." And dinosaur life indeed finds its way -- into an old mansion, essentially transforming the Jurassic Park franchise into a haunted house movie. Let that sink in: the playground of the deadly dinosaurs this time is an old mansion. Palm, meet face.

7. Sobibor (Konstantin Khabensky, Russia)

Any Holocaust movie after Schindler's List -- especially if it deals with the horrors of the concentration camps -- has such a high bar to clear, any other effort without vision or stomach would be an exercise in futility. The story of Sobibor -- the only time when Jewish concentration camp prisoners were able to successfully fight and win over their Nazi guards during World War II -- deserve to be told, but it deserves to be told well compared to this exercise in sacrilege. It is earnest where it shouldn't be, it is often cloying, and its direction is so bad the whole film feels like a slap to the memory of the dead and those who survived the horrors.

6. A Wrinkle in Time (Ava DuVernay, United States)

A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay's misfire, is beautiful to look at, but it is still a misfire. It stands as a film that got sunk by its own good intentions, both the story's effort to tell a vaguely Christian tale of fighting darkness, and the director's effort to give a Hollywood would-be megablockbuster a kick of diversity. All that effort falls flat nonetheless, because the film is a tedious exercise that fights so hard your every effort to like it. Then again, we must be frank about this unpopular opinion: the source material by Madeleine L'Engle, a classic of children's literature, was never a good book in the first place despite its massive popularity; its "inventiveness" could inspire the shadiest eye-rolls in the world. That wonkiness is what got translated into this effort, and shows us what a mess this story is in the first place.

5. Vice (Adam McKay, United States)

This one is about U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, the devil politician of the Dubya years. But who cares? What is infuriating about the recent "serious" efforts of Adam McKay, starting with The Big Shot, is that his films feel like they're all THAT, and they're really not. They're failures of pacing, and utter failures in tone, and supreme failures as satires, but they're so oblivious to these and think they're quite grand because they're about serious topics that they feel self-congratulatory even though they're pooping shit everywhere. Even its stylistic choices -- a surprising end-credits roll in the middle of the film, a series of narration by various ordinary American citizens, etc. -- feel smug and unnecessary.

4. The Predator (Shane Black, United States)

Shane Black's The Predator feels very much like a throwback to the action movies of the 1980s -- which is understandable, given that this franchise sprang from that decade. But it remains mired in the sensibilities of that time -- all testosterone, relentless action -- that it strikes like a sore thumb today. There really is no need to do this movie, and thus what you get is a film that's all about regurgitation without humour or sense.

3. Always at the Carlyle (Matthew Miele, United States)

I'm sure the right filmmaker can make a great documentary over the most mundane of things. Errol Morris did that with pet cemeteries. Gary Hustwit did that with fonts. Frederick Wiseman often just goes to some place and let his camera roll. They have come away with wonderful films. All it takes is passion, depth, and execution. Matthew Miele's documentary on the Carlyle Hotel in New York has none of that, coming off instead as an infomercial in the guise of documentary filmmaking. It's just a relentless barrage of celebrity name-dropping and while it goes about its task of having hotel staff act as talking heads, I cannot help but feel that the observational camera of Frederick Wiseman can do a better job at fleshing out the allure and the cultural importance of this establishment.

2. The First Purge (Gerard McMurray, United States)

There are some movies where, at the halfway-mark, makes you question life, and whether to finish the travesty you're watching or go out and spend what remains of your time living out there in the world. I did not reach the halfway mark, I lasted 30 minutes.

1. The 15:17 to Paris (Clint Eastwood, United States)

The worst film of the year. Not even the fact that this is a film based on a true story of real-life heroes -- of three young American men who foil a terrorist attack in a speeding French train bound for Paris -- makes me want to be generous to this awful, awful excuse of a movie. It's chilling demonstration of conservative values aside, it also makes the hideous choice of casting the real personalities behind the story as its leads. Atrocious acting follows.



Next: The Rest Outside of the Top 50...

Labels: film, review

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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Friday, January 04, 2019

1:00 PM | "Don't Look at Me!"

This snippet of the marvelous Olivia Colman doing her thing in Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite (2018) is how I want to treat 2019.

Labels: film, life

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12:36 AM | What is Remembrance?

Every time I pass by Lo-oc, I always see a name I’ve been constantly wondering about. Who is Amador Dagudag? There’s no information about him anywhere — except an online mention that he “protected ballots during elections.” And that’s it.

I read somewhere once that the surest way of being forgotten is to have a monument, a building, a street named after you. An ironic truth, but there it is. Your name turns into some abstract thing that becomes fully connected to that monument, that building, that street, which has a way of erasing your own history. For example, there’s Amador Dagudag. Google him, and all you get are posts and pictures of school buildings — and just one little line about the man that says nothing about him.

But what is remembrance? Everything in life is temporary.

Labels: life

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Wednesday, January 02, 2019

3:54 PM | #BestNine2018

I resisted at first, not wanting to jump on the bandwagon of #BestNine2018 -- but soon I thought that if I was not going to join the Great Essay Writing Contest for the New Year, how else to assess the personal year that was? So I finally gave in -- and found out that despite the extreme challenges I faced last year, 2018 was actually a pretty swell year. So good in fact that I had to sacrifice so many other important highlights just to come up with the Best 9. What's gathered here are not just my personal gilded moments; each one also becomes a representation of many other things. So there was a grand family reunion like no other, a TEDx talk, a play I wrote [among other things I do for the CAC], a new collection of short stories, a magnificent road trip with good friends, a Pride Month celebration, a trip to Palawan with the NCCA, a heritage journal for the Tourism Office [among other things I do for it], and a black hole of a challenge in the middle of the year that on the whole made me a better man. Life's about appreciating all the best and all the worst. I survived 2018, I also lived it beautifully.

Happy 2019, everyone!

Labels: life

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Tuesday, December 04, 2018

1:52 PM | Old Homeless Woman and Cat

My 5 AM thoughts go to this homeless old woman who has made living quarters of the parking space off the 7-11 that's right across the campanario. I see her on nights I go to Qyosko, and when I happen to go to the store to buy something or other. She has a cat. [Or the cat has her.] But it's such a loyal cat, beautiful, and looks like it's cared for. When the woman's asleep on the makeshift bed she's made out of cardboard, the cat sleeps beside her with such a look of comfort; when it's awake, it sits beside her sleeping body like a tiny lion poised and on guard. They always look like such a pair. Last night, she was sitting on the sidewalk looking lost into the drizzle. There was no cat. There was just this look of waiting on her face, vacant and searching at the same time. I couldn't ask her where the cat was. I could only walk past her forlorn figure, grab a cab home, to my bed and to my dreams where she would linger cat-less even to my waking hours.

