Someday Happy

MOVIES: Oh look, The Road has an R-13 rating! It must really be scary then! Excited for it, more than for Aswang, whose director, Jerrold Tarog, I admired for the SRR segment with Carla Abellana. No PG horror movie is scary, and that’s a fact.

FILM REVIEW: While admirable in its purpose, the Cinema One entry Ka Oryang suffers from a lack of passion between their two leads, Alessandra de Rossi and Joem Bascon. It’s hard to believe that Alessandra’s character can endure torture to protect her partner, when their love isn’t fleshed out enough.

FILM REVIEW: There be Dragons (Roland Joffe, 2011) reminds me of the Filipino film Rosario (Albert Martinez, 2010) in the sense that both of them featured the same framing device—the flashback—that hampered the growth of their respective narratives. The present-day characters should have been cut out of the final edit of both these films.

It’s also not hard to like There Be Dragons, but its inherent weakness is the need for viewers to know a bit about the source material (St. Escriva’s biography) so they could make sense of the film. The complexity of this material leads to the introduction of many characters that are paper-thin. St. Escriva’s numeraries, for instance, constantly appear and disappear out of the film, confusing the uninformed viewer.

LATER AT THE ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL.

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Suspiria: dir. by Dario Argento, 1977 - A young American dancer travels to Europe to enroll in a famous ballet school. Little does she know that the school is merely a front for a coven of witches. 4PM, Greenbelt Cinema 5. 112 minutes.

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Che Bella Giornata (What a Beautiful Day): dir. by Gennaro Nunziante, 2011 - A comedy about a clueless security guard who falls in love with a shady woman out for revenge. 5PM, Greenbelt Cinema 3. 97 minutes.

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Una Vita Tranquilla (A Quiet Life): dir. by Claudio Cupellini, 2010 - A quiet man who runs a hotel business tries to escape his past, which constantly haunts him. 6PM, Greenbelt Cinema 5. 100 minutes.

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Mine Vaganti (Loose Cannons): dir. by Fernan Ozapetek, 2010 - Tommaso is the youngest member of a large family of pasta-makers in Puglia. Today, they have come together for a special family meal to celebrate handing over the factory’s management to Tommaso, who has decided to finally announce to his family that he is gay. 7PM, Greenbelt Cinema 3. 110 minutes.

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Vincere (Victory): dir. by Marco Bellocchio, 2009 - The tragic story of Ida Dalser, Mussolini’s first wife, and her son. 8PM, Greenbelt Cinema 5. 128 minutes.

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Ultimo Tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris): dir. by Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972 - An impossible love story of an American businessman and a young Parisian woman, who engage in a clandestine affair. 9PM, Greenbelt Cinema 3. 136 minutes.

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ADMISSION IS FREE.

CINEMA: I must say that I hated how Nanni Moretti directed his Habemus Papam, but I loved his character there. He was funny in the card playing scene, as well as in the volleyball scene (which was completely pointless), but I cannot forgive him for that preposterous ending.