Ranchero (2008)

Ranchero (Michael Christian Cardoz, 2008)

Michael Christian Cardoz's impressive debut feature film Ranchero starts on the morning of the final day in prison of Ricardo (Archi Adamos). Ricardo, or Carding as he is fondly called by his fellow inmates, is in charge of the kitchen, where he, his pal Miyong (Garry Lim), and other fortunate inmates, are tasked with turning meager ingredients into something edible for the thousands of hungry prisoners. The film opens with an astounding long take: beginning with an observant close up of Ricardo face, struggling to wake up, then the camera zooms out allowing us to see Ricardo stretching his back and arms, before going to the cell's bathroom (a pitiful space where the only thing that separates the toilet from the cots is a cement partition) where he uses up whatever water is left in a plastic jug to wash his face. He then takes a piss, carefully timing his urination to assure that it makes the least sound possible. The camera zooms out some more, revealing the state of the cell: filthy and overcrowded, with at least five or more inmates sleeping on the remaining beds or the floor.

The film's opening shot is remarkable not only because of the technical proficiency (where in a single shot, Cardoz was able to map the topography and atmosphere of a cramped prison space) displayed but because in a matter of a little bit more than five minutes, it was able to define Ricardo's character and the setting where Ricardo's story is set. It's been said that to truly know a man, one has to observe him in his sleep. Cardoz twists the trope a little bit further, implicating that a man's waking-up routine mirrors a sizable chunk of his personality. Ricardo, from the way he prolongs sleep up to that final possible second, acknowledges knows the value of sleep: a respite from the oft-painful realities and routine of prison life.

Ricardo's compassion lies in the fact that he respects his cell mates' sleep, making sure that his morning routine will not cause his cell mates to awake prematurely thus allowing them the freedoms of their sleep-time fantasies for a few more minutes. The film's compassion lies in the fact that it doesn't mine the stereotypes of prison life but instead counteracts it. The provincial jail of Ranchero is a lot sunnier than usual with inmates who are a lot friendlier than usual. One can even say that despite the rusty metal bars, the grime, and requisite bullies, prison life actually ain't that bad.

The prison setting accommodates Cardoz's tale that subtly dissects the role of fate and circumstance in a life that is forced to exist in routine and predictability. Inmates wake up at an exact time. They are served their meals as scheduled. Although they wait years to be released, there are premiums for good behavior and service, subtracted from their sentences with mathematical accuracy. However, somewhere between the cracks of habit, are instances wherein the often cruel machinations of fate step in. Habit is addictive, as we can tell from the inmates' fear of leaving prison in exchange of the freedom and unpredictability of the outside world. Ricardo is going through his last day of institutionalized routine of waking up early, of chopping vegetables into stars, of cooking meals and delivering them to the several rancheros (prison mayors) to distribute to the inmates, and of spending idle time smoking cigarettes with Miyong. He is a mere day away from joining the rest of humanity, and be swept wherever fate leads him.

However, Ricardo, although self-assured of his liberty, is not exempt from fate's final prank. That afternoon where everything seems as certain as day and night, a knife is discovered missing from the kitchen, pushing Ricardo out of the comforting monotony of knowing exactly what will happen the following day. Ranchero ends in utter ambiguity: Ricardo sits alone in the kitchen while the camera zooms out revealing the the kitchen staff in total disarray, unable to come up with something for dinner after the brawl since everything they cooked were burnt. The camera zooms out some more, revealing the posters of Jesus Christ and other saints that are plastered on the wall (a beautiful parting shot that emphasizes how small and subservient humans are to the dictates of the powers that be). Ricardo sits still and alone, obviously distraught, confused, and perhaps fearing what may happen the next day since the brawl has effectively muddled the future that has been playing in his mind since the moment he opened his eyes that fateful morning.

Adela (2008)

Adela (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2008)

The fourth edition of the Cinemalaya Film Festival opens with a film by Adolfo Alix, Jr. Ever since Alix debuted his first feature film Donsol in the 2006 edition of Cinemalaya, he has never stopped working, directing at least nine feature films during the span of three years. The screening of Alix's Adela coincides with the festival's tribute to Anita Linda, an actress who works just as hard as Alix, having appeared in more than a hundred movies since before the early 40's up to the present, including films directed by Gerardo de Leon (Sisa (1951) and Ang Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo (Python at the Old Dome, 1952)), Lino Brocka (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed But Found Wanting, 1974) and Jaguar (1979)), Ishmael Bernal (Ligaw ng Bulaklak (Wildflower, 1976) and Mario O'Hara (Babae sa Bubungang Lata (Woman on a Tin Roof, 1998) and Pangarap ng Puso (Demons, 2000)), among other renowned Filipino directors. There is no doubt as to Linda's artistry and generosity. She has gracefully aged with Philippine cinema, witnessing the film industry rise, fall, and rise again through the years, still eagerly inhabiting roles with an unwavering zest whenever called upon.