Note: Cat in photo is not the actual cat.

Labels: life, pets

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Sunday, August 26, 2018

9:00 AM | Coming to Silliman

It’s the trees first of all, three hundred sixteen of them, sprawled over 62-hectares of green campus—massive acacias of the kind of towering presence that catches the eye for the way they seem to add shape to the skyline, for the wizened look about them that gives you a distinct feeling they know history, for the abundance of foliage that abounds with birds. When you think of Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, you begin always with the acacia trees.



Begin, for example, by walking down Hibbard Avenue from the university portals that face downtown Dumaguete. Just a few meters away, you stop and this is the sight that catches you: a field of green, rolling towards where the outlines of Mount Talinis are, terminates at the western end with the sight of the ornate Silliman Church, an American Gothic affair in white that stretches towards the sky. Embracing all of this are the acacia trees that line both sides of this quadrangle of green. And it all seems so postcard-perfect, this marriage of trees and field and architecture, framed by the cobalt blue of Visayan skies and the trace of Cuernos de Negros in the distance.

In the grassy expanse of the western quadrangle facing the church, when you are not dodging the young skateboarders trying to own the sidewalks that border it, you get how young Dumaguete really is by the sight of Frisbee players running around the green. Further on, before you get to the doors of the church itself, a recess in the grounds provides the perfect spot for the amphitheatre, which used to be the sight for the stagings of various Shakespearean plays in the first decades of Silliman’s history, but now mostly exists to provide seat and respite for the romantic trying to make sense of the world.

The world slows down in Dumaguete—none of Manila’s erratic and punishing rush here—and because of the sweltering humidity that comes by virtue of having a campus built right at the edge of the Visayan Sea, its denizens take deliberate slowness in pace, as well as in life; and most face life indeed with the uniform of tsinelas and the thinnest of shirts and the shortest of shorts, with time largely a suggestion demonstrated by a local expression regarding distance: “Everything in Dumaguete is ten minutes away.”

Informality with an island vibe is the way to be for most Sillimanians and Dumagueteños on general—but the lackadaiscal attitude can be deceptive, too: because beneath that impression is actually a fierceness that drives an overwhelmingly intellectual and cultural city. The campus demonstrates that. In the Robert and Metta Silliman Library, which can be found at the heart of the northern part of campus, we find a building and collection of books many people claim to be one of the biggest in Asia. In the glorious brutalist-style of the Claire Isabel Luce Auditorium beside the library—and also further on, the new Romeo Ariniego Art Gallery—we have what many culturati in the country have taken to calling the Cultural Center of the South, the throbbing center of the city’s vibrant art and culture scene.

Here and there, always ringed by acacia trees, are the dorms and the faculty houses and the college buildings both new and old, and the surprise of gardens in the nooks and the crannies. Some people call this campus one of the most beautiful in this part of the world. It has its moments, but of course I truly love it—if only because its beauty seems to come from no design at all, just everything falling into place in a strange confluence of history and circumstances, and then finding out that the merry mix have created a campus more than fit enough to Instagram.

Hibbard Avenue is the stretch of street—named after Silliman’s founders David and Laura Hibbard, Presbyterian missionaries who took the challenge of founding an industrial school for boys in 1901 in the new American colony in the Far East—that bisects the entire campus into its eastern and western parts, and it goes all the way north, about two kilometers away, to terminate at an extension of the campus in a barangay called Bantayan, where you get another sprawl that is rightly called a farm; this houses, of course, the College of Agriculture. Immediately besides this farm is the Silliman Beach, which is where we find one of the best marine biology institutions in the world, and the short stretch of sand and surf faces the east and the striking blue-green of Tañon Strait with its abundance of whales and dolphins and butandings.

There is deliberation in the detailing of this campus geography: because what other campus boasts of an eclectic mix of beach and farmland and cityscape and grand architecture and abundance of trees, all in one bundle of a place? That eclecticism alone is beauty.

Labels: dumaguete, silliman

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Saturday, August 25, 2018

11:59 PM | In Electric Dreams

Reunion night, High School Class 1993.

Looking at them, it's hard to believe that these people I know -- all of us entering middle age now and many showing the girth and softness and other fabulous symptoms of wear -- used to be the young punks that made our high school hire a security guard after a bunch of us did away with the principal's car, or made the city impose a 10 PM curfew for minors [which is still in place] after a bunch of us partied a little too hard on the dance floor of Music Box in the early years of the 1990s. Truth to tell, we weren't exactly a wild bunch either -- just young people lucky or unlucky enough to do certain things at the most opportune moment to make some mark.

It has been 25 years since we graduated in 1993, and many of us have gone on to some measures of accomplishment and success. But tonight, on our silver anniversary reunion night, none of that really mattered: we all reverted back to our high school selves, like a switch flicking a time machine. The smart guys back then reverted back to being the smart guys in the room now. The wallflowers then became the wallflowers now. The cool kids are still the cool kids. Aileen was still Aileen, Rosewell was still Rosewell, and so was Salome, and Theresa, and Melissa, and Jo, and Eliel, and Gwyn, and Joy, and Sherwin, and Earl, and Rheina, and Fiametta, and Roy, and Nina, and PaEugene, and Vicente, and so on and so forth. A small jolt still hits you when you see your old high school crush, who now sports a potbelly. Still, a jolt is a jolt. Whatever reinvention we've made of our lives flew out the doors of the reception hall of old Santa Monica Beach Club, and it was back to us remaking connections through our old stories, our old escapades, whatever we could dredge from increasingly frail memories.

It wasn't nostalgia, at least I don't think so -- it was just living shorthand for connection between old friends. What is weird about being surrounded by high school friends is that instantaneous reflex to just relax and be "you," where you don't really need to explain who or how you are now to be part of this circle of friends. I mean, these are people I rarely talk with these days, and most of them I haven't seen in years, but in the scheme of reunion night, none of that seems to matter. You are just Ian from high school. And thus the comfort, the general lack of pretense, and the easy surrender to how we were 25 years ago.

As the night wore on and the hired DJ struggled mightily to play for us the soundtrack of our youth -- and not once succeeding -- we danced to music that at least brought out some body memory of moves. And on the dance floor, it amused me no end to find that we were subconsciously starting to form a huge dancing circle, the way we used to dance with each other back in the day. Old rhythms are forever?



The DJ started playing 1980s music, thinking perhaps that we were 80s kids -- wrong! -- and as I watched my old friends shimmy about, I found myself grinning at the sheer delight of watching people I came of age with still try so hard to recapture the movements of our nimble youth, never mind that most of us were easily running out of breath now, never mind if the knees were starting to get weak and couldn't swing as much.

