A Pilgrimage to Cinema

I first got acquainted with American film director Jeremy Saulnier through " Blue Ruin ", which premiered at the 2013 Cannes film festival. This violent and grim work impresses because what could've been a rote revenge thriller is actually layered with unsettling complexity and motivations. As much as there's the given increase in body count and blood spill, it's also more importantly a downbeat character study, intriguing as it is considering the surprising ineptitude and meekness of its avenging killer.  That's why I eagerly anticipated the release in our cinemas here of his next film, " Green Room " (2015, USA), which likewise made its debut in last year's Cannes. And true enough, Saulnier still impresses with this one. Just like "Blue Ruin", the film is relentless, violent and grim;though rather than a revenge tale, this one is a captivity thriller (thus, the director works once again on a genre). "Green Room" has essentia...

Dante Mendoza's " Ma' Rosa " (2016, Philippines), a main competition entry in the recent Cannes film festival, may not be one of the best Filipino films of the year, but it's definitely one of the most important. Not only because of Jaclyn Jose's Cannes best actress-winning performance (we'll get back to this later), but also because it touches upon some of the social ills that plague our country: illegal drugs and police corruption. And in the film, it becomes apparent that the one problem can't do without the other: drugs becomes a milking-cow for the law enforcers and the former continues to perpetuate because the latter allows it to be so. There's really nothing revelatory in the idea, which says something about how grave the problem has already become. But what's disturbing is how complacent we have become in such a way as to treat such a problem as being a part already of our daily lives - a cultural phenomenon, that is.  That's actua...