In Adela, Linda plays the titular character, a retired radio voice talent who is celebrating her eightieth birthday. The film accounts for that supposedly special day in the life of Adela. We first see her alighting from a tricycle, hurrying past a crowd of useless onlookers, to help a neighbor who is giving birth right in the middle of the commotion. The day goes on, with routine mixing with the clever turns of circumstance. Adela misplaces her wedding ring, gets swindled by the neighborhood fence, hears mass, visits her son in prison, chances upon a co-worker, and finally travels to the outermost area in her seaside dump site to conclude that special day. The film is introspective, forcing the viewers to experience the starkness of living alone in the world through the profound mundaneness of Adela's birthday.

There are at least three important scenes that astounded me, on the basis that these scenes are emotional crests in a film that is deprived of an explicit plot. The first one was when Adela was listening to the radio drama, she suddenly changes her voice to match the two characters in the radio drama, seamlessly shifting from the high pitched pleas of the daughter to the stern alto of the angry mom. It's a beautiful scene for the simple fact that it both showcases Linda's acting prowess and it emphasizes the feeling of reminiscence (of a former, unattainable past) that hounds the character of Adela that day.

The second one was after the party, when Adela walks into the house of the new mother she helped that morning. She chances upon the mother breastfeeding the baby. The camera then concentrates on Adela's face which changes from delight to sadness, where a heartfelt smile becomes soaked with tears. If the first important scene emphasized the passive emotion of reminiscence, this second scene attempts to break the character, pushing Adela to react to the heartbreaking fact that she has become alone, while the rest of the world has somebody to love and love them back.

The third scene happens near the end of the film. Adela sets up her picnic blanket, prepares the noodles she cooked, and against the backdrop of Manila Bay, contemplates on her situation: aged and even amidst the the crowdedness of her neighborhood, alone. Again, the camera centers on Adela's face. This time, there is no pretense of joy. She is just there, crying precisely because of the fact that everyone has physically (previous to her picnic, the entire neighborhood attends a political rally, leaving her behind) and symbolically left her alone. She walks past the bushes before the film ends, with an air of thought-provoking ambiguity.

Adela works solely because of Linda's terrific performance. Linda is an actress who can tell stories with a mere movement of her lips, or a momentary flicker of her eyes. The sparseness of the film's narrative is grounded on the fact that Adela is a film that relies on Linda to add untold depths to the knowledge that the titular character's passed-upon past: that she has a daughter working for a rich man in Makati who couldn't get a day-off to spend the day with her; that she has a son who is wasting away in jail for whatever petty crime; that she has another son working abroad who left a broken family in the Philippines. Linda, with a subtle trembling of her eyebrows, the sudden flowing of helplessly restrained tears, and coupled with the vast experience of portraying a wide array of characters ranging from a mother gone insane with the loss of her kids (in de Leon's Sisa) to a forgotten movie actress (in O'Hara's Ang Babae sa Bubungang Lata), has done enough to turn mundane into magical. Adela might very well be Alix's best film to date. Alix has Anita Linda to thank for that.

Alone (2007)

Alone (Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2007)
Thai Title: Faet

With the strength of their first feature film Shutter (2004), directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom were able to momentarily deviate the attention of Asian horror film fans from Japan or Korea to Thailand, whose reinvigorated film industry remains to be one of the most promising. Shutter is just that kind of film, similar to Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) or Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (2001), that had all the elements traditional to Asian horror cinema (like the effective sound design, the long-haired ghosts with gait or posture problems, the subtle attack on contemporary philosophies, among others) and was able to mesh them all effectively not only for cheap and quick shocks but for prolonged disturbances. The twist in the end of Shutter is indeed clever, but unlike M. Night Shyamalan's famous twists in almost all of his films, the film never relied on it and existed independently of the devious machination.

Alone, Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom's follow-up to Shutter does not have the latter's pitch-perfect supernatural tone from beginning to end. Instead, the directing duo opts to take risks by making their audience believe they're in for a similarly-veined ghost story, when in fact, the film mines something more disturbing than vengeful spirits and murderous ghouls. Alone has for its center that unmistakable and supposedly indestructible bond between sisters, complicated further by the fact that these sisters have been conjoined since birth. Ploy, One of the sisters dies when they are separated and Pim (Masha Wattanapanich), the living twin, now peacefully living in South Korea with Vee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan), her dedicated boyfriend, since their separation, has to deal with such guilt when she is forced to return to Thailand upon learning of her mother's dire medical condition.

Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom do not forgo the typical scares that pervade Asian horror. As the film progresses, Pim gets persisting visitations from her dead sister who with her unkempt long hair, bleeding eye sockets, and decomposing skin, seem to be a mere repeat of every other Asian horror wraith. However, the film attempts to lace the tiring trope with creativity and ingenuity. Thus, the ghost haunts from commonly used places like the empty spaces of Pim's bed, the mirror, curtains, to more ingeniously conceived places like from the slowly spinning blades of Pim's room's ceiling fan, where the immobile mangled corpse is hanging.