"Do you realize that in this reunion we are at that last cusp of whatever remains of our youth?" I told Rosewell. "In our next reunion, five years from now, we will be talking about our medications and procedures."

The DJ started playing Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder's "Together in Electric Dreams," and while it was still not one of our generation's repertoire of hit songs, part of the song's lyrics hit deep, and everyone responded to it visibly: "We'll always be together," the song went as we sang and danced along, "However far it seems / We'll always be together / Together in electric dreams." And that is the story, really, of old friends and twenty-five years, and how we will always be together, especially in our electric dreams.

Labels: high school, life, memories

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Friday, August 17, 2018

9:00 AM | All the Cricket Songs in the World

I can only wish the poet Carlos Angeles is right—what relief it would have been to be on the nose about things, the world becoming a lens for desolation; it would have been so much easier to behold a landscape of bleeding sunrise in knifed horizon, peacock stain upon sand, the wreck of air, the murdered rocks refuse to die. Sadness sings in a Carlos Angeles poem, and I envy its odd redemption of cricket sounds.

Do you know this poem? You should read this poem.

But it has been a beautiful day, so I gather. I am told by the dearest someone beside me that it has been a beautiful day, and I cannot disagree with him. Outside, much later, the Thursday mid-August night settles into an ordinary sort of rhythm you will recognize for Dumaguete calmness, in the way this town of a city always does: the screeches of tricycle tires on asphalt gradually softening, a kind of simmering inside the darkening houses punctuated by the blue of television glow, the hurried talk of the young as they catch what remains of gentle city traffic on the way to some party somewhere, Escano perhaps.

It is the last stretch of Mercury in retrograde, in the middle of the ghost month, and the days I am told are beautiful.

I see this.

Everything in its full lightness—and how I envy the easy joys of the people I see, how I envy their capacity for life. The sun shines, the half moon plays hide and seek with the night clouds, and if I find myself by the Rizal Boulevard to see what becomes of the horizon, I will see how the bright blue-green of the surf plays magnificently with tropical light. I see this. I just do not feel any of it. The day is a ghost, and I am in the throes of the deepest sadness I know.

Sadness brings its own version of clarity—a small and shifting and acrid stillness in your brain that is the only stable thing in a tumbling sea of shadows, and the shadow of shadows. You grasp at this small thing, this precarious balance, this bedeviled clarity, and you make it your crutch. Thus to the world, you appear calm, you walk in measured steps, and there are occasions you even laugh. You pay bills, do the moribund things like cleaning the house, like going to work, like enjoying the rib-eye steak at this digs in a new food park somewhere in the bowels of Claytown. You somehow exist, and for now that is enough.

But there is no use confiding to people—not many will understand, will dismiss things as mood swings you should be able to handle, their advise is “to snap out of it,” a judgment you accept because it takes too much energy to argue otherwise. Besides, you know this is the only vocabulary they have in this language of psychology they do not speak. You know the world would not bother to read the dead depths in your eyes. If they looked closer, they would have seen a gaping void where no light lives, where nothing makes sense, where everything disperses into the wreck of air. You wish for the fantasy and simplicity of snapping out of it.

The last happy year, as far as I can consider the vagaries of days and memory, was 2012—the year the world was supposed to end if the ancient Mayans were to have their way. It did not end. The calendar from those ancient days pointed to the conclusion of a b’ak’tun (a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar), which contemporary archaeologists had determined to be the 12th of December, 2012. That abrupt end simply did not account for a tomorrow, and how that made everyone go on a tizzy—do you remember?—but I was happy. I felt that my life by then had rounded all corners, had satisfied most of my dearest dreams. Life was full, and if it were to end in the name of the Maya, so be it. I remember my own anticipation of December 21 when it rolled into the calendar, to meet its dawn like it was probably the last, and to feel from the earth any signs of mysterious stirrings that were supposed to signal some catastrophe that would end everything. I waited till midnight. Except for reports of an earthquake somewhere else in the world, the world did not end.

Did the scientists read the calendar wrong? Or perhaps the Mayans were the first trolls, laughing from somewhere among the nine layers of their Place of Awe, their version of the hereafter, at our gullibility? Or did we just place too much of a superstitious emphasis on the meanings of relics we have scarcely come to understand? I doubt there are suitable answers to these questions, and I am not an archaeologist.

Some time ago, I read a tweet that posited another probability. Perhaps the world did end in 2012 in some otherworldly cataclysm our human brains simply cannot begin to comprehend, and we are now merely wraiths living in the shadows of that catastrophe we cannot see. Which is why the world is what it is, at the moment, a topsy-turvy purgatory. We are all dead—and the world right now is just the long sigh of the consciousness of our collective soul going into that cosmic bright light. Perhaps. I have never felt right since 2012, and a part of me is inclined to agree. As of this writing, in about three hours, I shall turn 43.

Somewhere where I cannot hear them crickets despair in ambushing me with their song.

Labels: birthday, life

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Wednesday, August 08, 2018

10:17 PM | Trust

It just occurred to me that the reason why a significant number of my stories are of the confessional type -- quite autobiographical, I must admit -- is that I have never learned to properly open up to people without getting dashed by the disappointment that they don't quite believe my story. I get condescending responses like, "Are you sure about this? Maybe if..." and variations of the same, which I allow them to do, in the name of skepticism and all that. But inside, I'm like, "What the f--? Here I am doing this stupid confessional thing with you, and I rarely do this, and you doubt me?" I once had an altercation with a former good friend, and when I poured my feelings out to a common friend, I was pointedly and condescendingly told, "That's your version of the story." But the last laugh was mine, because a few years later, that former friend sued that common friend, and that common friend was hunted down like a common criminal by the police and landed in jail. Why am I posting this? I don't really know. I guess it's just a realization that, for the lack of somebody to trust, I turn to the next best thing in my need for a sounding board: my stories. They're really mostly my life, fictionalized. If you believe they happened, good for you. If you don't believe they happened, I could care less; they're fiction.

Labels: life

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Monday, July 09, 2018

11:25 PM | What It's Like to be Loved

I was hungry, I was tired. My film class had gone on from 2 PM and ended around 7 PM -- the film of our choosing being 2 hours and 4 minutes long, which followed a short film that lasted 36 minutes. After class, I found myself in a cafe, still working, about to spiral -- and you suddenly appeared beside me, a welcome sight on a Monday night, very much like a balm to every conceivable existential pain. You took me to dinner at Bricks Hotel, where we met local young artists and the very personable owner of the hotel, who gave us free dessert. [That was nice.] You took me for a stroll along the Boulevard right after, where we beheld the calm sea and also a flying drone taking pictures. And then you took me to Why Not for a cone of ice cream each, which we happily licked away while walking. And as we spent away the evening hours, it occurred to me like a lovely thought blossoming that this must be how it feels like to be loved. To be in someone's constant company, and cherishing the generosity of his presence.

