Author: JE CC
In a nutshell: Two childhood best friends, rich girl, poor boy, an arranged marriage, a problematic marriage, family businesses…and oh, yes, infidelity. This new show is practically a hodgepodge of soap opera clichés. And surprise…it still works! ABS-CBN is turning on the tone switch for its late primetime programming a little sooner than expected. Three months ago, the nights were lighter (except for some occasionally mellow episodes, though some overly dramatic) with the Piolo Pascual-Arci Munoz-starrer, Since I Found You, which graced the small screen with its breezy airiness, light humor, and lovely take on modern-day romance. But the network…
“Unli Life” begins with Vhong Navarro’s character, Benedict, getting dumped by his girlfriend Victoria (Winwyn Marquez), on the very day he means to propose to her. He then stumbles upon a strange bar where he gets offered by the bartender with an equally strange drink, which the bartender claims, makes time traveling possible. This literally pulls back the time, sends Benedict to different periods in history, and voila! Time travel! The film would be extremely messy if we were to treat the jokes as fistful seeds strewn across an eccentric narrative. It is a lot of hard hitting humor to take,…
The real beauty in ‘Ang Babaeng Allergic sa WiFi’ barely resides in its interestingly bizarre love story. Charming and gentle, albeit formulaic, this teenage love triangle manages to generate a generous dose of sweetness, enough to sidestep everything it lacks. Here, themes and characters imbue life to this fairytale book, and they make a beautiful cover. In the film, certified nerd and loner, Aries (Jameson Blake) is smitten with Norma (Sue Ramirez) whose off-the-wall charisma makes not falling in love practically impossible. Though hopeless romantic, Aries never really had the grit to reveal his feelings, and it becomes even harder…
There is hardly a moment in Disney’s “Christopher Robin” that cripples the heart. There will be quiet sobs and gasps, but the heartaches this endearing live-action adaptation of A.A. Milne classic, ‘Winnie, The Pooh,’ leave behind are just warm enough to let audiences linger in the nostalgic feeling it manages to elicit. The effect is monumental, yet gentle enough to deliver memory-tickling senses; its exuberance serving as a joyful reminder of a forgotten beautiful past. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) is now all grown up. Gone are the days of countless adventures with his stuffed animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.…
Victor Magtanggol briefly explains the events during and before ‘Ragnarok,’ right within the first few minutes of its pilot episode. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok literally means ‘twilight of the gods,’ a series of catastrophic events where all of Asgard is decimated. To followers of the myth, the uncanny similarity screams out. But perhaps, the extremely evident resemblance will strike harder to fans of its more contemporary iteration–Marvel’s Thor. Showrunners were quick to address accusations that the show is a mere ripoff of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s hammer-wielding superhero, arguing that the show just took some inspirations from the mythology. Their bigger…
‘Kusina Kings’ had few things to say. So few, that the attempt is practically confined within the efforts to make its audience burst into laughter. The fashion through which is delivered, is similarly limited, largely driven by Empoy Marquez’s signature comedic style; it massively works. The humor’s effect is like being tickled when one is in utmost need of a good laugh. Victor Villanueva, the director, barely duplicated the method he employed to his 2016 dark comedy, ‘Patay Na Si Hesus’. This time, the script is practically embracing shallowness. Usual comedy tropes populate his narrative, and frankly, there may have…
Star Cinema’s “I Love You, Hater” hardly manages the entanglements of its narrative right. It is not a deep story, but there are a lot of under-plots it aspires to cover, that didn’t quite earn a proper resolution. That’s an undeniable blemish to this charming anecdote of an overly-familiar teen romance, but the film’s visual and thematic virtues remain adequate to keep everything more than just tolerable. Well-acted and inspired, the film coasts on the charismatic appeal of its leads and their dramatic competence to get the film’s powerful intents, across. In the beginning of the film, Zoey (Julia Barretto), learns…
So much about Since I Found You is typical, utterly mundane in the sense that the light and airy tone it carries has been the same expression that made Philippine Primetime TV shift to a lighter landscape, finally tapping other options aside from oversized and mindblowingly dramatic soap operas, where big and explosive confrontations are the real deal. That changed a few years ago with the introduction of ‘Be Careful With My Heart’, ‘On the Wings of Love’ and other mellow dramas, and almost instantly, the genre becomes conventional. But it’s the conventional you’d like to see in a show—especially a…