Alone does not match the persisting eeriness of Shutter, but the film, at the very least, manages to ease my horror-craving eyes. The film makes that significant risk to branch out from just being a ghost story in the typical post-Ringu vein, and despite being a bit far-fetched (even more so than ghouls revealing themselves in developed photographs), it actually works. It is what essentially differentiates the film from Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom's Shutter. The film, while it initially makes us believe that it relies on the supernatural, mutates, during its final ten minutes into a completely different film: mellow torture-porn (as compared to the optic nerve-cutting, fingernail-removing, and limb-slicing antics of Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)) that is grounded on rather simplistic psychology, of violent sibling rivalries and unrequited love. Interesting enough to give the supposedly dying sub-genre a reviving nudge, I thought.

Hancock (2008)

Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008)

As a political allegory, Peter Berg's Hancock is utterly shameless. Hancock (Will Smith, who is still charming despite his outward asshole composure), the obnoxious, highly destructive yet undeniably effective superhero as symbol for the vehemently unwanted yet arguably noble United States of America is a tad too dubious; and when Ray (Jason Bateman), that kind-hearted publicist who takes Hancock in, scolds everyone for criticizing Hancock for the millions of dollars worth of destruction Hancock's rescuing methods cost when he saved a life of a human being, I can't help but cringe at the political implications of that seemingly innocent speech: that it's fine to blow up a country, as long as we get the job done. Of course, interpretations are a matter of perception. For a red-blooded Republican, Hancock may prove to be that ultra-popular film that might evoke reason behind the madness in Iraq but for me and the millions of munchers of pop cultural extravaganzas, it's just another summer flick: entertaining, loud, partly well-thought of, mostly dumb, but essentially trite and forgettable.

Probably the best thing about Hancock is that it is set in an America that thinks, feels, and reacts like the America I know of. Hancock's Los Angeles is composed of citizens that are fed up, annoyed, and unimpressed of shallow heroics. Unlike in recent comic book flicks like Jon Favreau's fairly enjoyable Iron Man and Louis Leterrier's hyperactive and noisy The Incredible Hulk where cars, streets, buildings and almost anything are exploded for spectacle's sake and despite the blown up structures and rising death tolls, superheroes are treated like celebrities because of the simple fact that that is just how the world works, Berg's cityscape has a price tag attached and the superhero involved has to deal with it like the rest of us, mortals. Each luxury vehicle, each train engine, each street lamp that gets destroyed notwithstanding whatever greater good the destruction was meant for cost Los Angeles a lot of money, which is then converted into public outrage and lawsuits against the superhero.

Initially, I thought Berg sought to revolve the film around that idea: a man gifted with the ability to do without the laws of physics but is under attack by real life social and political physics. For at least the first half of the movie, Berg convinces me that he might have something very good brewing with his perpetually mad, gruff, and alcoholic superhero who requires the help of an image consultant to straighten out his advocacy, or the lack of it.

Towards the end of the film however, Berg decides to expand the movie's mythology and involves in his superhero a back story that includes angels, immortality, and a fated yet ill-fated romance with a white woman, which isn't exactly bad but could've been handled with a little bit more restraint with the romance angle, and probably more of the comedy that Berg is very competent with (don't believe me? watch The Rundown (2003)). Right after that hilarious kitchen scene where a deliriously surprised (and mad) Hancock bashes each and every kitchen utensil against the indestructible body of Ray's wife Mary (Charlize Theron), the film devolved into something that is annoyingly trying so hard to be emotionally resonant that it turns into something nearly incoherent and downright unfunny.

Still, one can't deny that Hancock trumps both Favreau and Leterrier's comic book movies by its sheer audacity and ambition. While it may not have been that genre-bending work that this oversaturated sub-genre of cinematic superhumans and maniacal villains needs very badly, it is at least a step to that direction. At least with this failed attempt, we've become aware that there are still bigwigs in Hollywood who are capable of thinking outside the box and not adapt every silly comic strip into a full-length feature.

Tirador (2007)

Tirador (Brillante Mendoza, 2007)
English Title: Slingshot

In Brillante Mendoza's Manoro (The Teacher, 2006), Jonalyn, a young Aeta girl attempts to teach her tribe to read and write so that they can vote during the upcoming elections. Along with her father, she traverses into the wilderness to look for her grandfather, the lone Aeta whom she needs to convince to be taught how to read and write. The grandfather only appears near the end of the film when Jonalyn, alone and defeated, sits by the voting precinct. Along with the wild boar which he caught while hunting for days in the wilderness, the two of them go back to camp to celebrate not the fact that almost the entire tribe has for the very first time voted, but the fact that they have food to eat and that they are alive. Manoro, for all its extraneous advertising of Jonalyn's heroic efforts to have her tribe take part in the Philippines' democratic process is actually about the insignificance of democracy. The film can be aptly summarized by the grandfather's parting words: "that doesn't make me less of a man," referring to his having failed to take part in the elections.