Labels: life, love

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Friday, June 29, 2018

1:14 AM | The Long, Sweet Monday

It had been a long Monday, the 25th of June.

The emotional peak for that day for me came early. We had just finished doing our presentations on four specific aspects of gay lives—Prof. Michele Joan Valbuena, former chair of the Psychology Department at Silliman University, talked about the spectrum of gay identity; Atty. Golda Benjamin, instructor at the College of Law, talked about current legal groundings of the LGBTQ; J Marie Maxino, instructor at the Department of English and Literature, talked about the nuances of gay living; and I talked about gay representation in culture, focusing mostly on movies. There was a huge crowd gathered around the American Studies Resource Center of the Silliman Library, and we were fielding questions.

Soon a girl came up, and in a shaky voice that ran the gamut of being scared and being tired revealed to the crowd how she was recently forced to “come out” to her family and how she was now flailing in her relationships with them, essentially asking us the panelists in that Pride Month forum how to be brave in the face of all that.

This is the thing many people don’t get about queer lives: often there is the heartbreaking ostracism from the very people who are supposed to care for us, no matter what. The details of the girl’s story and how she delivered it shook me—and I must admit I cried in front of everyone. It was a very emotional moment, an unexpected one, simply because it struck me as being so brave, that decision to speak up, in public no less. It must been such a driving thing for her, to be compelled to ask.

I remembered a friend from five years ago, for example, who was told by his father that if he didn’t “turn straight” in six months, he would be forced to leave home. A former student also told me that once she was in a fast food restaurant with a very close relative who, upon seeing a couple of lesbians exchanging affection in the line at the counter, promptly told her that if she behaved “like that,” she would also get the boot. How many more stories like these are out there? I bet thousands.

For J Marie, her emotional moment came right after our panel when a boy came up to her and revealed how he had to flee from his hometown all the way to Dumaguete to get away from all the bullying.

And that was when I realized this was why we were doing all the things we’ve been doing for Pride Month in Dumaguete: to make visible all these issues no one wants to talk about, to create a safe space for discourse, to allow people to reveal of themselves without fear.

Truth to tell, when I found myself starting 6200Pride three weeks ago with only about seven people eager to help, and with no budget whatsoever, I made an effort not to think about the gargantuan demands of pulling off a Pride Month, which suddenly had ten major events to manage. I didn’t ask for these ten events; other people suggested them with so much enthusiasm I felt compelled to help them realize what they wanted.

“You want a drag show?” I remember telling Sol De Castro, for example. He had been, for the longest time, the leader of Silliman’s ISPEC, the campus’ organization for LGBTQs and allies, and had developed a drag persona called Solé, but had yet to put on a show in all the years he had stayed in Dumaguete. “Fine, let’s do a drag show,” I finally told him—without actually knowing how it was to actually pull off a drag show. But we did it, and it was an awesome success.

“You want a panel on coming out?” I remember telling Felix De la Pena Mosqueda III, the local leader for the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community-ISLAS. “Fine, let’s do that, too.”

Victor Giorgio Villegas was adamant about having a talk on HIV, and a free testing. Karl James Villarmea wanted a separate panel on queer faith. And so it went.

So sure, June 25 had been a very long Monday, and June has been a long month—but so far, we’ve done eight events out of the ten we’ve set out to do. We did the coming out stories last June 22—and that was an eye-opener for everyone, because we took care to have good representation: we had a lesbian, a gay man, a trans woman, and a trans boy still calling himself queer, all talking about the challenges and repercussions of coming out. We did the HIV talk last June 23, and the free clinic for testing as well—and that was huge challenge, stigma-wise, but we did it anyway.

We did a fun run and walk in the name of ecology and gender rights last Sunday, because Karl thought we should start thinking about the interlacing of disparate issues in our complicated lives.

Then on June 25, we did four [and a half] events in total: a jampacked panel on gay issues; then the panel which tackled queer faith—which was a long, very interesting event, held at Magdamo Hall at Silliman, the home of its Religion and Peace Studies Department; a zine fest; a poetry+music event; and the unfurling of our gigantic rainbow flag.

In the end, I went back again to my early question: why were we doing this? Because we didn’t have to, you know. But I’ve realized it is for that girl who cried, and for that boy who escaped his bullies.

Some things are bigger than ourselves; and long Mondays are fine in the light of all things.

Labels: dumaguete, Pride, queer

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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

10:01 AM | What's Going On at the #6200Pride?

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, queer

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Monday, June 18, 2018

3:07 AM | Soaring Sound

The choir started singing Mozart’s Requiem on an early Sunday evening—it was the June 17th, at the tail-end of Father’s Day—and we were transfixed by the music until the very end. When the performance was over, no one moved; no one could quite believe it was finished and felt there should have been more. More music, another piece perhaps. [There was alas no encore.]

That pregnant expectation for more was very much a testament to the performance by Ating Pamana/Silliman University Gratitude and Goodwill Ambassador, directed by Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez—and it was without question superb, the kind of performance you know has been wrought by someone who is equal to the passion and to the demands of the music.



Once again, Dr. Suarez has demonstrated the immense gift she has in conducting music: exquisitely aware of how to “timpla” sound [her word], eschewing the loudness that has come to characterize much of the country’s choral efforts and believing instead in precision, in massaging the notes and the spaces between them just enough to create a richness that is also about finesse. In her program, the famously unfinished piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart felt quite finished—although she did take care to include the pieces composed by Francois Xavier Süssmayer to finish out the composition after Mozart’s death. (Süssmayer had been a pupil of Mozart and had been much with him during the time he had worked on the Requiem.) From Dies Irae to Tuba Mirum to Rex Tremendae Majestatis, from Recordare to Confutatis Maledictis to Domine Jesu, from Hostias to Lacrymosa to Sanctus and Hosanna, and from Benedictus to Agnus Dei, the choir conquered each movement with panache, each voice vibrant—and I could only imagine the what-if had this also have been accompanied by a full orchestra. But I’ll take my blessings where I can. As it is, the choir was the star.

It goes without saying that Dr. Suarez and the Ating Pamana/Silliman University Gratitude and Goodwill Ambassador deserved the applause they finally got: hearty—and grateful. It did feel that way, the applause. Because listening to music such as this was indeed a gift.

Was this a good choice to open the 56th Cultural Season of Silliman University? By all accounts, it was. As a season opener, it was a good harbinger for things still come—and the cultural calendar is without question chockfull of delightfully anticipated events, including the Philippine Madrigal Singers, the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra, and Ballet Philippines.

