• Release date: November 27, 1976
• Director: Sidney Lumet
• Starring: Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight
• Genre: Drama, Satire, Black comedy
• Star rating: 8.5/10

Social media sites filled with cute animal videos and hilarious memes are now slowly occupied with expressive paragraphs of political dissent. The once high expectations of good governance are getting lower with the rise of populism and demagoguery. Deception and controversy now corrupt the most reliable news sources and institutions. 

As difficult as it is to explain, something has happened to the world since 2016. The paradigm is shifting, and it has grown more despairing and less trustworthy, or has it always been?

Almost forty-five years ago, in a time of a great recession, growing anti-war sentiments, and political scandals, one movie resonated with its audiences’ frustrations. Not only has Network (1976) defined the maleficence of the times before and since, but it also provides a masterclass on acting prowess and satirical screenwriting.

It is hard to imagine the vision and merits of this film without Paddy Chayefsky’s pen game. His screenplay speaks like a collegiate essay, philosophical in substance while verbose and eloquent in articulation. To the casual viewers, it may seem a bit peculiar to see actors speak like religious preachers. But this stylistic choice of Chayefsky works to elicit various emotional reactions ranging from fear-mongering to rabble-rousing to comedic relief.

Yet only the expertise of virtuoso acting can bring to life this mixture of histrionics. Thank God we had the likes of Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway to offer viewers one of their most iconic performances of their careers!

However, to show appreciation for their efforts is not to view them as “characters,” in the sense that they are like your everyday people walking in the city streets. They are ideals and realities personified.

Howard Beale (Finch) and Diana Christensen (Dunaway) best represent two philosophies in a constant tug-of-war, expressing human madness in contrasting mannerisms. On the one hand, Beale elucidates the frustrations of unsubstantial human living and societal decay. On the other hand, Christensen’s megalomania feeds on this fury, wasting no opportunity to profit from the world’s anger. To clash them together unveils TV’s constant strife between integrity and publicity.

And therein lies the film’s most compelling rhetorical questions: who speaks and who listens? 

Do the words come from a prophet warning us of the times or just nothing but from the garrulous ego? 

Can these warning signs genuinely instigate change, or will they only be reduced to opium-like fodder for the self-righteous soul? 

Are we searching for a new hero to bring about a revolution, or are we just looking for the next jester to entertain us?  

Do these ideas make us unique individuals or, as the film puts it, “humanoids,” clones of the same mind?

In the decades since Network (1976), people now curiously think it is a premonition. But maybe for the late Chayefsky, this is a reality that has long persisted and reincarnated.

For others, the film’s portrayal of the media industry is all mere hyperbole. Maybe for some, its exaggeration reveals a truth yet to be fathomed or accepted by the world.

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!

Howard Beale

• Release date: October 20, 2017
• Director: Khavn de la Cruz
• Starring: Justine Samson, Pio Del Rio, Warren Tuaño
• Genre: Indie, Experimental
• Star rating: 9/10

“This is not a film by Khavn.”

Khavn de la Cruz, an odd but whimsical standout in the Filipino cinematic milieu, never understates that sentence with each piece he creates.

Redundant? Perhaps.

Ironic? Maybe.

But why the refusal to self-credit? To whom is the credit given? To Khavn, no man or woman behind the camera single-handedly controls the direction a film takes. It is most apparent in his full-length features like Balangiga: Howling Wilderness (2017), one of his Obra Maestra.

Many a few history dilettantes could identify the poignant significance of this quaint Visayan town the film’s title had referenced. It is the site of a fatal chapter in the Philippine-American War: the Balangiga Massacre. One might think that the film would delve into this sadly obscure part of the country’s history. Surprisingly yet curiously, the film takes a different direction. It veers away from the place of history and into the unknown and hidden depths of Samar Island’s tropical nature. Along the way is a mystical adventure that is enchanting yet perturbing.

