Top Ten Movies

…that I can remember!

Meloinks, who is hosting The Blog Rounds January 2009 edition, promised that it won’t be a case of “tell me your top ten movies and I’ll tell you who you are” and Gaya suggested that it might be a case of “tell me your top ten movies and I will tell you your age.” Perhaps this list, in the order of which came to mind first, will be something of both. ;p


1. 100 is an independent film that I very highly recommend. Here’s an extensive review I wrote some months back. Similar to the Bucket List, but this one is very Filipino.

2. Air Force One with Harrison Ford. Action. Adventure. Suspense.

3. Hunt for Red October starring Sean Connery. Action. Adventure. Suspense.

4. Coma is an ancient movie which none of my students have seen but I keep using this as an example of how the noble practice of medicine can be corrupted by the lust for fame and money.

5. Anak starring Vilma Santos. I cry every time I watch this movie.

6. Mano Po (number something) is another superb Vilma Santos starrer. Beautiful memories. I watched this movie with my high school classmates, just a few years ago, during one of our reunions. We were all girls in a long row in the movie house and during an intense emotional moment in the movie, a male classmate called his wife, who was with us, to ask where we were, what were we doing, etc. His wife hissed into the phone, “Will you please stop disturbing us as we are currently crying in the middle of a movie!” Oh, how we laughed and cried all at the same time.

7. Movies I watched as a child with my cousins and siblings. Every Christmas my big family would have a Christmas program and for each song or poem or dance rendered, we would get a gift (candy, handkerchief, plastic toy, etc.) or cash (5 pesos was rich). After the program, we kids would count our ‘earnings’ and always there was enough to go watch a movie downtown.

Mindful to scrimp if we wanted to have popcorn and soda with the movie, I, as the mastermind of adventures, would lead my many cousins and siblings down the road as we walked to Park Theater or to Main Theater, and make sure that everyone was accounted for and seated in one long row at the movie house. Today, my cousins, siblings and I are all grown and we all share fond memories of those movie treks.

8. Pirates of the Caribbean was the first movie I saw on a wide screen TV, in my cousin Albert’s house. I watched the movie over and over again. The wide screen was fascinating. And so were Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.

9. A Few Good Men, Top Gun. Tom Cruise was there. Reason enough?

10. Movies I watched in college. Weekends were so mingaw in campus. All our classmates were not around and our dorms were very quiet because those who had relatives in Metro Manila would be with their relatives and those of us who were promdi would be left by our lonesome selves at the dorm.

Our kuyas, who were studying law, would herd us undergrads and bring us to Ali Mall in Cubao or to Circle Theater in Delta. We would pile at the back of the bus and talk in Visayan or in English (easier to us than Tagalog) in loud voices, just like the hillbillies that we were. I don’t remember the titles of the movies that we watched, only the wonderful memories of being with friends in an otherwise strange place.

kilig and kurog

Am so thrilled that the review I made for the movie "100" came out in the local weekly newspaper today! :-D

Am so terrified that the review I made for the movie "100" came out in the local weekly newspaper today! O_O

Thanks, Ian, for both. ;-)

100 things

...i want to do before i die.


That's what the movie "100" was all about. It's the story of a young woman's journey with her family, friends, her pet, and with herself, after she was diagnosed to have terminal illness. The theme is somewhat similar to “Tuesdays with Morrie”, a play that tackles facing life as one is facing imminent death, but somehow this movie reached me in a way that the play did not.

And how is that?

It’s not because of the actors, for Bart Guingona and Miguel Faustman in the play are definitely better actors than some of the cast in the movie. Maybe there’s the factor of visual appeal as a play is limited by what can be put or conjured on stage whereas a movie’s possibilities are almost endless. For example, as I said before, one of my main complaints about the play is the preachiness. There were several instances when the script gave a mini-lecture to the audience on how one should live and what are the things in life that really matter. The movie is able to avoid the lecture but instead the viewers are brought on a tag-along trip as the main character lives her life, the remaining days, that is, to the utmost that she dreams of. It made me think, yes, if I were in a similar situation, I would do what she did, too.

