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In David O. Russell’s brilliant, frenetic American Hustle, hair is character. The volume and elaborateness of each actor’s hair tells you how far they would go to get what they want; it’s a portent of destiny. This is a movie in which the one normal, sensible character is played by Louis C.K., and he’s bald.

American Hustle is based on the Abscam scandal, a 1970s FBI sting operation, and it opens with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) doing his hair.

That creature on top of his head is a toupee held in place by a combover, and Irving doesn’t so much glue it on as orchestrate it. Some people put their game face on; Irving cements his hair in place. The fact that he has a combover and a toupee tells you that he’s not only deceiving others, he’s deceiving himself.

Christian Bale’s shape-shifting abilities are well-known, and as Irving he transforms himself into a paunchy, ridiculous, but weirdly seductive man. Not only does he con people into paying him to expedite loans they never get, he also has two luscious women—his wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and mistress/business partner Sydney/Ethel (Amy Adams)—fighting over him. Irving is a sleazebag, but in Russell’s view he’s not a bad person. He’s hustling to survive like everyone else.

Amy Adams can do anything, and here she plays Sydney, a con artist with big hair and dangerously plunging necklines. Amy, everyone looks terrible in this movie, but disco trash diva is a great look for you. The big hair echoes the ambition and resourcefulness of this former stripper-turned-editorial assistant-turned-fake English aristocrat. She’s not a bad person, either, but the good life is supposed to be the birthright of every American, and she’s collecting on that promise.

FBI Agent Richie DiMaso really has straight hair, but this is the era of Saturday Night Fever and sexy Italians are in. So he puts his hair up in little rollers, and the fake curls match the nervous undercover guy who’s in over his head. Bradley Cooper’s Richie always on the verge of freaking out, and his attempts to consummate his lust for Sydney are hilarious. (The Saturday Night Fever hommage is wonderful.)

Jeremy Renner as Mayor Carmine Polito has a big, shiny pompadour to match his dream of revitalizing Atlantic City. He’s actually a nice guy, but his dream causes him to make rash, stupid choices. In fact all these characters are willfully stupid, which is why you can’t really hate anyone.

Which brings us to the most hilarious character of all, Rosalyn the housewife who won’t give Irving a divorce. The hair piled high on her head with waves going in every direction identifies her as an agent of chaos. Jennifer Lawrence is probably too young to play Rosalyn, but she’s hysterically funny as a passive-aggressive bitch with the knack for getting people into trouble—and the nerve to demand their thanks afterwards. The Lawrence-Adams confrontation at the night club is epic. When Lawrence lip-syncs to ‘Live and Let Die’ while dusting furniture, we fall down laughing.

If you liked Goodfellas and Boogie Nights, you’re going to love this.

Sana Dati: Against Romance

There should be nothing extraordinary about Sana Dati, the Cinemalaya film by Jerrold Tarog. It is not particularly original. It does not reveal big truths or make important statements. No ground-breaking techniques are introduced. Haven’t we seen enough wedding movies to last us a lifetime? The insipid title almost dissuaded us from watching the movie.

How, then, to account for the way we are enthralled for two hours, hanging on to every turn of the tale, and caring so much about a character we also wanted to slap?

The answer is Craft. When the filmmaker’s craft is solid, when the director’s vision is clear, when all elements are united for a single purpose, a movie can destroy you.

Read the full article at InterAksyon.com.

When the film opens three actors are onstage doing the penultimate scene from Julius Caesar. There is a rawness to the performances, and none of the studied theatricality we tend to expect from productions of Shakespeare. The play ends, the audience members rise to their feet, the actors shout with relief and joy and embrace each other. Then they clear the stage, and guards lead the actors back to their prison cells and lock them in. We are in the high-security wing of Rebibbia Prison in Rome, and the prisoners have just put on Julius Caesar.

The filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani follow the production from auditions to readings, rehearsals and opening night. Technically Caesar Must Die is a documentary, but it’s also a very intense drama set in the intersections between art and real life. The actors—mobsters, murderers, drug traffickers—don’t need the Method to bring Shakespeare’s drama of ambition, betrayal and violence to life; it is their life. Cannily the stage director urges them to speak in their own dialects: Shakespeare was English, but Julius Caesar is their hometown play.