Tirador (Slingshot) is the urban equivalent of Manoro. While the two may have dissimilar milieus (the former is set in the filthy slums of Quiapo, Manila; while the latter, in the pristine forests of rural Pampanga), energies (the former relishes in its perpetual state of motion; the latter is far more relaxed), and predisposition (the former is bathed with gloom and cynicism, the latter is more hopeful), the two films nevertheless share the same lack of trust and apprehension for the Philippine political and democratic system.

Tirador opens during the dead hours of the night, where couples are noisily fucking each other with only plywood walls separating their moans from the cries of the neighbors' startled baby, junkies are taking crystal meth out in the open, and hustlers are busy servicing their clients. A man walks around the slums to warn the dwellers about the impending arrival of the cops, causing the crooks on the run to scramble towards convenient hiding places, which include filthy canals and narrow alleyways. Once the cops arrive, the film starts to burst with energy, with the camera rapidly capturing every sensational bit of action as each resident is persuaded, threatened, pushed and forced to be lined up in the basketball court for proper identification, and eventual imprisonment. The following morning, the men are freed by a political candidate, hoping that his gift of temporary freedom will be remembered by the crooks and their families once the day of elections arrives.

Tirador continues on that note of despondence. Survival, the film's vocabulary which is unfortunately limited to words that connote pessimism, is devoid of any of the euphemism humanity has attributed to it, but primarily exists in its most basic, most animalistic sense. Men prey on men, comrades cheat on fellow comrades, and virtues like honor, respect, and honesty become misplaced in a community where the nagging urge to just last another day reigns supreme. The film bounces from one resident's petty crime to another, usually examined with the intricacy, frankness and vigor of an enterprising documentarian. Much has been written about Mendoza's visual style, frenzied yet voyeuristic and observant (the last two descriptions basically differentiate Mendoza's camera work with Paul Greengrass' famed visual incomprehensions). The camera never allows itself to rest as it eternally races along with its several dangerous subjects to what feels like grating repetition.

The result of Mendoza's virtuosity with the handheld camera and the seemingly endless narrative may feel tedious, most especially because the film seems to be perpetually bathing in a formidable atmosphere of danger, depression, and grimness. It is precisely because of this intended inhumanity that the film manages to accurately approximate this soulless and heartless dimension of humanity, arguably endemic in a nation wherein democracy, religion and extreme poverty miraculously coexists.

Tirador concludes with a prayer rally which is graced by several politicians who have prepared speeches about their virtues and their promises for change for the thousands of devotees, all of whom are potential voters. Among the devotees are Mendoza's subject slum dwellers, complete with candles and authentic looks of pious hope. Before the credits roll, the camera catches something that is both startling yet unsurprising: one of the slum dwellers' hand reaches down the pockets of an unsuspecting victim. There is no change, there probably will never be change. In the midst of the heights of democratic and religious exercise, nothing can ever qualm the alarming need to for food, for sex, and for a brand new set of dentures.

The Machine Girl (2008)

The Machine Girl (Noboru Iguchi, 2008)
Japanese Title: Kataude mashin gâru

The average adult person has around five liters of blood. The average adult person in The Machine Girl has a lot more than five liters. With geysers, fountains, and waterfalls of blood bursting from every possible wound, it can be assumed that human beings, at least for writer-director Noboru Iguchi, are only as useful as the amount of blood they can spill. Iguchi therefore exploits that dehumanizing notion, creatively finding ways of making each and every bloodletting as outrageous and unique as they can be. There's no pretense of depth or meaning as each plot detail, each stylized setting and each introduced character are only there to serve one purpose: to turn gory deaths into laughter-inflicting spectacles. Sure, the movie exists primarily to mine into our collective depravity. However, such being it's only raison d'etre, it accomplishes it with enough careless enthusiasm and verve to make the experience of watching this trashy movie into one memorable ride.

Iguchi doesn't waste time with talky introductions or artsy opening credits as he starts off with Ami (Minase Yashiro) violently blasting through a gang of bullies preying on a nerdy schoolboy. During those first few minutes, we see limbs sliced, heads exploding, and gallons and gallons of blood splattering wherever. "Murderer!" exclaims the rescued schoolboy, and the label prompts Ami to reminisce on how she turned from an athletic college girl into a one-armed machine gunning murderer.