And I think Mylene Dizon’s physique is just perfect for that role. Gaunt and willowy, she is grace and composure all throughout. No melodramas for her, only subtleness and quiet talking. That is the nice thing about movies, when the character needs to whisper, he/she really can whisper and the camera will capture it. A whisper on a stage play has to be just that, a stage whisper.

Another major difference between the plots of “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “100” is the context of the setting. “Tuesdays” is very American while “100” is very Filipino. I almost had goosebumps thinking, wow, a Filipino wrote this, galing. I think the screenplay was able to capture very accurately how Filipinos respond when a family member is diagnosed with cancer. I have seen those exact same responses (i.e. some amount of hysteria, getting second and third opinions, Chinese medicine, a desperate return to religiosity, pilgrimage to this and that shrine, faith healing, pray overs, and the like) in my own relatives and patients. And I’m glad an oncologist was on board in the making of this movie. It makes me wince when the production people do not bother to check if their medical data is accurate and they end up showing medical bloopers on film. Thankfully, not so for this film.

I also like the spic and span look of the movie, so in keeping with the main character’s personality, which is clearly obsessive compulsive as depicted by her very neat apartment and the no-nonsense handwriting on her perfectly-lined-up- yellow-post-its, and so in contrast with the malignant cells growing maniacally inside her body.

There are two scenes in the movie that stand out in my mind when all the other images have begun to fade. First is when the woman was serially drawing the curtains in her apartment. Her apartment was painted cream or was it white? The curtains were of the same color. The film showed her at one window drawing the curtain then she would fade and then she would be at the next window drawing the curtain and then she would fade and so on and so forth until all the windows had curtains drawn. The next shot showed everything in reverse. She was opening windows this time.

The other scene was the death scene. It was very subtle and suggestive. Very artistic. Before the death scene, we could see how her health was deteriorating and how she was finishing up her list of 100 things to do before the day. So towards the end, most of the shots were focused on activity around her bed, as those closest to her visited and spent time with her. Her high school crush/boyfriend, who was now a priest, came and gave her the sacrament of extreme unction. The next scene showed these people that she loved in the terrace and in the living room of her apartment, talking and doing the things of daily living, bathed in bright sunlight. From the shadows of her room a figure approaches the other people, the figure doesn’t go near the people but only looks upon the beloved ones one last time, a long time. The light and shadows were very suggestive. She was too weak to stand or walk in the last scene so it couldn’t possibly be her physical body that walked there.

After the long last look, the figure turns and crosses the front of the screen slowly and deliberately. It was quite eerie, that play of light and shadow and the figure crossing across.

Whew. At that point, I was actually closing my eyes, because I’m talawan when it comes to death scenes. But each time I opened my eyes to see if the scene was finished, the figure was still there, crossing ever so slowly, so now that scene is embedded in my memory.

The things I like least about the movie would be the bawling crying scenes of Marife, her secretary, as well as the scenes involving her pathetic married lover. I think they could have done better as supporting actors? Note: I remember the names Marife (the secretary), Ruby (her best friend), Emil (her ex-crush/BF?), Mae-an (her mom’s alalay) but I can’t remember Her name in the movie! -_-

Here are the 100 things she wanted to do before she died:
1. tell her mom
2. resign from her job
3. choose her coffin and wake music
4. overnight picnic at the beach
5. go skinny dipping
6. eat daing and kamatis
7. eat ice cream. lots of it.
8. break up an adulterous relationship
9. give away her material possessions
10. cook her favorite foods
11. find a new human for her cat
12. go to Hongkong
13. go to Disneyland
14. go to Europe (virtual only, via computer)
15. sing karaoke in a Malate bar
16. drive very, very fast
17. organize her photo albums
18. spend time with her brother
19. visit her old high school
20.spend time with her high school crush who had become a priest
21. plus eighty more things

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet in this longish movie review, is that the movie gave me a good laugh and a good cry as well. It was funny and poignant at the same time. Eugene Domingo and Tessie Tomas are comediennes actually as well as serious actors. That’s why their funny scenes looked so natural. Really so laugh out loud hilarious. As for the crying, well, it was for many things. For a well written script, that made me so glad. More movies like this and I’ll become a movie fan all over again. When I was a kid my fervent dream was to become a moviehouse owner so I could watch all the movies all the time. For superb acting. For laudable indie filmmaking. For fine artistry. For the beautiful Luce Auditorium. For the idea of making my own list of 100 things to do…

