What is Cinema?

Jane is only 16, while Aries is just 17. They are a couple and they already have a child, who is just less-than-a-month old. They are street-dwellers - setting up, sleeping and even having sex wherever they could find themselves - and they make a living by stealing. As the wisdom tells us: What goes around, comes around. The young couple live off on forcibly taking other people's properties from them and so it hits back on them. Someone very dear to them is likewise taken away - their own baby. And thus begins Jane's and Aries' quest to find their stolen child, whom they call Baby Arjan (a combination of the parents' names). That's what's at the center of " Pamilya Ordinaryo " (2016, Philippines), written and directed by Eduardo Roy, Jr and Best Film winner in last year's Cinemalaya. The squalor of the teenage couple's milieu and the waywardness of their lives are depicted in a strong and fearless way, almost with a documentary-like authenti...

The moment Juliette Binoche's character in " Ghost in the Shell " (2017, USA), a live-action remake of the Japanese anime directed by Mamoru Oshii (which, in turn, was adapted from the manga), practically "explains" the meaning of the film's title (like what's the "ghost"? what's the "shell"?) early on to Scarlett Johansson's cyborg character, I intuitively know that we're in for a big trouble. Such an expository dialogue spoon-feeding the audience right away, instead of them discovering for themselves the essence of the title - and of the film itself - as the movie progresses is a sure deal-breaker for a good and rich cinematic experience. True enough (as this film junkie eventually finds out), this latest version of "Ghost in the Shell", directed by Rupert Sanders, is yet another incontrovertible proof that Hollywood shouldn't really tinker with the untouchable (" Psycho "? " Solaris "?...