But to go back to Mozart Requiem…

The sound. Let us talk about that heavenly sound which reverberated around the Ariniego Art Gallery in a kind of fullness I have never heard before in any other venue in Dumaguete City. There was an uncanny precision even to the echoes. Can you imagine music “soaring”? I have always read that description, and it is in fact a cliché. But the performance demonstrated exactly this effect, and it made all the difference. And it occurred to me that this was always the dream. Once upon a time, in 2014, a group of us—Diomar Abrio, Grace Sumalpong, Leo Mamicpic, Edna Mijares, Annabelle Lee Adriano, Moses JoshuaAtega, and a bunch of others—went to Tagaytay City for dinner with Dr. Romeo Ariniego after having invaded his art collection at his house in Dasmariñas, Cavite, which later on became his fondest donation to Silliman University.

We were frank with our wishes: that perhaps we could have an art gallery to house it all, and that perhaps we could have an art gallery to also function as a venue where we could have a more intimate time with chamber music and choral music, even poetry readings, surrounded by great art. (The Luce was beautiful and grand—but it was too big for certain things.)

We had no idea Dr. Ariniego was listening to us intently in Tagaytay, and three years later, we now have that building that the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council and a bunch of Manila alumni were only wishing about years ago.

This was always the plan for the Ariniego Art Gallery—and when we approved the final architectural design, we took note of that as well, first in giving the specifications, and then finally in choosing the design that best fitted all our expectations.

But there’s art here, and there’s finally music in it too.

And tonight, listening to Ating Pamana sing so magnificently, the genius of Mozart splendidly evoked, all was right in the world.

Labels: art and culture, classical music, cultural affairs committee, dumaguete, music, silliman

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Saturday, June 16, 2018

1:00 AM | The Most Successful People I've Met

By Nick Mamatas

Response to a tweet by @APompliano that read:
The most successful people I've met:
1. Read constantly
2. Workout daily
3. Are innately curious
4. Have laser focus
5. Believe in themselves
6. Build incredible teams
7. Admit they know very little
8. Constantly work to improve
9. Demand excellence in everything they do

The most successful people I've met:

1. Have well-connected parents
2. Who are also wealthy
3. And work in a related field
4. But have a different surname
5. Which allowed my successful acquaintances to "come out of nowhere"
6. Because that's a feature hook
7. Easily arranged

The next most successful group:

1. Married someone
2. With no goals of their own
3. Who are happy to be secretary
4. And valet
5. And unidirectionally monogamous
6. And crawl off silently after separation
7. When the successful person trades up to a better servant

The third group:

1. Are good at quantitative reasoning
2. Read a lot
3. Work sixty-hour weeks
4. Spend their energy covering for their incompetent bosses
5. Usually burn out at 40
6. Grow a stupid beard
7. Can't even get laid at Burning Man
8. Accidentally tweet porn at 3am

The fourth group:

1. Are immigrants
2. From countries with authoritarian governments
3. Who don't like to talk politics
4. Because their parents were part of the regime's intellectual elite
5. And have nicknames like "The Bloodthirsty Tiger"
6. And that $800 handbag is too cute

The fifth group:

1. Are utterly unexceptional
2. worked hard
3. got injured in car accident or fall
4. or were racially/sexually abused by bosses
5. and kept their mouths shut for once, didn't say "partially my own fault"
6. got a big settlement
7. blew it starting a small press

The last group:

1. worked pretty hard
2. got lucky with timing, then
3. coughed hard once and up came some blood
4. or experienced bad thoughts about their phones
5. vanished for years
6. took the bus once; recognized me
7. I said "How you've been?"
8. "Oh God, Nick, oh God."

Everyone else pretty much just has something on SoundCloud and wrote a book you've never heard of.

Labels: poetry

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Friday, June 15, 2018

6:40 PM | The Pride of 6200

In perhaps its most ambitious undertaking since it started celebrating Pride Month in 2016, Dumaguete City is poised to make the 2018 edition its most comprehensive and inclusive, with ten events scheduled throughout June to cater to various interest and concerns of local LGBTQ.

I’ve found myself to be the lead organizer for this event—for reasons I’m still trying to sort out—although I vaguely remember deciding to do this when, a few months ago, Ren Dy, a good friend, made a totally uncharacteristic remark, and resolve. He doesn’t usually follow other people’s lead regarding activism and assorted social concerns, but one time he remarked on the death of two local gay men—one of them a good friends of ours—who had recently under “mysterious” circumstances: “It’s time we do something,” he said.

I found that simple resolve Ren declared quite amazing, and I realized that most of us do feel finally moved when things approaches the personal. Because we knew those two young men died from complications of AIDS—a specter we are still beginning to grapple with in Dumaguete—although we had to decode from the official medical reasons given: “pneumonia,” usually, and sometimes “tuberculosis.” And we knew they didn’t have to die, because HIV is a perfectly manageable condition with recent advances in medical technology—except that these were closeted individuals whose families could barely grasp the heavy intricacies of their situations, because of the stigma.

I’ve always believed that in Dumaguete the biggest problems regarding LGBTQ life and welfare are misinformation and invisibility. These create stigma, and that is the biggest obstacle towards making any headway regarding problems besetting the community. The entrenched conservatism, of course, makes sure no one talks properly and in public about anything, hence the misinformation. And the stigma regarding the lives of gay men renders them invisible; the closet is still where many local gay men live—maintaining a strict cis persona for their families, and a flamboyantly gay one for their friends. Most learn to live in that grey area. And while I firmly do not believe in “outing” anyone from their closet, I can still say it’s a fraught place to live in, even if you have learned to negotiate its shadows.

But I think it’s also time to start making deeper explorations into the various issues of LGBTQ life, because we are not just defined by our sexualities—we are also defined by how we do culture, how we engage in spirituality, and how we link our advocacies to other important concerns like the environment. Hence, there is Pride Month in Dumguete in June.

Pride Month is an internationally recognized celebration advocating for LGBTQE rights and welfare, and it was first celebrated in Dumaguete in 2016, although the first Pride Parade was organized in 2011. The Dumaguete initiative of Pride Month is called #6200Pride, which links Dumaguete’s zipcode to the popular expression of LGBTQ activism—but #6200Pride is not an organization; it is a loose network of organizations and individuals in Dumaguete who are dedicated to the LGBTQ advocacy. Part of this network is local organizations such as the Illuminates of the Spectra [ISPEC] of Silliman University, led by Sol De Castro and a team of other students, and PETALS Dumaguete, a newly-formed LGBTQ group in Dumaguete led by Prof. Carlou Bernaldez of the Negros Oriental State University.

