Screen Log 7: Black Panther; Marrowbone; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."

What a feast for the eyes BLACK PANTHER was! The visual spectacle of those costumes alone should more than justify a ticket. But then you also have the production design--one of Marvel's most luscious and breathtaking in recent memory. You also have that kick-ass cast, and the fact that much of the world is now catching up with the brilliance of Michael B. Jordan, and being reintroduced to, if they've already forgotten (so soon!) about, Lupita Nyong'o, is nothing if not heartwarming. Jordan fans ought to play the nearest copy of "Fruitvale Station." I'm not thoroughly convinced by its wokeness, however; felt that, had director Ryan Coogler been left to his own devices (i.e. freed from the clutches of the studio system), the issues on race and representation being tackled by the film could have been dealt with more nuance, depth, screen time. But I'll definitely see this movie a second time, no questions asked. Also, I'm 24/7 game for rhinos.

MARROWBONE is a story that invalidates itself, and I only watched it because my sister, who fancies herself a horror-film aficionado, insisted. What a stupid movie, that so-called twist being one of the most self-destructive and deceptive I've ever encountered.

At last, I finally watched the much-laureled THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, and my, my, my, oh my, where do I begin.

This is what awards voters liked? What a lot of the critics liked? You can throw this story in a fiction writing workshop and I bet you it will not survive the day. A lot of things in this movie were simply careless, and I'm not even talking about the way it handled the more Ameri-sensitive elements such as racism. The writing's just sloppy--and for a playwright of Martin McDonagh's calibre, that's baffling.

Take for example the scene (spoilers) where Dixon/racist cop/Sam Rockwell, now all burnt up and bandaged in the hospital, is wheeled into the ward.

Nurse (to neighboring patient): "Burn victim. He's pretty heavily sedated."

Then said burn victim launches into a monologue so eloquently, you wouldn't think twice it's all pretend. It's stuff like this that's really off-putting if you don't just watch on the surface. And even then, the narrative's pretty sloppy, and many of the characters were very thinly baked. It's really Frances McDormand's movie, and she should be enough to make you reach the end.

Watching this gave me the impression of a writer who only set out to write for fun, not putting much thought into the things he was putting on paper, and having a really darn good time setting up the pieces that don't really fit or make much sense. The actors loved it, and that's understandable, given how actor-driven the whole thing was, how juicy the lines and scenes were. But is this really what the Academy Awards want for Best Picture, to memorialize as the year's "best" (though of course it never is about being the best)? I can think of two other Best Picture candidates that are infinitely more deserving of the accolades this "Three Stupid Billboards" (as Ian Casocot calls it) has been receiving. Shout out to "Lady Bird" and "Get Out," and heck, even "Dunkirk."

Screen Log 6: Big Little Lies Season 1; Our Souls at Night; Meet Me in St. Gallen; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 1

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."

A week later, I am still not over the spell cast by BIG LITTLE LIES, which, trashy as it supposedly was in the way the best pieces of gossip are, was nothing if not gratifying television. The writing, the multiple narrative arcs, the world building, the design of the whole endeavor, and I'd be damned if I forgot about the acting. Some reviews compared the women of this series--Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz--to a tribe in a primeval sense, and I thought that was very accurate. You wouldn't want to mess with their children, not after that finale. At the start, I thought Witherspoon, she who weaponized "Frozen on Ice," should have taken home those Lead Actress trophies, but by the end, yeah, I definitely made a 180 for Kidman, because that was just intelligent, career-defining acting from her. Now I'm kind of scared the second season won't live up to its predecessor.

OUR SOULS AT NIGHT made me think, for a brief second, about growing old in a small First-World town, but were it not for Jane Fonda and Robert Redford's mesmerizing presences--they could literally have read the phone book and it probably would've made a good film--I would have dropped this Netflix baby. I'm trying to recall now what the film was about, the scenes that stood out, the dialogue that struck me as particularly genuine, and all I can remember are Fonda and Redford, probably having dinner, or playing with the child, or going camping.

I don't remember a time post-2010 when the cinemas offered a stellar Filipino film on commercial (versus festival) release for four consecutive weeks. After "Ang Dalawang Mrs. Reyes," "Mr. and Mrs. Cruz" and "Changing Partners" came MEET ME IN ST. GALLEN, which featured, among others, a bona fide star performance from Bela Padilla (whom I last saw in the unsatisfactory "Camp Sawi," I think). The first fifteen minutes of the movie were comedic gold, thanks to Padilla's incredible timing and sardonic line deliveries. ("Terorista pala dapat kelangan niyo kung gusto niyo ma-shock" was responsible for my first big laugh.) The three-part, coffee-centric structure I found not always effective; the second segment, especially, the one hewn closest to the tenets of realism, was also the least enchanting for me, perilously teetering on the edge of overwrought-kabit-moviedom at times. The sins of this imperfect movie about imperfect people, however, were very, very easy to overlook (they were almost impossible to discern with a layman's eye), and the final result was nothing if not a celebration of what Philbert Dy called the continuing maturity of Filipino films (or something to that effect).

