However, I still try to view “Ma’ Rosa” like a time capsule.
I ask myself, how can one imbibe what “Ma’ Rosa,” as film, features when today the likes of Nestor and Rosa wouldn’t be captured but instead slaughtered, as what’s been happening to thousands these past years. After cops raid their house one night and haul them off, their children (Andi Eigenmann, Felix Roco, and Jomari Angeles) are left struggling to raise ₱200,000 in bribe money.Īs a writer, I personally find it hard to put myself back in my headspace three years ago - in a pre-Duterte, pre-drug war world (and this is still discounting director Brillante Mendoza’s affiliation to the current administration). To make ends meet, the two also deal “ice” from this store. Their primary source of income is a small sari-sari store.
“Ma’ Rosa” tells the story of the titular Rosa (Jaclyn Jose) and her husband, Nestor (Julio Diaz). It’s a classic that will live on to be reenacted again and again and will leave a mark on the Bobbies and Teddies of the future. It’s an affecting scene a soft yet intense showdown between some of the best actresses of their generation. It also depicts the woes of the diaspora, a running theme on many Star Cinema movies yet this time it’s no longer the moms and pops relating to the hardships of working away from family. Maybe God has his favorites, and we’re all just rats jumping around the corner looking for food. That pivotal scene, a 12-minute confrontation where the family just lets it all out, bottles the anxieties of the late 2010s: with a weeping Toni Gonzaga telling the stern-faced Bea Alonzo “Ikaw ‘yung matalino! Ikaw ‘yung maganda! Lahat ikaw na!”, acting as a substitute for our generation’s frustrations and feelings of failure and smallness.
PINOY INDIE FILM MOVIE MOVIE
Blame the gays and hugot culture for turning an innocuous family movie into internet wildfire. It raked in ₱145 million during its run but it didn’t achieve the immediate meme-lord status like it has now. “Four Sisters and a Wedding” was hardly the icon it is now when it first came out in 2013. “Four Sisters and a Wedding” (Cathy Garcia-Molina, 2013) Without further ado, here are our picks for 25 greatest films of the decade. To counter our own notions of what is “great,” the factors we considered in our selections are: critical acclaim (meaning it’s not only us personally who found these films praise-worthy), mass following (appreciation isn’t insular only to academics and critics), cultural impact (did the film affect the zeitgeist? Is it still talked about to this day?), and access and distribution (a list wouldn’t be that much appreciated if majority of the films cannot be watched by curious readers)
Some ground rules: Though we credit that rankings can be reductive and because we are aware of the fallibility of our own shifting biases when it comes to favoring one film over another, in creating this list, we agreed that there must be a consensus when it comes to giving a slot to each entry. To commemorate the decade coming to a close, we look at 25 films that best defined this era of Philippine cinema. This decade in cinema will be identified as a summation of multiple moving parts - from the landscape and technological shifts, movements born of movies, and new ideologies shaped by cinema. Lastly, and also closely related to what I just previously mentioned, in the 2010s, we witnessed the dissolution of the “mainstream-indie” dichotomy.Īre the “mainstream” and “indie” labels even applicable nowadays, when budgets and industry don’t significantly differ? If it’s a matter of sensibility, how can we distinguish when “independent” filmmakers are directing studio-backed movies, while established actors and filmmakers from the big networks are also increasingly going “indie”? And let’s not even delve into the question of whether it’s based on notions of quality. In this decade, we saw how a niche, arthouse interest became “eventized,” a tradition larger audiences would dabble in and flock towards to - to an extent - in the context of Cinemalaya. In this decade, we witnessed how these small budget movies moved from being shot with consumer digital cameras to some of the most high-end cameras in the industry, providing some of the most arresting visuals on screen. Though one may argue that this current “Third Golden Age” (the first two being the ‘50s and the mid-’70s to ‘80s) was ushered in the 2000s - the frequent signpost being Auraeus Solito’s 2005 “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” - it was in the 2010’s that we saw, arguably, the current peak of Philippine cinema. Manila (CNN Philippines Life) - We’ll always look back at this decade as a transformative era for Philippine cinema.