‘Love, Simon’ may strike too unconventional given how gay romance often turns out to be maudlin, if not overly sensual. In this Greg Berlanti’s adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s breakout book,’ Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda’, the lachrymose tone is grounded to a certain lightness, and frequently, the effect is heartwarming, and to some extent, poignant. Greg Berlanti’s impeccable sense of tone allows the narrative’s unexpected beauty, sustain its fragile but inescapable charm, never letting such elegance sink audience to an unfamiliar feeling, but to an affectionate awareness too natural not to relate with. In the film, Simon Spier (Nick…
The seventh and final season of ‘New Girl’ is unexpected—unexpected, not just in the sense that the sixth season was meant to be the last, and not seventh, but largely because this new season starts with extremely adorable charm, mindblowing even, that it makes ‘mindblowing’ an unsuitable word for a situational comedy. But it is mindblowing, and the fact that it will run for just eight 20min-ish episodes propels our excitement for how the season’s gonna wrap up everything. Arguably, if the series ended with the previous season, there won’t be enough remarkable things to remember about. Season 7, however,…
The new season of Netflix’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ is menacingly sardonic and funny, its choreographic weirdness sprinkled with just the right amount of petulance and darkness. It’s hard to figure out which season is better, really, for while the first season curiously explored Lemony Snicket’s absorbing mythology of the Baudelaires and their distant uncle, Count Olaf, and came up with an ingenious mix of humor and terror, the second season does not fall short either, of fresh and mind-blowing antics, disguises, and peculiarities, to offer. The second part of the trilogy, the season stretches through the events in…
‘Never Not Love You’ is a beautiful movie. That’s not true entirely in the context of its being a romantic film, it is beautiful in the same way relationships often are–flawed, chaotic, mostly heartbreaking, but inspiring and life-changing enough to make people stronger, and help them become the better persons they need to be. And it is what people who are truly in love, deserve. In the film, Gio (James Reid) and Joanne (Nadine Lustre) are two people with conflicting priorities, but somehow managed to set their differences aside. Their love affair works in fits and starts, its magic never…
Barely a month, since it first aired, ‘Bagani’ has emerged as one of the most talked about TV shows in the country. While the buzz has been mostly fueled by negative criticisms for its alleged cultural misappropriations, it is hard to deny that such kind of publicity helped the show generate massive curiosity among casual viewers and critics, alike, thereby allowing the show’s true intents reach a bigger audience. But, is it possible that the negative criticisms are utterly misplaced? A recent tweet from Mark Angos, the show’s head writer prompted us to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the story…
A high spirited, gloomy romance where illusion undermines reality, Cathy Garcia Molina’s ‘My Perfect You’ dwells in a beautiful world that feels implausible and real at the same time. It’s your standard, overly formulaic romantic comedy, that anchors upon the electrifying chemistry of its leads to deliver a sweet, and fairly moving story. The film brings together, Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach and Gerald Anderson, in a haunting tale of loss and second chances, and all the beautiful and painful realities that come with them. In the film, Burn Toledo (Gerald Anderson) is a graphic artist who gets dumped by…
The most important undertaking ‘Bagani’ would need to accomplish, is to live up to its title, and deliver its very essence. That is, if it aspires to disprove the claim of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, that the show’s used of the term, may be maligned, and that it may put its sheer substance to waste. There has been a statement from ABS-CBN, addressing the issue, hoping to clarify that the intent is purely to embody the characteristics of ‘bagani’–the old Filipino term for “bayani’ or ‘hero’–and that the show is just inspired by various Philippine mythologies. Arguably, this…
Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ is an intelligent political movie, the studio’s most provocative entry to the ever-expanding cinematic superhero universe’ so far. That it delves too deep into its political sense, is barely a matter of choice, as the entire narrative, itself, runs on a political backbone that has always been the moral core of Wakandan legacy. But Wakanda is more than just a legend. For all it represents, it is real, in every sense of the word. Director Ryan Coogler weaves the film’s arguments with a profound commitment, that the ambitious bid he undertakes, results in resonant motivations, fully realized…