And Khavn and company want you to come along in the journey, wherever they go and however they want you to see it through the power of its cinematography that blurs the line that partitions fantasy and reality to almost non-existence.

With the camera at his disposal, Albert Banzon lets you view the peculiarity, the isolation, and the fascination of Khavn’s worldbuilding through different lenses, be it through the eyes of a child, a ghost, or even an Omnipresent Being.

A variety of perspectives is necessary. When dealt with the vastness of a fictional 20th century Samar, one must look closer and farther to get the bigger picture. The result is an aesthetically hypnotic fodder that nourishes the cinephile’s soul. You can see it in the surrealism of a dream, the placidness of the rivers and forests, or the gruesome brutality of the surroundings.

But Balangiga is not all visual gratification. Blunt frankness is well- embedded throughout its almost 2-hour screen time. And a full embodiment of this honesty lies in the character of a Visayan youngling: Kulas (Justine Samson). Written on his face is a level of complexity rarely seen on the Filipino screen: a precocious demeanor bent on survival, a ferocity akin to a pride of lions mixed with a child-like sense of isolation and vulnerability. And the most apparent irony of them all: those make him more human in contrast to the humankind that has regressed to animal-like instincts. It is petrifying to witness the clear-cut differences, indeed!

But as the film ends, audiences may feel perplexed by its unorthodox style or unsatisfied with a movie that, at face value, makes no sense to them. A word of assistance for the confused: its aim as a piece of cinema is not to recount history. As cliched as it may sound, history is more than forming and rediscovering a narrative. It is also a process of reflecting and reimagining an experience.

Balangiga elucidates those thoughts on a certain point in history by putting oneself in someone else’s shoes and invigorating it with an assortment of emotions: remorse, wonder, pity, fear, and hatred.

Indeed, this is not a film by Khavn. It is a film by and for those souls lost first to bloodshed, then to time, distance, and change. Fortunately, the memory has not lost itself to the so-called howling wilderness. It is now relived and immortalized on the screen.

• Release date: October 29, 2020 (Netflix)
• Director: Avid Liongoren
• Starring: Angelica Panganiban, Sam Milby, Robin Padilla, Empoy, Arci Munoz
• Genre: Animation, Comedy
• Star rating: 6.5/10   

In the film industry, the animation sector is the quintessence of an oligarchy. From the childlike whimsy of Disney to the humanism of Studio Ghibli, the top animation studios dominate thanks to the powers of the purse and word-of-mouth. Their mainstream status has consequently left an indelible mark in their audiences’ consciousness through its visual and stylistic distinguishability. 

So perhaps the difficulty for other aspiring animators comes in finding not only the most lucrative concept but also the most idiosyncratic. Enter Rocketsheep Studios, a small animation studio with potent ambitions. Ever since their debut film Saving Sally (2016) experienced an unexpected but welcoming success, it opened ajar the window of opportunity for aspiring illustrators in a country where such industry is borderline non-existent. 

Culminating into their second effort Hayop Ka: The Nimfa Dimaano Story (2020), the question lingers. Does it exceed the expectations set by its predecessor, or will they be an unfortunate case of being a one-trick pony? 

Firstly, any reasoning for its praise or derision should start at the element that may cause the most divisiveness: its plot. Perhaps you have heard of this pattern before: a philandering woman gets caught in a dramatic love triangle as the universe gives her the comeuppance she is due. 

From there, the ambivalence is justifiable, and one must look at the argument on both sides for a fairer perspective. 

On the one hand, Rocketsheep Studios seems to have not learned its lesson from its previous effort Saving Sally. It is a plot pattern that we are all too familiar with, and bluntly, it can get tiring. 

It is trite. 

It is banal. 

It is as shallow as a kiddie pool. 

So understandably, audiences who crave more profundity and substance would not prefer Hayop Ka!.

On the other hand, that might be the whole point. Daringly, the film seemingly embraces this flaw with self-awareness. It knows just how ludicrous the story is and takes advantage by pointing its flaws out in a hilarious fashion. And no cinematic medium can best express this than the hyperbolic art form of animation.  

