A Brutally Honest Love Story

AMOUR

Michael Haneke, 2012

In 2012, Austrian auteur Michael Haneke made one of the most emotionally intimate films of the 21st century: Amour. Remember that Adam Sandler song from The Wedding Singer? That somehow describes Amour.

Anne and Georges (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are an octogenarian couple, blissfully married for a long time. Both are retired music teachers. Their forte: the piano. They live by themselves in a Paris apartment. Their only child (Isabelle Huppert) already has a family of her own, and is somewhat emotionally detached from her parents. (She cares more about trivial things like profiting from her parents' house.) One day, the couple suffers a major blow in their relationship when Anne suffers from dementia and then stroke.

The Dirty Laundries of the Church

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
Peter Mullan, 2002

If The Magdalene Sisters was shown during the Magdalene laundries' "glory years" — no, wait — I don't think it would even be shown at all. The film is a massive punch in the face of those zealots who fantasize that women who don't abide by their religion's "values" are "fallen women," therefore they need to "repent."

Repent so by doing time at the Magdalene laundries, a purgatory where you have to work for hours without pay. It is also where the Catholic Church's dirty laundries are exposed, to the workers at least: a manipulative and corrupt Mother Superior, a perverse priest, basically the Church in their not-so-human form.

A Personal Apocalypse Now and Then

BLACK HOLE SUN

Howard Greenhalgh, 1994

I grew up listening to '90s music, mostly pop — basically anything that comes out of an FM radio, which was a refuge for an eight year-old who is tortured by cheesy old songs that are permeating the Sunday airwaves. A shelter from her father's daily dose of Elvis' songs.

Whenever the King would haunt me in a somewhat annoying and redundant manner, I would turn on my cassette player (mostly the Spice Girls and those silly boybands who sound the same). Sometimes I would tune in to MTV and watch a bunch of music videos. (Yes. MTV used to play music videos before they were infested by the "reality show" crap.)

Fave Movie Quotes: The Virgin Suicides

She was the still point of the turning world, man.

- Trip Fontaine

Is There a Way Into the Mind?

LA JETÉE

Chris Marker, 1962

Miss Sylvia Plath once asked: Is there no way out of the mind?

La jetée asks the opposite: Is there a way into the mind? Can lost memories ever be recovered? Can I find myself back in time by way of the mind?

Set in Paris after the fictional World War III, Marker's post-apocalyptic film is a montage of monochromatic photographs. Its main character is a POW (Davos Hanich) who unwillingly becomes the guinea pig of the "victors."

Audrey Hepburn Defined

Here's some cute artwork I found online. It depicts the physical traits/trademarks of Miss Audrey Hepburn, one of the women whose classic beauty and humble persona I truly admire.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn,

whom all women idolize and men never think about.

- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended. I don't own or claim to own any of the photos used.

Fave Movie Moments: 2046

Just like most of his other films, Wong Kar-wai's 2046 is about lonely people longing for love. Although comprised of an ensemble cast, WKW's 2004 feast of lost love has Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) as its focal point. Yes. The same dude from Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love.

2046 is a blatant sequel to In the Mood for Love. It portrays Chow as a jerk who enjoys having casual sex with women, a self-destructive path he chose after losing his one true love: Su Li-zhen (a special participation by Maggie Cheung).

Fave Movie Moments: Mulholland Dr.

Coffee makes my day. Or night. I guess I can qualify as a coffeeholic, although I only have two or three a day. A charming cappuccino. A f*cking Frappuccino. And an excellent espresso.

In David Lynch's mystifying Mulholland Dr., there's this singularly yucky yet funny scene involving some bad coffee and an irate mobster: the espresso incident.

Emotion vs. Rationality, then Vice Versa

GARDE À VUE

Claude Miller, 1981

Garde à vue couldn't be any more timely. The film is about a man who allegedly raped and killed two girls.

As I write this, Philippines' leading news programs are reporting about a seven year-old girl whose corpse was found in a public bathroom somewhere in an impoverished Pandacan neighborhood.

Her body was found with a bunch of stab wounds and cigarette burn marks on it, her clothes gone. The poor girl is believed to have been raped and then killed by heartless dickheads whose "manhood" should be castrated by a rusty knife. What they did is totally inhuman; only pure evil could do such cruel thing to a helpless young life.

Before "Action" and After "Cut!"

Ever wondered how thespians behave between takes? Yeah? Me too. Well, here are some shots of actors and actresses seen behind the scenes. Featuring a gamut of personalities, these photos are just as fascinating as watching a film's apogee. Okay. Maybe that's an overstatement. Anyway, enjoy.

(This is a sequel to my first on-the-set post.)

It's amusing the way some actors show their love...

Tom Cruise and a guy on the set of Top Gun, circa 1985.

...and their friendliness...

L-R: A "friendly" Henry Fonda with Katharine Hepburn and Mark Rydell.

On Golden Pond set, c. 1981.