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When we were kids, we tuned in every week to a TV show called Chicks to Chicks. The very title marks it as an artifact from the early days of women’s liberation, when attractive women were routinely referred to as young chickens. It was the martial law era, so any discussion of politics or unpleasant realities that did not fit the Marcos-approved image of the New Society was suppressed. Sex, however, was all over TV and the movies. Chicks to Chicks starred Nova Villa and Freddie Webb as a feisty housewife and her hunky husband who ran a modeling agency. Inexplicably, the models (Carmi Martin, the late Maria Teresa Carlson) lived in their house and went around in their underwear. Each week the wife would suspect her husband of cheating on her, but everything would turn out to be her lecherous brother Chito Arceo’s fault, and the couple would make up and take a shower together. This show ran throughout our childhood.

Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

1st Ko Si 3rd. Nova Villa is adorable. We want to see her onscreen regularly. The movie is stretched thin, but pleasant enough.

Dagitab thinks it’s a French movie. We have no problem with that. Also, the house of the UP professors looks like every UP professor’s house we’ve ever seen. Authentic.

Separados. We suspect this is a ringer from Star Cinema. The relentless score. The explanatory dialogue. Every scene is a moment. Noel says its title should be Divorce, Actually.

The Janitor. Not bad for a crime thriller, but the main reason to watch this is Dennis Trillo. Dennis Trillo is so fetching, he makes fetch happen. We would buy the DVD if it contains an extra 30 minutes of his workout. Highest concentration of hot guys in a Cinemalaya movie: Trillo, Derek Ramsay, Alex Medina, Raymond Bagatsing.

Last Sunday at Cinemalaya, our menu was one of unrelenting grimness. First there was Bwaya, in which parents search for the body of their child who had been attacked by a crocodile. Then there was Ronda, in which a policewoman drives through the mean streets of Manila as she looks for her runaway son. Finally there was Children’s Show, in which children beat each other to death.

This would’ve been reason enough to watch nothing but romantic comedies for the next three months, except that at its harshest and most unforgiving, Children’s Show lifted our spirits. In Roderick Cabrido’s film, life beats people to the ground, but they refuse to be broken. On the surface the film appears to follow the miserablist social realism template of “serious” Filipino indie cinema (i.e. poverty porn), but then it turns around and offers, if not hope exactly, then the possibility of it.

Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

Francis Xavier Pasion—the name sounds like a Dreyer movie—is a very clever filmmaker, and we wonder if this cleverness might actually impede his development. His third feature, Bwaya, hits all the right notes: it is set in a distant, mysterious place, among marginalized, indigenous people, it touches on contemporary sociopolitical issues, and it is based on actual events. It’s film festival bait, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But for all its craftsmanship, it’s like watching something beautiful under glass…

Ronda follows a policewoman on her nightly patrol among the pimps, whores, thieves and derelicts of Manila. In case the title is not graphic enough, it opens with a patrol car driving slowly through the city streets. Except that we don’t see the city streets, we see the hood of the patrol car coming at us. After several minutes of this, we started to wish that it was a biopic of 70s star Carmen Ronda; then maybe we’d have more to look at…

Read our reviews at InterAksyon.com.

Bwaya by Francis Pasion: Maganda. Film festival bait. The Agusan marsh looks gorgeous.

Ronda by Nick Olanka: Okay lang. The scene in which philandering policeman Carlos Morales is talking to his paramour on the phone is excellent.

Children’s Show by Roderick Cabrido: Bongga! Sumi-City of God, with those filters that make everything brown, but it works. Those kids are terrific. Watch it. Run.

The reviews are coming up.

Monday we’re doing chores and watching Guardians of the Galaxy again. This will put us in a happy mood for our next moviethon. Tuesday’s menu:

Sundalong Kanin – A period movie! What does the title mean? Rice Soldier? Like Seven Samurai, who get paid in rice to defend the village?

Separados – The title is spelled “s6parados” so we call it Sixparados. Edwin says it has “glossy production values, which may not be a bad thing.”

First Ko Si Third – Nova Villa and Freddie Webb! A Chicks to Chicks reunion. Max Tessier our grumpy French critic friend says Nova Villa looks like Giuletta Massina.

Hustisya – We hope the trailer is not an indication of how the movie will turn out, because we do not want to laugh at Nora Aunor.

What have you seen?

Starting today.