A drag show featuring local drag artists Sole, Maningning, and Kendra Heart starts Pride Month on June 16 at 7:30 PM at Hayahay Treehouse Bar.



Other events include “When I Came Out: A Panel on Coming Out Stories” on June 22, Friday at 4 PM at the American Studies Resource Center of the Robert and Metta Silliman University Library; a talk on HIV/AIDS by Dr. Ma. Lourdes E. Ursos on June 23, Saturday at 9 AM at the Physicians Hall of the Silliman University Medical School, to be followed by a free and confidential testing and counseling at the Ursos Clinic at the Silliman University Medical Center at 2 PM; and the EcoPride Fun Run and Hike on June 24, Sunday starting at 5:30 PM with assembly at the Lee Super Plaza Hypermart, ending at the Valencia Plaza.







June 25 will see a slate of activities, including the Pride Panel on Gay Identity, Gay Culture, Gay Living, and LGBTQ and the Law at 10 AM at the American Studies Resource Center of the Robert and Metta Silliman University Library; a talk titled “Why Queer Faith Matters” at 2 PM at the Magdamo Hall in Silliman campus; and a Pride Poetry and Music event at 3:45 PM at the Silliman Library foyer. A Pride Zine Fest threads throughout these activities starting at 10 AM. A screening of Joselito Altarejos’ award-winning film Tale of the Lost Boys is slated at 7 PM at CityMall Cinema [still pending though].











Dumaguete’s Pride Month culminates with a Grand Pride Parade on June 30, Saturday, starting at 3 PM at Portal West in Hibbard Avenue. We are encouraging not just the local LGBTQ community to participate, but also our cis or straight allies. We hope to compose it with many organizations and individuals in a celebration walk around the city.



6200Pride also includes other local organizations and individuals in Dumaguete City such as Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts [YATTA], Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community-ISLAS, the Dumaguete Amateur Roadrunners and Striders [DARS], Dumaguete City Tourism Office, Dumaguete MetroPost, 6200 Film Society, and several organizations and academic departments in Silliman University including the Culture and Arts Council, American Studies Resource Center of the Robert and Metta Silliman University Library, Religion and Peace Studies Department, Psychology Society, Silliman University Medical Center, Silliman University Medical Students Association, English Society, DumAlt.Press, and others. Sponsoring groups include the BASILBAN, Hayahay, and Dy-Dael Dental Clinic and Associates.

That’s a lot of people invested in this advocacy—as it should. In June, we will paint Dumaguete City with all the colors of the rainbow.

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, life, queer

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Sunday, June 10, 2018

11:38 AM | Pride on the Screen

When Looking first premiered in HBO in 2014, it promised to be a series that would explore, with some rainbow thoroughness, the ferris wheel of gay lives, at least that which can be found in and around San Francisco. Created with intimate care by Michael Lannan, it was also a television show shaped from the creative genius of Andrew Haigh, its director, someone who had previously given us Weekend in 2011, a now iconic gay drama about two men hitting it up for a one-night stand, but find themselves incredibly drawn to each other’s lives.

I loved Looking; it was a well-written, well-directed, well-acted series that was both romantic and realistic, with characters that were complex, in equal measure infuriating and relatable. I loved it the most for what it promised: gay lives in mainstream culture, necessary representation in the checkered history of the LGBT in television.

But what was surprising for me were the criticisms lobbied at it from the most unlikely source: gay men. What was wrong with Looking, according to them? It was too white. It was not diverse enough. It was too sexy. It was too vanilla. There were no lesbians. It was too romantic. It was not romantic enough. Et cetera, et cetera—and at the end of it all, the show lasted only two seasons and a movie, eventually cancelled.

And so we are largely back to live in a world where television is predominantly heterosexual. The Real O’Neals was uproarious and promising—but that got cancelled, too. Thank God at least for the revival of Will and Grace and Queer Eye, and the juggernaut of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has become such a mainstream pleasure, it’s incredible how much cache it has come to carry.

In the movies, at least in American cinema, we’ve had a breakthrough of sorts with Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight surprising everyone for exceeding its indie roots, and came to be the cinematic critical darling of 2016, eventually winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017—and fulfilling the promise denied Ang Lee’s seminal Brokeback Mountain which lost that same accolade to the bewildering bleeding heart that is now the much-maligned film Crash. Moonlight may have won film’s top prize in recent memory—but it is still largely a product of independent efforts; it didn’t start as a mainstream studio offering, embraced only by everyone else when it proved too big to ignore.

Can there be a film about gay and queer people from a studio with a mainstream sensibility, essentially constituting an effort at cracking this particular glass ceiling? The conventional wisdom has always been that gay lives could never be embraced by mainstream cinema; films of that sensibility could never turn a profit—because apparently there is only a miniscule audience for such—hence, gay lives could never be taken seriously as a subject matter fit enough for multiplexes. They tried in 1982, when 20th Century Fox made Making Love, directed by Arthur Hiller. It proved to be a box office disappointment, and the reviews were withering—although it has of late garnered a cult following, making it a mainstream film truly ahead of its time. The traditional home for gay-centric films has always been the independent cinema scene, where the taboos—because the distribution is niche—are often broken, and sincere filmmaking has always been the vanguard. To list all the gay films made from this side of world cinema is to risk overindulgence. There has been hundreds, a lot of them good, and many of them fantastic—Moonlight is only one of the most recent efforts. In 2017 alone, there has been Call Me By Your Name, Beach Rats, Princess Cyd, BPM, Thelma, God’s Own Country, Patay na si Hesus, 4 Days in France, A Fantastic Woman, Strong Island, Paris 05:59: Théo and Hugo, 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten, Battle of the Sexes, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, and The Ornithologist.

Here comes Greg Berlanti’s Love, Simon—a film from Fox 2000 Pictures, essentially from the same studio that gave us Making Love. (You have to hand it to Fox for trying.) The film, about a teenager who feels compelled to confront his own gayness when an anonymous persona starts posting about being gay in an online school forum, is based on the popular YA novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. I expected to like Berlanti’s heart-fluttering adaptation of the book—given that he directed The Broken Hearts Club in 2001, a film that was quite impactful for me when I was a much younger man.



I did not expect myself, however, to tear up near the end, to see a gay version of the pivotal moment in Never Been Kissed. And it occurred to me that representation indeed counts, and in the movies much more so.

But this one had a bit more gravity that it purports to be about an ordinary boy perfectly accepting of the fact that he’s gay. No self-hating angst here, no terrors of the closet; the landslide that he has to navigate through is not even about the usual self-pitying refrains about having to hide; it’s about the repercussions of having to lose love.

