My top Filipino movies

Ma' Rosa has four children. She owns a small convenience store in a poor Manila neighborhood where everybody likes her. To make ends meet, Rosa and her husband Nestor, resell small amounts of narcotics on the side. When they get arrested one day, Rosa and her children are ready to do anything to buy her freedom from the corrupt police.

As a young woman born in a tradition-bound town but raised in the modernizing atmosphere of Manila, Julie gropes towards maturity without benefit of guidance from understanding elders. Home for the traditional town fiesta, she meets poor boy-next-door Dido Ventura (Bembol Rocco), whose passion and impulsiveness rush them into elopement, but his family has a long-standing grievance against the Monserrats, who through fraudulence in the past had grabbed the Ventura property. When the young lovers ask for permission to marry, Julie's snooty aunts make her choose between her present status as a rich single Monserrat, and an uncertain future as Dido's wife. In a moment of indecisiveness, Julie gives up Dido and returns to her music studies. At university, Julie is visited by the elderly violinist from her hometown whom she idolizes, Maestro Juan Roque (Jonee Gamboa), who has learned she is pregnant and come to announce he is her father--then walk out. When she gives birth, against her aunts' wishes she decides to give the baby to its father. But by this time, it's become impossible for the baby to have its father. Dido has joined the band of Huks headed by Kumander Salome (Lito Anzures). Driven by the desire to help his daughter, Maestro Juan Roque goes to the Huk hideout to effect reconciliation between Dido and Julie. A quick night visit for Dido is arranged, and the lovers reunite--too late, for government agents have learned of the Huks rebel's presence, and a bloody shootout affirms the nihilism of the film's title.

A persistent suitor is stabbed to death by Salome, the wife of a coconut farmer. From the simple crime of passion three conflicting versions of the truth are given - by Salome herself, by the people of the small fishing village, and by her own husband. Each version contributes a piece and facet of the truth, and slowly reveals to us the real character of Salome and her husband, and the true nature of their relationship.

A female movie fan idolizes a movie bit-player who becomes her obsession. Her unrequited love for him leads to a nightmarish end.

A story that explores family conflict between 2 sisters and their painter father before the World War 2, in Intramuros, Old Manila.

Elsa saw the blessed Virgin Mary who had changed her life and caused a hysteria in a poor isolated village.

Even though he is not good in school and belongs to a poor and unfortunate family, Magnifico still has a big heart and a large amount of optimism that enabled him to help not only his family, but also the community.

From Filipino bad-boy director Brillante Mendoza comes Slingshot, an exhilarating portrayal of teenage thugs and petty thieves, all out to get what they can in the teeming slums of Asia's notorious city of sin, Manila.

Young Carmen Castro (Maricel Soriano) is unmarried and pregnant and informs her cousin Stella (Amy Austria) about her situation. Stella scoffs and recommends abortion, as does Jerry, the child's father. Her overly-religious landlady Juling (Charito Solis), who is busy juggling her religious aims and her legal quarrel with the poor families illegally living on her land, strongly suggests that she keep the baby, as killing it would be a sin against God. Carmen sees signs that would seemingly suggest an answer to her difficult decision. Her poor neighbors struggle for money to feed their children. She sees a physically malformed child vending goods outside the church. She loses her job at a financing company due to the struggling economy during that time. Carmen eventually decides to have an abortion in a deeply moving scene with close-up shots of the cold steel utensils.

The life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.

The Pineda family struggles with bigamy, unwanted pregnancy, possible incest, and skin irritations in a dilapidated movie theater.

Gruff and cynical Rene is no stranger to loneliness, living an emotionally detached life with his dog, Bkawaw. Yet a connection with a middle-aged taxi driver begins to soften his outlook on life.

A crime-drama-suspense genre film not often seen in Philippine cinema. A controlling patriarch loses it over his daughter's marriage and her attempts to escape from their incestuous household.

Joey, Kathy, Sylvia, and Maritess, best friends from 1979 to 1982, navigate drug use, singing dreams, unconventional relationships, and housewife roles, depicting personal battles and societal challenges during that period.

A woman falls in love with a Japanese soldier during the Japanese Occupation in the Philippines; the whole town turns against her.

A young man tries to make some money so he can marry his girlfriend. He takes a job for $2,000 and then realizes that this job involves killing a woman.

Set during the Philippine-American war, a short-tempered Philippine Revolutionary Army general faces an enemy more formidable than the American army: his own treacherous countrymen.

Ishmael Bernal's opus recreates the quality and slow pace of life in a dying village surrounded by the sea as it is caught in the eternal cycle of love and hate, of fertility and pollution, of birth and death. A bold and successful attempt to depart from the usual commercial fare, it cryptically paints a large, bleak canvas showing rural fold and how their chances at redemption and happiness are irreversibly decimated by poverty, ignorance, neglect and the dark side of big business.

To support her paralytic father, Chato works as a utility girl for a burlesque star Virgie Nite. But when Virgie gets drunk on the night of her scheduled show, Chato pitches in for her. And she becomes an instant sensation. Enthused by the initial acceptance of the audience, she defies her father's admonitions and presents herself to the manager. And thus, becoming the new burlesque queen.

Friends attend the wake of Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman. They look back into her life and how she faced the adversities and triumphs of living as a transgender in Filipino society.

This riveting crime thriller follows Oscar, a recent emigrant to Manila who gets pulled into a harrowing world of corruption and violence when he takes a job as an armored car driver to support his family (in Tagalog w/ English subtitles).

A college student has an affair with a security guard's passive wife. The husband finds out that his wife is cheating on him, when one day he walks in on them while they are having sex, and shoots them both.

Two affluent families struggle and learn to survive during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines.

The story follows the trials of a woman as she risks to build a meaningful relationship with a married man despite the different hurdles that abound.

A groom takes his city bride to his hometown to settle in his father's house. Struck by her uncanny resemblance to his dead wife, the patriarch is driven to lust after his daughter-in-law. When things come to a head, a violent family quarrel ensues and leads to tragedy. A middle-aged spinster recounts the tale to reveal her identity and trace the downfall of the landowning clan trapped in the past.