American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950, Fritz Lang)
Tyrone Power (very normal looking white guy who wouldn’t live another decade, also starred in Nightmare Alley) stars as the only American who can save the Philippines from the Japanese. Along with his...
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The Madonna and the Dragon (1990, Sam Fuller)
One of three TV-movies Fuller made in ’90, a year after his final theatrical film Street of No Return (and I still don’t know where to find the other two). Earnest photographer Jennifer Beals...
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Independencia (2009, Raya Martin)
Sought this out because Martin is one of Cinema Scope’s 50 Under 50. Reminds of the fake 4:3 history of Tabu, but even more artificial, and with more leaves and fronds than Sternberg would’ve thought...
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Insiang and shorts from the Philippines
After the storm devastation in the Philippines, I thought back on Independencia, the only Filipino movie that I can remember having seen, an excitingly stylized though thematically depressing attack on...
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The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)
More consistently great than part one, with higher high points (Robert Morgan!). I’m tempted to make a playlist of ABCs highlights and edit myself a super-anthology but I’ll wait until part three comes...
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Norte, The End of History (2013, Lav Diaz)
“If you’re doing a revolution, you should have the guts to kill a person.” Theoretically, this kind of thing is right up my alley: four-hour, long-take, wide-shot foreign film-fest fare with an...
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The Human Surge (2016, Eduardo Williams)
Mostly wanted to watch this so I’d stop getting it confused with Human Flow, but also it has an interesting description, a killer poster, and four-star reviews from some Respected Critics. Maybe...
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Window Boy Would also Like to Have a Submarine (2020, Alex Piperno)
Piperno’s first feature is a Slow Arthouse Being John Malkvich, the least fun version imaginable of a story about discovering portals between a cruise ship, a city apartment in Uruguay, and a shed in...
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How to Disappear Completely (2013, Raya Martin)
Protools’d dance tracks… story of daughters having sex with their dad… story of a family with a chicken for a son (being told to a chicken). The main girl keeps coming across men with guns, and later...
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