The Golden Globe winner for TV series-comedy this year was THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, and that was simply an ingenious choice. Tony Shalhoub, in particular, ought to have another Emmy nomination by year's end (a serious oversight on the part of the Globes). Whenever I feel down, I shall go back to that scene where the whole family sees Joel (the titular character's unfaithful husband) in the same restaurant, then execute their not-so-covert escape.

Screen Log 5: Mr. and Mrs. Cruz; The Handmaid's Tale Season 1; Wind River; The Greatest Showman; Changing Partners

"The Handmaid's Tale."

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo's follow-up to her popular (but problematic) two-hander "Kita Kita" is MR. AND MRS. CRUZ, and exiting the cinema, I realized this new movie was everything I needed it to be. I admit I'm kind of a sucker for romantic two-handers, but what I loved most about the film was its untainted sincerity. Without being pretentiously profound, it just felt real, the conversations and the people, even though we're always aware that the whole enterprise is a contrived love story. Also, it reminded me of the El Nido trip I had with one of my best friends three years ago, but without the sex part. So there's that. It's a shame the Robinsons cinemas here in Iloilo are all about the money, relegating the movie to just two screenings per day per branch (with one branch giving the movie two daytime slots, as if everyone has the liberty to go to the movies for lunch).

I finally got around to watching Hulu's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE. And man, did my feelings runneth over.

First off, it's very watchable, binge-worthy television. The ensemble is excellent. The production values are more or less topnotch. But my complaints begin with the fact that the series seems too aware that it wants to serve Drama (with a capital D), and that is betrayed foremost by the myriad of cloying slow-mos. We get it: The scene is dramatic. The character is emotional. She has a lot of feelings. Can we please move ahead? 

Also, many times I thought the directing didn't cut it; I could almost see the actors being told to stop, walk over here, say the line, stop, camera focus on the face, hold intense look for two seconds. 

Also, I'm not very convinced by the dystopia itself. It reminded me of what Eros Atalia and Sarge Lacuesta said during the IWP Workshop last year, that on the page, one can just write things as they are and it won't have to be questioned, but onscreen, the world being built has to be investigated alongside the world before and the world to come. I haven't read the Atwood novel, but I'm sure it must be a pretty different and far superior animal. The dystopia being depicted onscreen, meanwhile, raised a lot of questions for me. I'm not entirely convinced of its politics (I'm not even sure it's depicted very well), and the science of this whole alternate universe is really lost to me. I mean, for one, this is a world that prioritizes the creation of babies but they find it so easy to drag their only sources of babies (the handmaids) through hell? Or is that something that will be illuminated upon in the next season? Which will be in three months' time, and yes, I await its arrival.

Taylor Sheridan's WIND RIVER was shown here in Iloilo for only one day last year. First day, last day. That's the way the cinemas work in this goddamn country. One can certainly promote a feminist reading of this movie, which is to say, what the hell, the women are all weak again, and they need to be saved by the White Man? (And yes, I know the girl ran six miles in the snow, and that's suppose to show that woman is far stronger than man, but come on). Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed this White-Man-Savior movie, and thought Sheridan should have earned more awards attention for his direction and writing, for how his film eschewed convention to deliver a tale that focuses more on grief and the bleakness of everyday life, the action and the mystery never the central players of the whole story. If I'd seen this last year, I might have willingly included it in my best-of roster.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, directed by Michael Gracey, is what happens when filmmakers ignore the basic tenets of fiction and just do what they feel will earn them the most bucks. Littered with caricatures and infused with paper-thin dramatic insight, it is basically a step-by-step tale about a man who rises to fame, loses it and realizes all he needs is his family. I am not so perplexed by all the love it has received; many audiences these days love their stories shallow. The love for the song numbers I can understand a little, as Pasek and Paul have come up with one or two memorable ditties there ("Never Enough" looks poised to become the audition piece of the year). But even the music itself is repetitive; it's like going to a concert and hearing the same numbers over and over again. After last year's "La La Land," this is definitely a hundred-mile step back for the songwriting duo. As for Michelle Williams, honey, was she so in need of a job at the time? Talented as the woman is, she looked out of place, if not joyless.

I reviewed CHANGING PARTNERS when it was still a stripped-down play at the PETA Theater Center. The Dan Villegas film that was a hit at the Cinema One Originals festival last year more or less retained the play's brilliance. Up close, the quartet of actors (no secret that my favorite among them's Anna Luna) was even more searing and heartbreaking. Admittedly, the screen transition could be confusing, as evidenced by my mom's reactions during the first few scenes ("Why is Agot suddenly a lesbian? Do they live in the same building?"), but the confusion was quickly laid to rest. This is how you do a movie musical, Mr. Gracey. And welcome back, Mr. Villegas!