The story is premised on vengeance, or at least a most simplistic and elementary reading of the primal human emotion. Ami's younger brother and his friend have been targets of a gang headed by the son of a yakuza boss. The younger brother and his friend are murdered, forcing Ami to chase each and every person connected to her brother's untimely demise. On the way, her arm gets sliced off, she earns a friend (Asami) out of her brother's pal's grieving mom, and gets a machine gun attached to her armless limb. As it turns out, as Ami kills, she gains more murderous enemies out of the family members of her victims. There might be a commentary on the vicious cycle of violence which revenge causes, but the real value of the growing amount of vengeful persons is for the movie's penultimate battle where Ami and the army of deadly relatives fight it out to the death, using weapons ranging from samurai swords, flying guillotines, and the drill bra.

Of course, The Machine Girl is anything but novel. The idea of a limbless hero has been exploited from Chang Cheh's classic The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and the multiple sequels and spin-offs it inspired, to Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007). The movie espouses dehumanization in favor of the commodification of death and violence, a standard of the genre of direct-to-video trash flicks The Machine Girl belongs to. While Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Shinya Tsukamoto, directors who all worked or are currently working for the ill-reputed genre, might have done wonders both aesthetically and thematically with the material, Iguchi doesn't seek to revitalize the genre or give it some newfound respect. Instead, he purposely and obediently comes up with a product which the film's American funders envisioned: bloody, violent, fun, and funny without the burden of guilt and introspective prodding that most plot and theme-heavy films encourage.

Serbis (2008)

Serbis (Brillante Mendoza, 2008)
English Title: Service

Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis (Service) is hardly a perfect film. In fact, it is so riddled with flaws that it would utterly be improbable and impossible for me to enumerate each and every one of them. I have a faint understanding as to why it has caused such a divisive uproar when it was screened in Cannes, where critics and viewers either absorbed it or delegated it as pornographic trash. Perpetually swimming in a perpetual cacophony of traffic and chaos, Serbis details a day in the life of the Pineda family, owners of an Angeles City movie theater that screens soft-core pornographic films to hustlers servicing gay men in the comfort of the theater’s damp and dark interiors. Even absent portions of the two explicit sex scenes (one involving a man and his girlfriend making love despite the discomfort of a boil in the man’s buttock, and another involving the projectionist receiving a blowjob from one of the theater’s patrons), which the local censors forced the film’s producers to cut for local exhibition (a blatant undermining of Constitutional safeguards in protecting due process, as completely explained in my paper which calls for the abolition of the obsolete law that created the present censors board), the film elicits a legitimate response of either disgust or fascination

I was undoubtedly fascinated. Serbis seems to be Brillante Mendoza’s most ambitious and most intriguing work. Serbis is a film that can be both seen as a traditional network narrative that juggles the stories of the residents of the decrepit movie theater, and a film going experience itself, since it seems that it was purposely meant to titillate, arouse and shock to replicate the characteristic sleaze of these ruined movie houses that have been transformed into cruising spots for the horny and adventurous.

Serbis takes its cue from Jeffrey Jeturian’s brilliant Tuhog (Larger Than Life, 2001), also scribed by Serbis-screenwriter Armando Lao. Tuhog details the tragic tale of a barrio lass (Ina Raymundo in her most believable performance to date) who was raped by her father, a story that is sold to unscrupulous movie producers who transformed it into an exploitative parade of boobs and butts in several acrobatic sex sessions. As structured (with the first half of the film detailing what really happened to the lass and the second half screening the movie based on the lass’ experience), Tuhog makes apparent the psychology behind the exploitation, eliciting a response of pity and disgust to the blatant commercialization and bastardization of other people’s tragedies.

Serbis, from the moment its opening credits takes the appearance of an overused reel before opening with the sight of a girl (Roxanne Jordan) completely naked in front of a mirror while whispering I love you’s in a seductive tone to its end where the “reel” burns at the moment wherein we are overhearing what turns out to be a negotiation between an old homosexual and a young bystander for sex services, is aiming at mixing reality and fiction and blurring the fine line between film viewing and voyeurism, the same way Tuhog examined the hurtful discrepancies of crossing that same line that divides life from film. What differentiates Serbis is that Mendoza’s film works best as an experience, which brings to mind the numerous walk-outs the film has elicited, which to my mind is a result of a lack of acceptance of this film’s goal of replicating the atmosphere in these dilapidated porn theaters that dot urban centers in the Philippines.

The film's plot crisscrosses to and from the dilemmas of the individual members of the Pinedas, a family characterized by strong women and inutile and irresponsible men. Nayda (Jaclyn Jose) tends to both the theater operations and the problems of her family, which includes Alan (Coco Martin), who got his girlfriend (Mercedes Cabral) pregnant but is hesitant in having everything end up in marriage; Ronald (Kristoffer King), the film projectionist who is busy being serviced by transvestites while exchanging sticky longing looks with Nayda; Lando (Julio Diaz), Nayda's gullible husband who is tasked in managing the canteen while doing other household chores. The storyline is as complicated as the labyrinthine corridors of the theater, with the characters not necessarily explicating their existences through traditional narrative structures. Instead, these characters are products of their settings, rotting at the same time as their beloved theater, and rapidly escaping from the clutches of Catholic morality just like the theater's patrons have abandoned the normal premises of privacy and decorum.