With every telenovela-style fight, hand-drawn animation intensifies it tenfold.

Any expressive, romanticized infidelity turns into hysterical caricatures of lasciviousness.

Visual and dialogical witticisms riddle each frame and every scene like an “I Spy” picture book, further spicing its comedic tone.

With these elements, the film further proves how execution matters just as much, if not more, than what narrative it offers. The story is not that deep, but the comedy compensates finely.

But the most distinctive characteristic of its animation would probably be its contemporary Pinoy identity. One Filipino could easily recognize Manila’s well-known landmarks. A politically motivated local can familiarize the socio-economic dichotomy the film attempts to convey. Even the most avid of showbiz pundits can laugh at the puns and references to local pop culture.

And such stylistic choices for the film can work in two counterproductive directions. 

Will it relate to its Filipino viewers? Certainly. 

Can it, however, be comprehended by foreigners? Doubtful. 

Hayop Ka! is not entirely a recommended gateway into mainstream Filipino culture, but it still shows promise in titillating its intended target audiences: the Pinoys.

Yet perhaps the best way to see this potentially divisive film is to place it in where the Filipino film industry is now. The movie is no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it the very first of its kind here. But in a country where the animation sector’s prospects look bleak, something must be better than nothing. To acknowledge the existence of Hayop Ka! and those that came before it, whether you despise it or not, is to start a long-overdue discussion of the future of the many aspiring animators of the Philippines. 

And that is why this film is one to keep an eye on.

• Release date: September 24, 2010 (TIFF)
• Director: David Fincher
• Starring: Jesse Eisenburg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Rooney Mara
• Genre: Drama, Biography
• Star rating: 8.5/10

Films and literature are not only meant to mirror our current realities. They are also tools to escape into a fictitious reality of our own. Due to life’s mundanity and feelings of inferiority, our souls aim for a higher status.

We read informative books on self-help to boost our morale and confidence.

We look to formulaic narratives of rags-to-riches as road paths to good fortunes.

We idolize the magnates who perpetuate the need for passion and tenacity to attain success.

But just how genuinely benevolent is this self-proclaimed gospel truth? What does it truly take to reach the apex? Will the ends justify the means?

Enter The Social Network (2010), the brainchild of director David Fincher and scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin, to offer a profound take.

At face value, the synopsis seems banal: another Oscar-bait biopic that dives deep into the nitty-gritty with somniferous direction. The Social Network (2010), though, has no such intentions akin to a historian. It lectures like an engaging entrepreneur, and it demands your full attention with aural and visual poeticism.

Observe its first five minutes as an example.

The verboseness of its scriptwriting may immediately feel overwhelming. However, it is somehow comprehensible. Step back, and one might recognize a secret to successful storytelling: adherence to a structure. From start to finish, it introduces and then concludes with substance and emotion. Like a musical piece, the characters emphatically deliver their dialogues with varying paces, cut-throat brutality, and adult witticisms. Put them together, and it reads like a sophisticated essay. If these details can excite you in five minutes, imagine what else it can do in less than two hours of film embellished with cohesive montaging and often figurative oratory.

Look you are probably going to be a very successful computer person. And you are going to go through life thinking girls don’t like you cause, you’re a nerd. And want you to know from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because, you’re an asshole.

Erica Albright

And as titillating as its writing is what it subsequently creates: characters that epitomized the woefulness, the stoicism, and the egregiousness of the capitalist hustle.

Justin Timberlake culminates his now developed theatrics into the role of Sean Parker, the avaricious opportunist hiding under the guise of a suave and gregarious confidant. One cannot help but hate him with a burning passion for his duality.

Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverino provides the one conscionable voice of reason calling for empathic amicability. Despite having a supporting role, Andrew, through his performance, ensures that, as Patrick Rothfuss puts it, the anger of a gentle man should be feared.