How about you? You wanna make one, too?

the author and director of 100

Chris Martinez won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Cinemalaya Film Festival 2008

Chris Martinez signing autographs at the Luce Lobby after the movie

This full length feature won three more awards:

Best Actress - Mylene Dizon

Best Supporting Actress - Eugene Domingo

Audience Choice - "100"

[itutuloy]

100

How many times in this weblog have I said that I'm not very fond of movies? Well, now I take back half of all that because I just watched a most incredible movie tonight. It's a full length indi film entitled "100" written and directed by Chris Martinez, who together with actress Eugene Domingo came all the way from Manila to grace this special showing at the Luce Auditorium. This film has not yet been shown in open theaters in the Philippines so it is really a privilege and a pleasure to have watched this Dumaguete premier.

[I've more to say! but later...]

if these walls could talk 2

That's the name of the movie we watched today for our Lit class. Though for the life of me I cannot think of a reason why we were made to watch said movie... It can't be for the script, I don't think there was anything exceptionally literary about the script, and anyhow one could hardly hear the conversations among the characters because, as you can imagine, there were a lot of howling and eewwwing among the audience, there being several explicit love scenes between women. This is a movie about lesbians, after all.

And so, even if I'm not very fond of watching movies, much less movies like this, I decided to enjoy this film, for whatever it's worth. In Tagalog, this would be "naki-ride-on nalang."

The movie is about the stories of three lesbian couples, at different times (1961, 1972 and 2000), all set in the same house, hence the title.

The first of the trilogy was quite moving and eye opening as well. It was about the tender love between two elderly women, in their mid-sixties. One partner, Abby, accidentally fell off a ladder and was brought to the hospital but the nurse wouldn't allow the uninjured partner, Edith played by Vanessa Redgrave, to see the patient one last time because she was not "next of kin." Abby died during the night and the hospital personnel did not even inform Edith, who was sitting in the waiting room the whole time. I was outraged at this. Is this medical care in America?

What follows next are the legal and practical difficulties of same sex relationships, that is, who gets the house, what happens to the couple's common property? It was so poignant to see Edith watch helplessly as Abby's relatives summarily took the tangible mementos of their relationship, precious tokens that the lesbian couple had so lovingly gathered through their thirty years of being together. Now I get a glimpse of why gay couples want to get married. There were no eewws from this segment. From a classmate at my back I heard "Sweet kaayo sila, sa." Yes, indeed they were sweetness personified.

The second segment drew the most eewws. Maybe because the ages of the characters were exactly the ages of my classmates: late teens. And this is where plenty of lesbian sex scenes were shown. Nothing further.

The third segment starred Ellen de Generes (as Kal) and Sharon Stone (as Fran) and this one made me laugh the loudest. Maybe because it's the story of how this gay couple tries to have a baby and this involves artificial insemination. I always saw AI as a serious medical thing, involving a lot of emotional seesaws and some degree of physical discomfort. In this movie, they showed how hilarious it can be for couples to try to conceive through AI. I just love how they played this segment. The cutest moment for me was when Fran was ovulating and Kal goes, in a frenzy, to the sperm bank to get the sperm which was stored in a small oxygen tank-like container and how she drives home very slowly with her precious cargo, to the consternation of everybody behind her on the road.

Back home, Fran, puts on a special 'conception costume' complete with a feather boa scarf and she lines the path from the doorstep to the bed with little white flowers on a cushion of little green leaves. While doing all these, Fran sterilizes the gadget that will be used to put the sperms into her uterus. She does this by boiling it in a pot of water. Yes, in a pot of boiling water. In her excitement I think she forgot that the instrument was made of plastic and rubber. So at the crucial moment, when they are about to put the sperms inside of her, she proudly takes out said gadget, all wobbled and wrinkly now, and proudly declares, "I boiled it!" Needless to say, that blooper was the beginning of a series of funny antics related to conception misconceptions.