The final representative of the past's fading splendor is Flor (Gina Pareño), the family's matriarch who miserably laments the failure of both the theater and her family. She alone adamantly stands with grace amidst the deterioration that drapes the setting, a deterioration that has almost completely eaten up her theater and her family. As Flor, veteran actress Pareño gives a brave and glorious performance, allowing Mendoza and cinematographer Odyssey Flores to expose her at her lowest and most vulnerable. In one scene, we see Flor taking a bath, Mendoza's ever-present camera eagerly lingering behind her naked body, evidently aged. It's a scene that might be argued as unnecessary but in reality, merely showcases the character's trajectory from utter disgrace to undaunted resilience. She dons a splendid black dress, as all memory of her recent failures temporarily erased, and then replaces Nayda in the ticket booth, glowing with the dignity of a near invisible past.

In Serbis, Mendoza and Lao lace their neo-realist intentions with lovely moments of absurdity: of a police chase that extends to the theater's interiors and abruptly ends with the snatcher hanging for his dear life, of a lost goat suddenly interrupting a film screening, and of an unsightly boil that has turned sex into an uncomfortable chore. It is this deadpan humor that is probably the only similarity Serbis has with Tsai Ming-liang's beautiful and elegiac Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), a film that is also set in a rundown theater that has become the setting for several dubious activities. The two filmmakers have differing mindsets. Tsai both mourns and celebrates cinema with the final screening of Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1966) on a movie theater's final night of commercial existence. Mendoza, on the other hand, fathoms the extent and the repercussions of deterioration of culture, and the way the same interacts with the lives that are affected (the Pineda family) and the audiences (the inattentive patrons depicted in the film and us, as enchanted or disgusted viewers of this film) that feed on such mutated culture.

Serbis is not Mendoza's best film, a distinction that still belongs to one of Mendoza's most neglected films, Manoro (The Teacher, 2006), a heartfelt tale about a young Aeta girl who taught her entire tribe to write in time for the presidential elections but fails to convince her own grandfather to vote. However, it is undoubtedly his most complicated film to date, one that works in so many levels that each viewing would surely elicit a different reaction, response and understanding.

******
This is my contribution to the Movies About Movies Blog-a-Thon at goatdogblog.

Urduja (2008)

Urduja (Reggie Entienza, 2008)

A cursory glance at the filmography of Reggie Entienza, writer and credited director of Urduja, which is purported by the film's marketers as the first Filipino full-length fully animated film (despite the fact that in 1997, Ibong Adarna (Adarna: The Mythical Bird, Gerry A. Garcia) was released in cinemas; In 1995, Isko: Adventures in Animasia (Gerry A. Garcia) was also released but that movie had portions that are live action), reveals an animator, exactly like the thousands of talented animators from the Philippines, who has been working under foreign producers and bringing to life stories that are connected to him only on a distinctly professional level. Entienza has mostly worked on direct-to-video cartoons which utilize the Disney-perfected formula of adapting public domain stories for the youth market. There is simply no doubt that Urduja, which is an adaptation of a Filipino story about a local princess during pre-colonial times, is a product of utter sincerity, at least for Entienza who has long suffered bringing to life foreign tales simply because no local producer is brave or moneyed enough to fund a local animated project. There is no question as to the movie's good intentions, but the biggest query remains to be "does it work?"

Unfortunately, my answer is a categorical no. Urduja reveals all the faults Entienza must have learned studying animation in a purely commercial perspective. In its effort to replicate the seamless flow of better-funded animated films from other countries, the movie more so showcases its crudeness, which in this case, turns out to be more of an annoyance than charm. Independent filmmaker Roxlee has long specialized in animation, creating gorgeous short films that are memorable precisely because of the fact that they are crude yet reminiscent works of art. His commissioned short for the Cinemanila Film Festival, which details a wooden idol transforming into a filmmaker, is an astoundingly simple yet beautiful work. Raya Martin's Maicling Pelicula Nañg Ysañg Indio Nacional (A Short Film About the Indio Nacional, 2005) and Now Showing (2008) have animated portions that despite their crudeness add character to the films. While the aspirations of Roxlee's shorts and Martin's films are hardly comparable to Urduja's, all i am saying is that Urduja has none of those films' simplistic and addictive charm and instead wallows in borrowed tedium.