During one dramatic highlight in the film, Nick Robinson as the titular hero, upon being outed online to the rest of the school, tells his sister matter-of-factly: “Why should I deny [being gay]? It’s not something I’m ashamed of.” And that statement felt very revolutionary, indeed, to be uttered in a mainstream teen romantic comedy.

Most older gay people I know who have seen this movie has said variations of the same sentence: they wished this movie came out when they were teenagers. I completely understand that sentiment. I wished I saw this when I was younger.

But still the criticisms of the film from a gay men—particularly of an older generation who just cannot buy the romantic premise of the movie. A friend of mine commented: “I heard this joke before, maybe it was a punchline in a sitcom, or perhaps a stand-up comic’s schtick. Anyway, I’m paraphrasing here: ‘I’m for same-sex marriage. After all, why should heteros have all the misery?’ I was reminded of that while watching Love, Simon. Its movie poster repeats a line that Simon says in the film: ‘Everyone deserves a great love story.’ Sadly, this isn’t it. Sure, the actors were appealing, the performances heartfelt, and I actually allowed myself to be taken in by the movie. But then I also realized, so this is what it’s like to be normalized. This is what it’s like to get our own Hollywood-style romantic comedy full of well-worn tropes, unrealistic clichés, and familiar beats—just with a gay lead. Well, okay fine, the film does tackle the difficulties of coming out, a topic unheard of in hetero romances. But the quirky vice principal? Check. The sassy black teacher? Check. Friend with unrequited feelings? Check. Grand romantic gesture? Check and check. Yes, I’d love for homosexuality to be normalized. What I don’t like are films, gay or straight, that further fuel the stupid Hollywood fantasy of Happy Ever After. Gay viewers deserve something better. Heck, gay and straight viewers deserve a great movie. Period. As the Timeless (yes, really) Gay Icon Cher says: ‘Snap out of it.’”

But I honestly found the film—and its banking on formula—very refreshing. In all my years of watching films, I’ve come to see a lot of gay, non-mainstream, very independent cinema which has treated homosexuality with more nuance and better representation than Love, Simon. These films were able to do that because they weren’t compelled by the expectations of mainstream market forces, and thus were freer to do what they wanted—but they had to stay “niche,” which is both a positive and a negative.

Love, Simon is an experiment at doing the mainstream with a gay lead—and in this, it is actually both revolutionary and “normalized.” For that, I applaud it. I felt a lump in my throat when I first saw the scene I’ve illustrated above—because I am 42 years old, and it took this long for me to see and hear something like that in my neighborhood cinema. Of course it’s a Hollywood fantasy, and it was designed like that. It’s the first step, a necessary one. One day, we will get our gay version of Moonstruck, with a gay version of Cher.

Love, Simon was clearly not made for us older gay men who are perhaps a little too jaded, because we’ve seen so much already, and consequently have experienced so much as well, given society’s slow evolution in mores. (It is changing though.) This is a film for the gay boy [and girl] of today. I was with my 23-year-old boyfriend when I saw this, and his face was the very picture of rapt attention, especially that scene between the lead and his mother. Afterwards, he said, “This is the first time I’ve seen a real gay kiss in a regular movie.” My friend remarked to this: “True, I am not the audience. Which brings me back to what really irks me now that I’m older: are fairy tales really necessary? Kids need simplified tales growing up, but I think, in this day and age, teens (and even tweens) should be given more complex tales. Or if not complex, at least more grounded.” But most of us—and truer still for the heterosexual majority—started with simple happy ending romantic comedies [starring straight people] when we were younger, and we swooned over them. And then we graduated level by level to demand more complexity. Of course fairy tales are necessary, as any fairy tale expert would tell us. They may seem “simple,” but they are in fact complex mirrors to human psychology. Love, Simon is not that simple: it tackles blackmail, coming out, coming out to a society deep in social media shenanigans, bullying, the complexity of friendship, and others. But these issues were treated with a light touch, which does not necessarily mean shallow.

The ending with a Ferris wheel struck a lot of people as being needlessly romantic and unreal, but for me, it was a throwback to Drew Barrymore’s ending in Never Been Kissed. Why did we cheer for that, and can’t cheer for Simon? I applaud both happy endings. If you have seen The Celluloid Closet, you will learn that in all of Hollywood’s history of gay stories, gay and lesbian characters—either overt or obscure—always ended up with these LGBT characters being dead or depressed, “punished” for being deviants. It took many decades, until 1968’s The Boys in the Band, to have a movie with gay characters who would all survive the ending of the movie, and actually get to have a party! The regular trope for endings for gay boys and girls in Hollywood movies is a sad ending. Recall the latest: Brokeback Mountain, sad. Call Me By Your Name, sad. A happy ending is very, very rare.



Clip from the iconic 1968 film The Boys in the Band, directed by William Friedkin from the play by Mart Crowley: "It's not always as it happens in plays. Not all faggots bump themselves off at the end of the story."

Most teenage movies involving a coming-of-age arc that also has romance thrown in for good measure, strive for a bittersweet feel, still happy but with a certain knowingness that adds texture to that optimism. John Hughes was the perfect storyteller for that kind of teenage film. But ultimately, Samantha Baker got her cake, candles, and kiss from Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, Claire Standish and John Bender exchanged kisses and earrings in The Breakfast Club, Andie Walsh got her Blane in Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller got his ultimate day off from school, with his girl and his best friend. I like happy endings, and I like them more in gay films for teenagers. Because is sadness what we want to model for gay boys and girls to learn from their formative movies? “Be gay, and be miserable for the rest of your life,” is not the tagline I want to foster. I want some happy endings, too, along with the sad endings.

I’m not suggesting that all films have happy endings. Have a movie with a sad ending? Applaud that. Have a movie with a happy ending? Applaud that as well. It’s all about the intent, and if the intent has been earned. Love Simon is intended to be a happy gay romance. Why hate it for what it sets out to do? But movies are really Rorschach tests: our reactions to them illustrate so much the murk of our hidden psychology. I like diverse endings—happy and sad—because I’ve had both in my own life, and I believe in the possibility that both can happen in equal measure.

Films can only do so much to “accommodate” our expectations of them, and I’ve always tried to appreciate narrative that triy to do its best given the limitations of the form it chooses to tell its story. Ultimately though, I am a romantic and also a realist, both in equal measure, and I appreciate happy endings in a romantic comedy, because the genre demands a happy ending. I remember romance novelist Mina Esguerra insisting all the time that if it does not have a happy ending, it is not a romance novel. [The genre is strict about that.]

Movies, especially the mainstream ones, are our fantasy lives unfolding in a magic mirror, film critic Edward Behr once said. Love, Simon is wonderful fantasy rooted in realistic problems. I do feel that the romantic ending was earned, although I’m aware that for some people it isn’t. Which is the great thing about art, it is always different to different people. I will always remember this workshop admonition in creative writing I’ve once gotten from an esteemed writer: “Never crucify someone’s story for what you want it to be instead.”

