there's just something so incredibly moving about someone being openly vulnerable that they don't entirely know what they're doing — especially hearing and seeing this from someone who is about to graduate from film school. there is a daughter in the midst of an important yet ultimately confusing milestone in her life. then, there is a father who is trying to do his honest best with what he can. there are all these human uncertainties we try to hide because…

although i'll always have appreciation for student filmmakers who venture into this genre, i do not often get moved by the dance films i have seen lately. for me, i usually notice a difficulty in finding the perfect rhythm between story, montage, and choreography. some of them focus too much on the narrative that the dance film concept merely becomes an add-on, some focus too much on the montage that the "dance" part of the film unintentionally gets lost, and…

to drown a fish is all about Anton’s (played by Joaquin Sayo) grief over the untimely ing of his mother (Maria Giovanna Soriano). However, given that this grief is at the very core of its story, the film heavily suffers from failing to properly establish it at the start. Two major issues can be attributed to this shortcoming. First, the relationship between the two characters is too vague. The first scene shows that Anton and his mother are not very…

At the age of modern Philippine cinema’s revolution against typical mainstream romance flicks, Crisanto Aquino’s debut film, Write About Love, situates itself inside the very process that is responsible for the different creative new takes on this genre. It follows the story of a beginning female writer (Miles Ocampo) whose screenplay for a romantic film gets greenlit provided that she must do some revisions to it along with the aid of a veteran male screenwriter (Rocco Nacino). By utilizing a…