From Bar Boys to Shake, Rattle and Roll: All The MMFF 2025 Movies Reviewed

(SPOT.ph) WIth the MMFF in full swing, there’s still plenty of time to catch the eight films in the selection. Here are quick reviews of five movies out of that line up, and links to the full reviews of the best three of the lot. Read up and see you at the movies.

The movie takes place ten years after the events of the original film. Torran (Rocco Nacino) is now a teacher in law school, while also working in corporate law. Christian (Enzo Pineda) is separated from his wife, and has returned from New York in order to spend time with his kids. Josh (Kean Cipriano) has crashed out from being an actor, and has gone back to law school. Erik (Carlo Aquino) is a lawyer in an organization providing legal representation for people in need, and he starts to doubt his calling when a client of his, a labor organizer, is killed.

Maybe this is nitpicking, but the way said killing is pulled off doesn’t conform to the way it’s typically done in the Philippines. But it does feel like a symptom of a larger problem, which is this propensity to choose florid, borderline soapy touches in depicting what are supposedly real life situations. There are some really strong scenes here, but a lot of it feels overwritten. There’s a whole stretch in the middle that ends up feeling like a series of verbose pep talks, with the fabulous Odette Khan made to deliver line after line of pithy wisdom—which just happens to address exactly what it is every character needs at any given moment.

Still, the movie's not really bad. It just doesn’t land right all the time. The cast is still pretty strong, and the new additions, namely Sassa Gurl, Therese Malvar, and Will Ashley all add some interesting wrinkles to the story.

Rating: 3 ½ stars.

Jessica and Jiro (Kristel Go and Earl Amaba) are persons with Down Syndrome, and they meet in a school for people with special needs. The two have been raised very differently, with Jessica having grown up to be more independent, and Jiro sheltered by his overprotective mother. But the two hit it off immediately, and Jessica quickly breaks Jiro out of his shell. The two decide that they are very much in love, and strike out on their own, despite the concern of the people around them.

Without giving too much away, the last stretch of the movie is a problem. I would posit that the movie could do away with it entirely, and it would actually work better. It feels tacked on to add another layer of drama to the story, when it doesn’t really need it. It was already pretty affecting to that point, giving real weight to the wants and desires of these people that society tends to dismiss as a helpless lot, while also dramatizing the concerns of those around them. It’s also just cool that the movie works with people with developmental disabilities: this is a population we rarely see in cinema, and it’s great that the movie is able to shine a light on their issues.

But yeah, the ending is a problem. It doesn’t undo the good that the film does, but it does leave a bad taste.

Rating: 3 ½  stars.

“I’m Savannah. My life is a vibe,” says the main character played by Bianca de Vera in the opening voiceover of the movie, which explains that she’s kind of a mess, and that she’s had plenty of boyfriends. The plot kicks off with her showing up at Nokal drunk, looking for her boyfriend LA (Dustin Yu), who has apparently been ghosting her for a couple of weeks. In her stupor, she mistakenly calls her thesis groupmate Vic (Will Ashley), thinking that it’s LA. Vic picks her up and takes her home and stays with her, which sets off a series of misunderstandings that will have the responsible student council president Vic pretending to be Savannah’s boyfriend as a means of taking revenge on LA. 

The very forced and embarrassing use of young people language aside, the movie is pretty insufferable. It’s a love triangle where one of the three doesn’t even really factor into the story. The biggest problem, though, is that it treats all of its conflicts as external, with the issues between the three main characters stemming from their relationships with their respective parents. So, the big climactic confrontation that actually resolves things involves each of them having separate conversations with parents, all of whom are barely present in the movie, and whose conflicts with the three leads are not very well established. These young actors are simply not served very well by the movie meant to be their vehicle.

Rating: 1 star.

The film takes place a few days before Christmas, telling multiple stories of Filipinos dealing with a global Internet shutdown. Wes (Gerald Anderson) was going to break up with his partner Kate (Charlie Dizon), and was sending an email to that effect when everything came to a halt. In Thailand, Bridget (Bela Padilla) is desperate to be in the Philippines by Christmas, but with flights grounded, she has to find other ways. The Crowders (Zoren Legaspi, Carmina Villaroel, Casey Legaspi and Mavy Legaspi), are a family of influencers, and the lack of Internet exacerbates existing tensions between all of them. Cheska and Jasper (Angel Guardian and Kokoy de Santos) have been in an online courtship, and Cheska sets out for Manila to try and be with her online beau. The crisis causes scammer Paula (Alexa Miro) seems to want to atone for her crimes. Artist Onyx (Kelvin Miranda) is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and ends up in jail. Luddite grandmother Cory (Gloria Diaz) suddenly finds herself at the center of life in town, now that modern conveniences are no longer accessible. Finally, stuck in their office, IT pros Bennie and Markus (Raf Pineda and Dom Corilla) try to find a solution to this Internet problem.

Obviously, that’s a lot of different narrative threads. Some of them connect meaningfully, and some barely touch the others. And the movie doesn’t really reckon with the level of crisis a global Internet shutdown would be, treating it more like a personal nuisance instead of something that would gravely affect the world at large. So it all comes off as a bit of a mess, but by the end it does manage to find its appeal, looking into how these characters are basically forced to find real life, as well as find palpable connections in the absence of Internet-supplied distractions. It still feels like it’s all just thrown together, and the level of narrative can vary wildly, but the picture it forms in the end is kind of nice.

Rating: 2 ½ stars.

In the episode 1775, a mysterious box shows up in a convent, and it quickly starts wreaking havoc among the sisters that reside there, among them the initiate Flor (Loisa Andalio), who is trying to find out what happened to her sister. In 2025, Faye and Sky (Francine Diaz and Sassa Gurl) crash a rich kid Halloween party looking to steal from the attendees, when a group of masked individuals arrive and start killing people. In 2050, Rosdan (Richard Gutierrez) and his family try to survive in a Manila overrun by aswang. 

The innovation in this Shake, Rattle and Roll edition is that the three episodes are actually connected to each other, tracing the path of that mysterious box that arrives in the first episode, which holds a great evil that will eventually lead to the apocalypse seen in 2050. It’s a clever conceit, though it doesn’t fundamentally change the way the anthology functions. It’s still three very different kinds of stories: the first is basically a ghost story, the second is a slasher, and the third is kind of like a zombie movie. And like practically every edition of this venerable franchise, the segments offer varying levels of success.

The strongest one is the second, 2025, which benefits from a fun conceit, and surprisingly gory deaths. There’s a notable lack of sound design in this segment that could have taken it to the next level, but the fun young cast makes it work, more or less. Meanwhile, 1775 just doesn’t work on a mechanical level, the scares not quite landing like they’re supposed to. And 2050 has some interesting design elements, but the action is so haphazardly presented, with everything shot too close to make any of it register on screen.

Rating: 2 ½  stars

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