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“P77,” GMA Pictures’ summer offering, may understandably become a polarizing film. Released through GMA Public Affairs’ film division, one would expect the movie to carry some concern over the social responsibility of the media, and, like their 2024 offering, “Green Bones,” would loop back to some didactic end. Initially slated for a 2023 release, its early promotional materials said that it was a film about the horrors of homelessness in a city of ghettos and skyscrapers. The final result shifted towards something else.

Barbie Forteza plays Luna, a daughter in a family facing precarity, who signed up to work on a cruise ship. Her employment was cut short as she rushed back home after learning of a medical emergency involving her sickly younger brother, Jonas (Euwenn Mikaell). With her mother missing in action, Luna takes matters into her own hands to work again for her family. She then finds out about Penthouse 77,...

Winner for Best Script in both Cinemalaya and QCinema, Jopy Arnaldo's feature debut is a film that stands out for an unusual aspect, the subtitles, which are truly implemented here in a rather unique way. Let us take things from the beginning though.

Gitling screened at Qcinema

Jamie, who works as a Japanese translator, has just called off her engagement. Makoto, a film director, is not sure yet how to handle his relationship with a wife who cheated on him two years ago. When he is invited for a film festival in Bacolod, their paths cross, as Jamie is hired to be his translator. As they spend more and more time together, the two become friends, bonding over their heartbreak stories and a language that Jamie made up. Eventually, Makoto decides to add additional subtitles to his film, and the two head into a cabin to work on them.

Probably the most interesting prospect of Filipino cinema, Mikhail Red, once more, presents his social comments through a genre packaging, in a crime thriller taking place in Manila, with the war on drugs of President Duterte providing the base.

“Neomanila” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

In this setting, we meet the film’s main hero, Toto, an orphan who sleeps on the streets and is trying to find a man that will allow his brother, Kiko, to be released from prison, or at least to find money to make his bail. Toto has a girlfriend, but her brother, Dugo, occasionally gives him a hard time. When tragedy hits him even harder, Toto does not find any reason not to join a duo of killers for hire working for a man named Sarge, Irma and Raul, with the former eventually taking him to live in her house.

Mikhail...

It’s not wholly clear how much Filipino filmmaker Mikhail Red wants his latest thriller, “Arisaka,” to be more than a faithful retread of the kind of lean B-movie that used to star Sylvester Stallone and, more latterly, reinvigorated Liam Neeson’s career. And it’s also not clear why he would nurse such aspirations: It’s the very competence of the action sequences (some dodgy CG arterial blood spray aside) and the strict adherence to the gritty actioner playbook that leave a faintly sour taste when the film attempts even the mildest commentary on real-world issues.

. Her presence, plus Red’s rising profile following 2019’s “Dead Kids,” the first Philippine Netflix film, should guarantee a degree of local success for the project. But its relative blandness makes it a harder sell anywhere its survival-meets-vengeance hero’s journey feels like a well-trodden path. Which is to say, almost everywhere.

Mariano...

Carlo Ledesma’s sophomore feature fiction is his first wholehearted venture into the domain of horror movies. Although his previous attempt at horror-“Tunnel” (2011) was labelled as such, it didn’t quite manage to raise as much as an eyebrow. With his majorly praised script penned for Avid Liongoren’s animated fantasy drama “Saving Sally” (2016), the curse was broken, and his talent for suspense became obvious. Three years into the film’s success pretty much owned by its writer, Ledesma returned behind the camera with “Sunod”, a dynamic, nail-biting watch with many twists and turns.

“Sunod” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival 2020

The core story might sound familiar – a desperate single mother is trying to keep her severely ill daughter alive at all costs, and when the much awaited wonder happens, it comes with frightening consequences. One is fooled into believing that the film will follow the safe horror patterns,...

It is always interesting to watch a producer (the one who gets things done) becoming a director (the one who “demands” things to get done), and that is exactly the case with Joji Villanueva Alonso, who, after 15 years in production and more than 39 films, decided to try her hand directly behind the camera. “Belle Douleur” premiered at the Dhaka International Film Festival while it won the Audience Award at Cinemalaya.

The script was inspired by a 2017 online video that went viral, where a woman named Aryana Rose narrated her true story, of falling in love with a 29-year-old man while she was 45.

Following the same path, the film revolves around Liz, a 45-year-old clinical psychologist working with children with special needs, who has been living with her mother for many years, neglecting her personal life and being still single, despite the fact that she is quite good looking. When her mother dies,...

Probably the most interesting prospect of Filipino cinema, Mikhail Red, once more, presents his social comments through a genre packaging, in a crime thriller taking place in Manila, with the war on drugs of President Duterte providing the base.

Neomanila is screening at the 17th New York Asian Film Festival

In this setting, we meet the film’s main hero, Toto, an orphan who sleeps on the streets and is trying to find a man that will allow his brother, Kiko, to be released from prison, or at least to find money to make his bail. Toto has a girlfriend, but her brother, Dugo, occasionally gives him a hard time. When tragedy hits him even harder, Toto does not find any reason not to join a duo of killers for hire working for a man named Sarge, Irma and Raul, with the former eventually taking him to live in her house.