Then, there is Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerburg, the quintessence of the anti-hero. You will either despise or be intimidated by his egoism. Regardless, you cannot help but watch in awe at his cogent argumentations (especially in the deposition scenes) or marvel at the way he wields his corporate power or flexes his intellectual prowess. Jesse brought these with a scintillating and sinister screen presence.

If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg

Yet, when aggregating all its praiseworthy qualities, The Social Network is one that does not encourage upward mobility. If anything, it is a masterpiece of irony and a satirical subversion of an all-too-familiar story.

Was it made to malign its real-life counterparts? Perhaps not. (Again, films are not guaranteed supplementary aids to learning history.)

Could the film be an eerie foreshadowing of what is to come in the years since its release? Maybe, with the benefit of retrospect. (As of writing, the real Zuckerberg has gotten quite the public ire in the wake of recent scandals.) 

But whether this may have been a product of clairvoyant thinking should not be the reason for the acclaim it is due. Possibly, the best way to see this film’s merits is to see it as the product of the current zeitgeist.

In the post-recession period, the tale of social ascendancy sounds less like a divine blessing and more like flirtatious temptation. The taste is bitter, and the feeling is desolate.

You are not an asshole Mark…you are just trying so hard to be.

Marilyn Delpy

• Release date: May 13, 2018 (Cannes Film Festival)
• Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
• Starring: Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Mayu Matsuoka, Kairi Jō, Kirin Kiki, Miyu Sasaki
• Genre: Drama, Slice-of-life
• Star rating: 8.25/10

As the cinema industry leans more towards progressivism, films are now gradually starting to mirror closer to worldly and personal realities than ever. Yet often discussed but underestimated in the pursuit of authenticity is the human ontology. At times, audiences and filmmakers today tend to forget the altruism of the human being that can be as genuine as the social ills and the personal sins they committed. Possibly, the worst part is how this longstanding, black-and-white arbitration of right and wrong has blinded us from the greyness in between due to the propagation of the hero-villain dynamic of media and literature.

Kore-eda’s Shoplifters (2018) offers this neutral sense of realism against a cultural zeitgeist marred by excessive pessimism and standards.

He takes inspiration from an unlikely source: an impoverished family residing in a home incongruous to one of Asia’s most advanced societies. By premise alone, the film’s wise intentions are starting to be made clear; first, through the narrative methodology and then, through introspective reflection.

Its methods, when delved into by diligent film connoisseurs, provide an equitable and cohesive witnessing of the family’s personal and interrelated lives that may be more saccharine and cathartic than our own. The film sensually invites its viewers to assimilate themselves in this seemingly pacific family against the backdrop of a dilapidated residence made nostalgic and pleasant to the eyes with a soothing color palette.

But behind the Studio Ghibli-like atmosphere, there is reason to step into their world cautiously. After all, the title “Shoplifters” ensures one thing. This family is not entirely saintly or is their poverty romanticized to show faux resilience. And when such gradual exposition of their secluded sinister nature eventually builds up to a shocking revelation, audiences may be overwhelmed by an unfathomable mix of emotions.

You were frustrated by the family’s deplorable faults, yet you were also angry for the way society subsequently demonizes them.

You wish to be contemptuous at their fallibility, yet you also acknowledge their corrigibility.

And most of all, you may be disappointed at this false illusion of a family, but you may also feel remorse and helplessness for this unison torn asunder.

Such emotional responses are elicited by a gut-wrenching use of situational irony onscreen. By the time we return to our worldly realities, the pondering on our perceptions begins.

Since time immemorial, our humanity is in quest of the perfect moral compass. We rationalized then dichotomized acts of good and evil, often so swiftly. Yet such pursuits have yielded this unwarranted stringency that society has upheld since. A film like Shoplifters is long overdue. In a milieu quick to embrace the upright and castigate the lowly, Kore-eda dares to challenge these pretenses by creating a piece that duly recognizes what is authentic: the moral ambiguity of the human conscience.