So I would probably say, thank you to the writer of segments one and three, those are my favorite parts of the film.

movie aches

Why watching Voces Inocentes gave me a headache:

First of all, I am not overly fond of movies. I would rather read the book than watch the movie version. A movie forces me to sit down for two hours straight while a book I can pick up and put down anytime, to return to at a later hour that I choose. And besides most movies are not that faithful to the original written text, as a lot of compromises, improvisations and revisions are made for the sake of cinematic effects. Not to say that movies are of a lesser artform than books, only not my preference.

And so with this attitude I sat down to watch the movie, squirming somewhat and tossing and trashing a lot while doing so.

The second reason for the headache is that I don’t like movies involving gunshots. And this movie had a lot. Much too many, in fact. I could not understand how soldiers, government or guerilla, could rain bullets on households and grade schools repeatedly, night or day, knowing full well there are children there. Or how the school administration and local authorities could allow these civilians to continually live in what was obviously a war zone. Or how could the mother not take away the children after the first episode that their “cardboard house” was riddled with bullets? Perhaps they were in a state of denial, wishful thinking, oh this would go away in a couple of days and everything will be normal again.

And most of all, the reason the movie gave me a headache is that I don’t have the stomach for movies showing violence to children. The contents of my stomach sort of went to places it shouldn’t have, like to my throat, ears, head. I think this was the reason for much of the squirming and tossing and trashing. I actually missed a lot of footages of the movie because every time there were gunshots or something terrible was about to happen I would cover my eyes and ears with a pillow and wait for an appropriate time before coming up for air. One hour and forty minutes into the two hour movie, I was almost frantic, when is this going to end? I couldn’t see any respite or resolution coming. It was all violence and senseless brutality all throughout.

I forgot at which part I cried. Was it towards the end or was it after? Or was it at the middle? It is kind of blurry and I don’t really want to remember exactly when or what made me cry. Maybe it was when the little boys, only between 9 and 12, were stripped of their innocence and play because of the beastliness of so called adults. Maybe it was when these little boys were marching in the rain and mud with both hands clasped behind their necks and pissing in their pants from sheer terror. Maybe it’s because I have a 14 year old son who is into drums and pingpong and gelled hair at the moment, as all pre-teens should be. Not forced recruitment into the army, not learning how to shoot other people and certainly not to look at a barrel down one’s face.



Watching the movie gave me a headache. And a heartache as well. Because the movie was not totally fiction. It was based on the true story of Oscar Orlando Torres, the playwright and co-producer of the film. Torres and his playmates had embattled childhoods during the 1980’s civil war in El Salvador, a country in Central America. It was the first time I learned that grade school children have actually been recruited as soldiers in many countries all over the world, including, to my utter dismay but not complete surprise, the Philippines.

In case you're wondering why I subjected myself to the torture of watching that movie, it was a class requirement. I wouldn't have watched said movie otherwise. Nor would I recommend it to anyone. Too depressing. I thought movie watching was for fun and relaxation. This movie was quite disturbing, like you see something unpleasant and you want to turn away and pretend it's not there.

I was also wondering about the harmony of writing such a somber post here, in the midst of all reunion revelry I've been posting a lot about. But I rather like the contrast. How boring it would be if all my posts were fun and cheery. And I learned something in class today: the writer always has some degree of melancholy. So there.

innocent voices

Watching that movie gave me a headache.

And a heartache as well.

If I recover, there will be a longer review tomorrow.

let the sun shine

Some days are good and some days are not so. If in case this week you find yourself with some extra time and some little bit of sadness, then I highly recommend this 2006 movie: Little Miss Sunshine. Don't be put off by the saccharine title, it's really laugh out loud hilarious at some points.

Starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin, this film has won several academy awards in 2007 including best writing of an original screenplay, by Michael Arndt, who by the way is not related to, though the namesake of, my high school penpal Arndt!

Pray tell,

Oh, here she is! Little Miss Sunshine herself.

Abigail Breslin as Olive

*the above pictures were taken from google images

kungfu panda

A must watch movie!! Such fun! I'm going to watch it again.

Here is Po, the Panda who is a kung fu fan and a food fanatic.


Master Shifu. Peace, Man!