Caesar is played by Giovanni Arcuri, a large, lordly man of influence in the prison community. When Salvatore Striano (a former inmate who had become a professional actor upon his release, and returned to Rebibbia for this movie—yes, it’s cheating, but it’s an excellent choice) as Brutus stops to note that his best friend had said almost the same lines to him before he was betrayed, we leave the world of art theory. Art is life, and freedom, and power. Caesar Must Die is the exercise of that power.

Badil: Democracy for Sale

Elections are the pinnacle of Philippine political life—so emotional and all-encompassing, everything that follows is practically negligible. Every effort is exerted and no resource spared in order to win the vote; by the time the winner is proclaimed, there is nothing left.

During election season, we make stirring declarations about truth, justice, change. “Vote wisely.” “Be guided by your conscience.” “Don’t sell your vote.” We mean what we say. The problem is that we know nothing.

Democracy is founded on the principle that the citizens have the right to choose their own leaders. Badil (“Gun”), the gripping political thriller by Chito Roño, shows us a system that has perverted this principle.

Read the full article in our Anti-MMFF festival at InterAksyon.com.

Photo from the Portfolio of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

2013 was a great year for Philippine cinema, though you wouldn’t know it from the box-office numbers or the TV coverage. You would know it from the excitement among ardent moviegoers: the people who believe in Filipino Cinema, who kept on watching Filipino films in the truly bleak times when Tagalog movies had become an open insult to their intelligence and a threat to their sanity, who braved the derision of their more practical friends and tried to give rational answers to the question, “Why do you even bother when you know you will be disappointed?”

We mean the people who feel despair and then outrage at how the studios use marketing and media noise to swindle casual viewers into thinking that crap looks good. Paradoxically they continue to pay the price of admission, knowing there is a 98 percent chance they will be screwed by the production companies, but pinning their hopes on that remaining two percent. These are the lovers of the moving image, devotees of the church of the waking dream, the Dreamers. Because if the Cinema can’t bring in the Dreamers, it has no right to exist.

This was the year we took a chance on filmmakers we’d never heard of and found ourselves rewarded, the year we overloaded on movies and stayed up half the night arguing about what we just saw. Even when we didn’t like the movies we couldn’t stop talking about them; we could tell that the filmmakers were dreaming the same dream that has haunted us since we sat in a darkened theatre for the first time. We rearranged our schedules so we could chase the movies, figured out the quickest routes between theatres spread out across the sea of traffic (“How do I get from Mandaluyong to Chinatown and then Cubao in three hours?”) so we could catch everything. It was exhausting, it was aggravating, it was exhilarating. 2013 was a year for Dreamers.

We saw a lot of wonderful Filipino films this year. They should all be showing at the Metro Manila Film Festival. Of course they’re not, and snow will fall on the gates of hell before intellectually demanding, ambitious, risky non-star vehicles that aspire to the level of Art will be admitted there. But climate change is on the rise, and stranger things have happened.

We’re tired of bitching about Tagalog movies. This year, we don’t have to. In this series, we salute the Best Filipino Movies of 2013.

Opening tomorrow at InterAksyon.com. Who knows, maybe we’ll even screen them.

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Post your own tributes to your favorite Filipino movies of the year in Comments.

“Which Meryl Streep movie are you? We are Heartburn. No, Plenty. Wait…Adaptation!”

“Noel is Still of the Night and Boboy is Silkwood. Juan, you are not Sophie’s Choice, more like Plenty. Ricky…Postcards From the Edge? Jon, you wish you were The French Lieutenant’s Woman, fall in line. James: Mamma Mia or The Devil Wears Prada. Michael is Out of Africa. Victor, the dingo ate your baby.”

“Ban hammers at shopping malls? That might stop the Martilyo Gang, but won’t it pave the way for the Showerhead Gang or the Paperweight Gang or even the Platform Shoe Gang? Great work, Secretary Mar, let’s see you stop Thor from coming to the mall.”

“Oh no, we are not watching all the Metro Manila filmfest entries this year. Maybe 10,000 Hours, which we think of as One Year, One Month and Three Weeks.”

“Shall we open another bottle? You know what’s a great Xmas movie? Besides It’s A Wonderful Life. Besides Metropolitan. The Shop Around The Corner.”

Model: Drogon Hiddleston-Cumberbatch. Photographer: RickyV.