De Leon doesn’t hide his unabashedly dreamy approach to the coming-of-age romantic drama, as a college student becomes smitten by a woman, changing each other’s outlook in life.
Visionary in the worst possible way, Folman’s live-action/animation hybrid packs in so many ideas about time, legacy and existence that it all seems so muddled, uneven and uninvolving.
At nearly 160 mins, Zhang’s latest does overstay its welcome, but as a murky murder mystery with twists and turns, it is finely executed and entertaining.
Shinkai’s new anime is largely compelling, though sometimes bogged down by its melodramatic excess and narrative contrivances.
A docu-fiction that explores the process of history’s becoming as De Leon boldly if cheekily subjects his country’s anti-colonialist national hero, Jose Rizal, to an artistic interrogation, yielding interesting takeaways on art’s discourse with the past.
An excellent Charlotte Rampling plays one half of a couple who have been together for more than four decades as they face a marital crisis that might prove to be insurmountable in Haigh’s delicate take on the meaning of love as refracted by secrets from the distant past.
Illegal makeshift houses without a roof will be torn down by the police in this underrated and heartfelt piece by De Sica, as a poor newlywed couple forced out onto the streets struggle to build theirs in time.
A Fellini classic featuring Giulietta Masina with arguably her greatest performance, this spirited tale of a prostitute who desires to change her life is at once heartbreaking and life-affirming.
A saintly donkey’s journey on acid, but Skolimowski’s elusive, fragmentary work is also earthy, as he gives us a hallucinatory, at times visually dazzling, piece that pays obvious homage to Bresson’s much sparer and more spiritual ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’.
A young woman gets married but her authoritarian father refuses to let her out of his sight in this grim and unnerving domestic drama with elements of horror, directed with vehemence by the great Mike De Leon.
