THE POLAR EXPRESS

-

THE POLAR EXPRESS, above other things makes us remember what it feels like to be a kid again, and what Christmas is all about.

The visuals are strikingly beautiful, the characters lovable, and you couldn't go wrong with a Tom Hanks-Robert Zemeckis tandem. 

RATING: 5/5






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn...
Read more

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitaliz...
Read more

ANG HULING CHA-CHA NI ANITA (Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, 2013)

-
Image
Young Anita (Teri Malvar) has a feeling she is afraid to express to anybody: that she has feelings not for a boy, but for a girl, and more so, a grown up woman, Pilar (Angel Aquino).  Being part of a family with a deeply Catholic background, and living in a rural town where the old ways seem to still govern everyday life, Anita is in real trouble once her secret gets out. Not even her best pals Carmen (Len-Len Frial) and Goying (Solomon de Guzman) are in the know.  Growing pains form the center of Sigrid Andrea Bernardo's debut full-length feature, a lighthearted, oftentimes humorous glimpse into a young girl's acquaintance with her sexuality. Yet, ANG HULING CHA CHA NI ANITA discusses a lot more than female homosexuality; through Anita, the film takes us on a bittersweet romantic journey between two people with a very wide age gap (hence, redefining the May-December affair) and treating it with much empathy for the motivations of each character. Pilar is a br...
Read more