What is Cinema?

Just like Jacques Demy's " The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ", Bob Fosse's " All That Jazz ", Lars von Trier's " Dancer in the Dark " and even Baz Luhrmann's " Moulin Rouge ", Damien Chazelle's " La La Land " (2016, USA) is a musical film unlike any other. You may be averse to watching characters sing and dance onscreen, but "La La Land" is such a singular experience: its rapturous, vibrant and charming energy leaps off the screen. As in the 31-year-old director's breakout film " Whiplash ", the very first scene - a traffic jam in a Los Angeles freeway where the motorists join together in a song-and-dance number, done in one long tracking shot - hooks you right away in the film's world, from which there's no letting go already. The so-called magic of cinema has never been more apparent than in "La La Land". But don't let appearances deceive you: the film's ebullience do...

It's all unabashedly familiar: the underdog who's secretly in love, the sweet girl who's torn between two admirers and the campus crush who will never really end up having the girl. Add to this the personal issues that these young people have to deal with their respective families every now and then. Yet, Star Cinema's entry to the "new" MMFF, " Vince & Kath & James ", directed by Theodore Boborol and based on an online series by Jenny Ruth Almocera, can still bring unexpected pleasures to most viewers. Alright, it's a rom-com, an oft-, if not over-, used genre in our cinema and which appears to be exclusively dominated by Star Cinema for a long time now, but the film has such an overall feel of being sweet, natural, youthful and unpretentious that whatever the shortcomings of the genre maybe overlooked or forgiven. In fact, there are times when the film doesn't exactly adhere to the formula. Or it may still be following the formula,...