Reviews by Chilette

Mozart in China(Austria) Danny and Li Wei, two ten-year-old boys from Salzburg, spend an adventurous summer on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. With the help of Mozart and a Chinese shadow princess they manage to save an old shadow theater from a greedy hotel chain.

One rainy night, a Xerox operator (Neil Ryan Sese) meets a mysterious woman, which leads him to a dark, passionate tale of duplicating fates and identities. Seroks, an intriguing digital indie film by Ed Lejano, will be screened on February 28 at the University of the Philippines Film Institute Cine Adarna.

The pyschological drama, a production of Cinema One Originals, makes use of the film noir style and fuses elements of the thriller in conveying a recurring pattern of duplicating events that reflect the film's title.


Set in the vibrant world of Recto, Juliana Palermo plays the mysterious woman who moves into a boarding house located above a photocopying shop. Palermo's femme fatale character meets the Xerox operator who works in the shop below her (Neil Ryan previously portrayed the eldest brother of Maxi in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Olivares).


As the story unfolds, the diverse, offbeat characters get intertwined into a mosaic of human experiences where they all seem to meet a similar "Xeroxed" fate. Set amidst contemporary realities of piracy as it tackles the nature of destiny and identities-whether genuine or fake-this is the intriguing world of Seroks.


The richly-textured film noir drama also stars Lauren Novero, Soliman Cruz, Mystika, Ramon Bautista, Alchris Galura, and Maria Isabel Lopez. Cinematography is by Neil Daza, the screenplay co-written by Lye Candelaria and line-produced by Amor Olaguer.


During the 2006 Cinema One Originals Digital Movie Festival last November 26, Neil Daza of Seroks took home the Best Cinematography award, besting the six other films in competition.

SILENT FILM is a black and white sequence of contemporary urban life, jittery images, recorded by a 1940's motion picture camera, and a sleepy narration of words, written by Filipino poet and singer Lourd De Veyra.

Director: John Torres (Source: IMDB)

The Tower Records story is about a man, his company and the unprecedented economic and cultural impact it had on the music industry and people around the world. Tower Records begins with the man who created it… Russ Solomon.

After watching the movie, I have decided to continue reading the book. It was moving and innocent. The true meaning of moving on and letting go in poignant fairy tale-like manner.

I cannot forget the story of Isabel the damaged... the scenes from the story are still on my mind...

“…The notion of the martir resurfaces in Relasyon (1982), a stellar example of a mistress movie with genuine depth. It portrays Marilou (Vilma Santos) as not just a mistress, but also a servant for the chauvinistic Emil (Christopher De Leon). There is a poignant scene in the aforementioned: in spite of catering to her lover’s every need, she is still left alone in the house on Christmas Eve, because he really isn’t hers to begin with. Santos’ brilliant, appropriately emotive acting in the movie gave the star her big break. Filipino Department faculty member Jayson Jacobo, PhD expounds on Santos’ role in Philippine media. “[Her] middle period presents us a social sphere of material conditions which articulate the context of amorous situations that persuade a woman to enter and exit a relasyon.” Jacobo finds that more recent mistress films are devoid of the dramatic sophistication that these older films presented. He points out their key faults, saying, “These films of late are too concerned with the calisthenics of sexual encounter, the scandalous confrontation, the fashionable hysteria, the publicity of neurosis and the contrivance of normative resolution…” – Rissa A. Coronel, Katipunan The Guidon Magazine, 30 January 2013