So we are still on lockdown. And despite certain restrictions being lifted, the vaccine is still so far away that it’s still best to stay at home. What to do? Aside from getting coronavirus TV news updates, Netflix marathon-watching is probably what most of you are doing. Based on my many conversations with my Netflix-loving friends, I present the three most popular shows to binge on while we are forced to stay safe indoors by this nasty pandemic.
Author: Rolmar Baldonado
Films for the cineaste. Were you moved, transported? Did you laugh, cry? Was it cathartic? Were you disturbed, affected, riveted? Did it make you think?
Freelance film editor, cineaste and cinephile
Twitter: @film_critik
Twitter: @rolmar
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The Oscars are here again, and it has been quite a competitive year, with many deserving hopefuls vying only for five nominee slots in each major category. Even the much-coveted Best Picture award has a healthy set of nine nominees, above the usual eight films, nearing its limit of ten slots.
Every once in a while, the cinematic stars will align and produce a perfect combination of drama, romance, and comedy in a film. A movie that will take the viewers through an emotional journey that will enthral them even way after that movie experience. In HELLO, LOVE, GOODBYE, it has done just that.
Finally, a documentary about Filipino cuisine is launched to the gastronomical delight of food and film critics. Filipino-American documentary filmmaker Alexandra Cuerdo helms ULAM: MAIN DISH. With this, she has deliciously concocted not only an immersion into Filipino cuisine but also an exploration of Filipino culture. It is also a study of the Filipino migrant experience and even a side trip into the history of Philippine politics and government.
THE ISLAND THAT ALL FLOW BY is an unconventional love story between a money-desperate toll booth collector and a puerile truck driver. This TV movie, written and directed by Chan Ching-lin, shines in all aspects with its delicate restrained scripting and excellent performances. It premiered on CTV and CTI Entertainment in April 2016.
Actions speak louder than words in Tsai Ming-liang’s third of his trilogy on urban isolation and loneliness, a confrontational drama involving a father-son entanglement. THE RIVER is known to be the “bleakest” work of the master auteur, and this masterpiece is quite a highlight at the Taiwan Film Festival 2019 in Sydney, Australia.
Filmed in grainy 16mm, Lim Lung Yin’s OHONG VILLAGE is a modern-day retelling of a disconnected and discontented filial relationship in a small ebbing fishing village. The decision to use film gives this drama a vintage quality to it that is Euro-style reflective and melancholic.
You know you are watching a film from a master perfectionist when everything is seamlessly interconnected and plausible no matter how improbable and far-fetched it could have been. In PARASITE, South Korean auteur filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has just done that.
Here are my favourites at the Sydney Film Festival so far. Watch out for them when they get a mainstream release.
The recent Spanish Film Festival had a hefty 32 films as their offering. From this, I am picking 16 of them as my personal best of the lot. These films got my five-star approval rating so catch them when you can when they get a cinema release.
The following are the films ranked in order of preference.