All stories have a place. All of these is a gamut, a range. Love, Simon is a step—one step hopefully among many others still to come—taken in the right direction.

Labels: film, life, Pride, queer, review

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Sunday, June 03, 2018

8:00 AM | The Fires of Dumaguete

I was six when I saw my first big fire. It was 1981, we lived in an old building—a rickety wooden affair that had plenty of rooms for several tenants and creaked during rainy days—which was owned by someone we called Tiya Tansing, and the house just happened to be located right near the corner of Calle Sta. Rosa and Calle Real, a stone’s throw away from the tianggue.

The tianggue in the old days was two or three blocks worth of stalls—mostly wooden and makeshift—constituting a grand maze of no discernable design, although I remember there was a movie theater there somewhere, where we saw the latest Snooky Serna and Maricel Soriano teeny bopper films from Regal. I can’t remember the name of the theater, but I can recall the heady topsy-turviness of the place, and the inescapable smell of vegetable rot and fish entrails.

One night in 1981, while Dumaguete slept, the whole tianggue burned down, a grand conflagration that was so immense, it felt like the apocalypse. That we lived nearby pushed us to panic, and I remember my family trying to evacuate what possessions we had—the dining table, boxes of clothes, assorted items marking lives suddenly seeming so fragile—from our apartment in Tiya Tansing’s house and right onto the street, which was swarming with onlookers who were in equal measure frightened and excited. I remember the rain of embers from the night sky—dots of firelight that looked like fireflies, but here and there were creating new fires in nearby houses.

That scene remains indelible in my memory. In 2006, when I wrote my short story “A Strange Map of Time,” which is included in my book Heartbreak and Magic, I memorialized all of that in this passage, where the hero confronts a similar fire to get to a mystical gate: “[H]e opened his eyes to a strange night, a fiery brightness everywhere in Dumaguet he could not shake away like a bad dream. The world crawled into his consciousness. His senses took time to recover, and only little by little did he make out the details of things: the smell was of acrid burning; the feel was of far-off heat licking the sensitive hair on his arms and face; the noise was of shouts in crescendo, the wailing of alarm constant in the air.

“It was the year of the Big Fire. The sight disconcerted him: a huge city block was in flames, the fire ravenously licking wood and toppling cement walls. There seemed to be an endlessness to the devastation, with fire spreading everywhere. It seemed like the end of the world. From everywhere, strange and old-looking earthbound trucks, painted red, buzzed about in fashion, sending gushes of hosed water into the air, into the heart of the flame, onto the surfaces of buildings opposite.

“The young man who used to be Sawi stood up and walked towards the fire and the gathering throng. Around him, people panicked, grabbing hold of so many things—a very thin old man was carrying a refrigerator, an old woman had six toddlers in her arms, two boys were rushing towards the crowd with a huge aparador between them—all of them running around to somewhere and nowhere. He saw that there was also a growing crowd—hundreds—that also descended to watch, in a clinch of awe and horror, the conflagration.”

I write this about fires and the grim fascination over them because only last Wednesday, Times Mercantile along Dr. V. Locsin Street burned down. Again.




This is the second time this has happened to this local grocery store, arguably a Dumaguete business icon, something all locals know to go to for the best priced liquor and the like. With Fortune Mart also gone, only Ricky’s remain of the Dumaguete of old. In 2000, Times’ old front along Perdices Street burned down along with the old Ricky’s, a fire that claimed two lives and reshaped how Dumagueteños did their after-hours grocery shopping.

But fires have an interesting history in Dumaguete, a terrible but decisive shaper of its landscape. The local church historian Fr. Roman Sagun has an interesting article about local conflagrations, and in “Fire and the Changing Cityscape of Dumaguete City,” he writes: “In 1990, a massive fire leveled down commercial establishments and residences along Real and Cervantes Streets. It affected two adjacent blocks that were mainly occupied by 34 families and eight commercial establishments. The fire started at 3:00 A.M and was contained two hours after. There were no casualties … but all 34 families were left homeless. The fire rapidly blazed all that was found within the adjacent blocks since most of the houses were made of nipa. Witnesses said that two fire trucks arrived early but one of the hoses snapped, [which] was because the valve was opened too soon before an additional link could be installed. [There was also looting, as] people pretended to help but … stole from the victims and commercial establishments [instead].”

The 1990 fire started at what was then VJR Kitchenette, which was located behind the old Rhine Marketing, and it quickly engulfed the surrounding commercial establishments including Tat’s or Goldy Theater, Dove Theater, Glecel’s Kitchenette, Luzonians Restaurant, Lamp Lighter, Badon Repair Shop, City Barbershop, GM Furniture, Anchor’s Tailoring, Tan’s Rechargeable Shop, and Vesin’s Store.

Fr. Sagun also wrote of the 1992 fire that damaged the Gold Label Grocery Store along Locsin and Ma. Cristina Streets caused by faulty electrical wiring. In 1994, the New Bian Yek Commercial Building along Real Street also caught fire, and while the concrete structure remained, the shops in the interior were decimated. In 1996, the Philippine National Police headquarters went up in flames.

The 1990s was a decade of fires in Dumaguete. Most of these fires occurred downtown, and usually happened in the early hours of morning—and while all these are devastating, there is no denying that fires have been instrumental in shaping the landscape of the downtown area. In the 2000 fire that consumed the first Times Mercantile and Ricky’s Bakery and Grocery Store, the whole episode began around 5 A.M., and in its wake caused 10 million pesos worth of property damage, and the lives of two sisters, Natalie and Ivy Acuña. Fr. Sagun writes of that terrible night: “According to the only survivor, Ronnie Baldoza, a working baker from Ricky’s, the hotdog freezer had a short circuit and caught fire. The two sisters, together with [Ronnie], tried to [contain] the fire with a fire extinguisher,” but the highly flammable materials that were stocked around the store fueled the flames too quickly, and Ronnie managed to escape, but the sisters had passed out from smoke inhalation.”

The new fire, which originated from the clothing store beside Times, lasted five hours long, according to reports by Raffy Cabristante for GMA News. Many of the boarding houses within the block were not spared, although most of the commercial frontages nearby are still intact because of their high firewalls. In retrospect, that now-gone old building housing Times Mercantile had indeed seen better times—but it was a grand wooden one of a style that used to grace the streets of Dumaguete, some of which still remain and are in perfect need for restoration. What will rise from the ashes of that building? The landscape of Dumaguete changes some more.

Labels: disasters, dumaguete, fiction, history, life

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