Although, I would have opted to view Urduja for what it is (a long-delayed initial foray into animation as a legitimate film industry), I can't help but compare since Entienza has himself intentionally copycatted scenes from popular Disney movies, like a song number between a talking rat and a talking tarsier (voiced by local comedians Michael V. and Allan K., respectively) that is reminiscent of Hakuna Matata from Disney's The Lion King (Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, 1994), or vine-clinging stunts by local tribesmen that do not have the same grace as Tarzan foot-skating from tree to tree in Disney's version (Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999).

What is most glaring and unforgivable is that Entienza also borrowed Disney's very liberal adaptation techniques: the bastardization of world literature for middlebrow American audiences. Urduja, from the hazy accounts of historian, is the female ruler of a pre-colonial (reputedly mythical) kingdom of Tawalisi. Her history is rich and draped with much mystery. The story of Entienza's Urduja is quite frankly a disservice to the fabled princess. The movie naively forwards a type of feminism that is still male-centric, as it encourages damsel-in-distress fantasies with its equation of the legendary Filipino heroine as one with Disney's roster of helpless princesses. On top of its botched sense of feminism, it insensitively portrays Filipinos in a bad light, turning Simakwel (voiced by Jay Manalo), into a treacherous villain, as it romances Urduja's infatuation with a Chinese pirate Limhang (voiced by Cesar Montano), a pirate who is chased by the Chinese for his thieving ways. The producers and director of Urduja might explain that the liberties taken were for purely commercial purposes (as history is rarely a box-office magnet) and that the target audience of the cartoon are children and not sensitive historians. I disagree. This unabashed and probably innocent Disney-fication is more harmful than helpful to the industry as it purports Western thinking in the minds of its gullible audiences.

Critics are often blinded by so-called cultural advancements, hence the unanimous A rating by the local Film Ratings Board. Urduja is technically apt, well voice-acted, and sometimes interesting. However, beyond it being the first (or second, or third, if you count the two tepid movies by Garcia) full length Filipino animated film, it is really nothing more than an example as to the direction Philippine commercial animation is going. As it turns out, despite Urduja being locally financed and produced, it still partakes of a way of thinking and doing business (although less pronounced) that I have detested ever since the animators at the Mickey Mouse studio had turned Kimba the White Lion (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1965-1967) into The Lion King, without crediting the former. As such, Urduja is a mishmash of many unsavory things: borrowed aesthetics, misplaced adaptations, and misaligned virtues. Thus, I'm still waiting for that true first Filipino full-length animated film since this one is as Filipino as Disney's Mulan (Tony Bancroft & Barry Cook, 1998) is Chinese.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008)

When Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) was released, it was deemed by many critics and viewers as a failure. The movie was a tad too slow, a tad too talkative, a tad too deep, and a tad too stylized for this generation of Diet Soda-drinkers and video game addicts. As years went by, Hulk has amassed a number of defenders, carrying out the slogan that Lee's film is by no means a failure since it succeeded in doing what it set out to do: to contemplate, philosophize the comic book movie and psychologize its conflicted hero. While the complaints of Hulk's detractors range from something as serious as the film's unwieldy depth to the something as trite as the purple tights the gamma-radiated brute is predominantly seen wearing, it cannot be argued that Lee's film remains to be an intriguing failure or success (depending on which fence you are sitting from).

Louis Letterier's update (or attempt to erase from the public consciousness the film that was Ang Lee's Hulk) of the Marvel comic book character is more in tune with middlebrow sensibilities, thus it is not very surprising to hear viewers shouting alleluias to this louder, dumber, and less challenging slump of a movie. The Incredible Hulk is nothing more than an over-budgeted commercial for the sequels, tie-ins, and every other gimmick the unscrupulous capitalists aboard Marvel Studios are thinking of. It attempts to amaze with a generous serving of wanton, destruction, and unabashed escapism only Hollywood can serve, with one half of the movie spent in explosions, gunfights, and wrestling matches between two computer generated mutant brutes, and the other half spent lighting Liv Tyler (who plays Betty Ross) to make her look like a Middle-Earth elf in academe clothes, supposedly the better to emphasize the unabashedly sappy romance between him and Bruce Banner (Edward Norton).

Letterier, who is famous for helming The Transporter's lousy sequel (2005), and a surprisingly refreshing Unleashed (2005) , all of which are movies that relied more on stunts and spectacles than actual storytelling, does a serviceable job making sense out of a storyline whose preamble is quickly breezed through during its opening montage (there's some sort of botched experiment where Banner turns into the famous Hulk and nearly kills his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's dad, General Ross (William Hurt)). The film officially starts in a Brazilian favela, where Banner is hiding while desperately trying to look for a cure for his gamma radiation. The entire sequence in the favela might very well be the film's most ambitious moment, where Norton (a terrific and very intelligent actor) gets to showcase a semblance of depth to his comic book character. The scenes in the favela showcases Letterier's aptitude for setting up rousing action sequences, where Norton is chased through the labyrinthine alleyways of the densely populated area by military operatives while maintaining an unexcited state. The moment Norton's green-hued computerized alter-ego appears, the film deflates into something repetitive and tedious: routine showcases of uncontrolled, flat and pixelated rage, of buildings and machines exploding, of roars, screams of unintelligible mutterings.

