Cinematic Highlights of 2007Movie Thoughts

Cinematic Highlights of 2007

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Lav Diaz's Death in the Land of Encantos

Cinematic Highlights of 2007

What better way for a film lover to celebrate the coming of 2008 than to give due recognition to the brilliant films that were released the past year. Living in the Philippines, where the censors are both cruel and stupid and the distributors are tardy or entirely negligent in releasing their gems (like P. T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Sean Penn's Into the Wild, among other widely released favorites), has made it very difficult to make a comprehensive list of cinematic highlights. More obscure titles (like Eric Rohmer's Romance of Astrea and Celadon or Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, again, among many other arthouse favorites) will most likely never reach these shores.

The ones that were shown here (through commercial runs, or the several film festivals, or DVD's) were weeded out, and to my surprise, there were very few disappointments (like Zack Snyder's culturally callous 300, Michael Bay's overlong and overly jerky Transformers, and David Slade's witless 30 Days of Night) and numerous pleasant surprises (like Sam Raimi's whimsical Spider-Man 3, Kevin Lima's enchantingly romantic Enchanted, Bard Bird's deliciously wonderful Ratatouille, Judd Apatow's touching Knocked Up and Greg Mottola's hilarious Superbad). The crop of films from the Cinemanila International Film Festival (Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven, Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris, Anton Corbijn's Control, and the grindhouse flicks from Quentin Tarantino's personal collection (Eddie Romero's The Ravagers (1965), a Pacific war flick in dire need of a reassessment and Cirio Santiago's The Muthers (1976), the quintessential female pirates cum women-in-prison exploitation flick)) do not disappoint.

On the other hand, there was definitely no shortage in quality when it came to local filmmaking talents. While the mainstream is still struggling in its self-imposed quagmire of uninspired moviemaking, the independent scene is brimming with talent, releasing various films that arouse intellectual discourse wherever and whenever they are shown (like Jim Libiran's Tribu, a valiant although imperfect effort in documenting the gang subculture evolving in Tondo, Dennis Marasigan's Tukso (Temptation), a Rashomon-like whodunit that subtly tackles the moral corruption that accompanies the real estate boom, Rico Maria Ilarde's Altar, a definite step-forward for horror auteur Ilarde, Brillante Mendoza's Foster Child, a lazilly crafted but still engrossing docu-drama on the state of foster parenting in the country, and Khavn dela Cruz's 3 Days of Darkness, the director's personal "fuck you" to the brainless horror films the mainstream is thriving on).

For my yearender list, I thought it best to separate Filipino and foreign films. As with all other lists, mine doesn't have the pretense of being comprehensive or peerless (and will most likely be a work in progress). It is also highly personal, subjective and will obviously lack the films that I have not seen (thus, if you don't find the film you love here, it is either I have not seen it or I don't find it noteworthy). And now the lists:

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