Towards the end of Fernando de Fuentes’ 1936 epic Let’s Go With Pancho Villa!, Miguel Ángel del Toro ‘Becerrillo’ (Ramón Vallarino) asks, “The Revolution will triumph. Why do we stay?”
It’s the central question in this stridently anti-authoritarian, anti-militarist, and (possibly) anti-Revolutionary drama, considered to be the first Mexican “super-production”.
Central Intelligence’s tagline – “It takes a little Hart and a big Johnson” – is one of those rare constructions in entertainment advertising, jokes so stupid they come out the other side clever. In this way, it’s the ideal teaser for a film that marries its pro-forma buddy-comedy structure to an admirable willingness to stick with the joke until the end, trusting in its leads to carry the day.
Phil Dy is one of the most prominent Filipino film writers working today, a staunch advocate for the emerging cinema of the Philippines and a sharp, vocal critic of institutional problems in the industry.
He’s also the co-curator of New Filipino Cinema 2016, a film series screening through July 3rd at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Welcome to the first installment of a new end-of-week series, in which we profile something new to streaming, and round-up a few other recommendations for your weekend. I’ve opted to go with Netflix, since that seems to be the most common platform right now, and so hopefully relevant to your house.
When James Wan released Insidious in 2010 and the original The Conjuring three years later, it surprised a lot of horror audiences and critics. The director of Saw, and the producer of its string of increasingly grisly sequels, seemed to have taken a sharp right turn, abandoning what fans call “extreme cinema” and detractors dismiss as “torture porn” for haunted-house atmospherics and a more creeping variety of dread.
Insiang, Lino Brocka’s celebrated 1976 melodrama of the Manila slums and the first Filipino film to ever screen at Cannes, opens with several ghastly, uninterrupted minutes inside a slaughterhouse.
It’s dirty, bloody, and brutal – pigs, hung upside down, bleed out from hastily punctured throats, before being tossed into vats of boiling water.
All the way back in March, I announced The Great Sports Movie Bracket of 2016, with the intention that a victor would be crowned by the end of March Madness. That … did not happen.
It turns out watching 16 movies, discussing them, and then deciding on victors in individual pairings takes a little while.
It may seem peculiar to go back and talk about a film two years after its release, especially one as forgotten as 2014’s As Above, So Below – so let me explain why anyone should care about the film first.
It’s a general rule in clowning – and I know with that phrase I’m already in danger of losing some of you, but stick with me – that you have to do something really cool and skilled before you can fail amusingly.
The best “mockumentaries” – This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind – pull off a neat trick. They tend to endear you to the characters they poke fun at, slyly subverting types and tropes while remaining affectionate in the process.
One of the great curiosities about early horror films, particularly the American variety: why are they so scared of horrifying? Paul Leni’s The Last Warning (1929) – more or less a reboot of his previous The Cat and the Canary from 2 years prior, swapping a spooky old Broadway stage for a spooky old mansion – is typical of this impulse.