It's an unfortunate necessity nowadays to supplant talent with faddist coolness. The Incredible Hulk works most when we Banner revealing his human side; when he desperately searches for a cure to his radiation; when he stares longingly at his ex-girlfriend; when he is interrupted from having sex by a threat of turning into the Hulk midway through the lovemaking session. Even his nemesis Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), military officer who gets addicted to gamma radiation and eventually turns into a Hulk-like brute called The Abomination, showcases a facet of human imperfection, power lust and the inability to accept obsolescence, especially when Roth, puny when compared to the Hulk and even to General Ross, subtly injects an air of insecurity to the character. Unfortunately, the human elements of the story are quickly replaced for bangs, thuds and millions of dollars worth of fireworks.

At least Lee's Hulk had the temerity to reorient a superhero's persona to accommodate the director's ponderings on human psychology. At least Lee's Hulk had a computer generated creation that really acted (that film's most beautiful moment was when the gigantic Hulk looked into Betty Ross (played by Jennifer Connelly) and expressed a semi-real pain, regret and longing), instead of just grunt and destroy things. Letterier's film is as insignificant as the next movie to come out of this year's summer line-up. The hype, the cameos, the underused acting talent, and the promise are just bulk, just incredible bulk.

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osbourne & John Stevenson, 2008)

At the very soul of DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda is a quotation from the father (James Hong) of Po (Jack Black), the titular panda: "The secret ingredient to the secret ingredient soup is that there is no secret ingredient." The pot-bellied panda does not need decades of kung fu training or the secrets of the Dragon Scroll to defeat the deadly Tai Lung (Ian McShane), he only needs himself and his voracious appetite for food. As such, the soul of Kung Fu Panda is as generic as the quotations written on a Hallmark Card; and the same has been the perennial soul of almost every movie coming out of the mediocre animation studio: from the ogre who rescues both a princess and a kingdom despite his being an ogre; to the janitor fish who with the help of a vegetarian shark was able to survive a shark mafia; to the domesticated zoo animals who were able to adapt to the wild.

I guess in a market that is saturated with computer animated films, I desperately needed one with a secret ingredient and none of that "the secret ingredient is that there is no secret ingredient" crap. Luckily, Kung Fu Panda turns out to be a genuinely entertaining romp despite its unabashedly meager ambitions. The movie is funny most of the time (thanks mostly to Black's personable voicing). The action sequences are kinetic and at some moments exciting, despite them being animated, and despite the animation being computer generated.

It helps that the directors Mark Osbourne (who directed some episodes of the successful and hilarious Nickolodeon show Spongebob Squarepants) and John Stevenson have a bit of sense in their heads. Apart from the fact that the animation here ranges from serviceable to spectacular, the movie has a palpable personality. While Black leads the cast with his zany voice work, the rest of the cast (most especially Dustin Hoffman (as serious kung fu master Shifu), Randall Duk Kim (as grandfatherly Oogway) and Hong) provide ample star power and flavor. The five kung fu greats, Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), and Crane (David Cross) don't get to do much, but they add a bit of variety to the romp. By shying away from easy laughs (fart jokes and other toilet-inspired humor) and mining the wealth of its basic idea of kung fu fighting animals in China, Osbourne and Stevenson were able to come up with something worthwhile, an unhealthy but tasty mix of Hong Kong influences and purely Hollywood commercial sensibilities.

Kung Fu Panda is a good start, at least for the young ones who might dig tales of underachievers going on to do great things. In fact, a bit of research for the movie's millions of viewers would open for them a treasure trove of forgotten gems that might provide longer lasting satisfaction than a summertime spectacle. If only to spark a genuine interest for the little ones to browse through the titles that are gathering dust in any video store's bargain bin, Kung Fu Panda is a definite recommendation (but of course, I would prefer people to just skip on this and munch on the classics).

Easier to find is Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle (2005), where some of the gags and stunts are borrowed from, but let's really start with the influence for the panda which is the inimitable Sammo Hung who despite his physical heft, can kick ass like no digitized character can. Start with his The Magnificent Butcher (Sammo Hung & Yuen Woo-ping, 1979) or Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Sammo Hung, 1980). Then there's Jackie Chan's non-Hollywood flicks, most famous of which are his Drunken Master movies, where he plays a lad who trains in the art of the Drunken Fist (conveniently, since he loves his wine) to defeat an evil martial arts master. Further down history are the works of King Hu (Dragon Gate Inn (1966), A Touch of Zen (1969)), Chang Cheh (The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), Golden Swallow (1968)), and Liu Chia-Liang (Executioners from Shaolin (1977), The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)). There's just a lot more in this world than hungry pandas and irate tigers.