There's no meat in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later -- well, there's a lot of it, actually (chewed up, mangled by helicopter blade, torn to shreds by machine gun fire, incinerated by flame thrower) but the stripped-down narrative is strictly about getting people from Point A to Point B and wondering which member of the team gets eaten alive in the process. I think I'm all alone in giving this a must-see recommendation (fans and critics both hated it, probably because it jettisons the political allegory of Danny Boyle's first film), but the action sequences have an appealing, telegraphic visual style to them that reminds me of the ending of Richard Linklater's Slacker: throw a running camera in the air and see what gets caught on film.
Auraeus Solito's Tuli is a disappointment coming after the heels of his brilliant debut Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros. But it's a very good sophomore slump nonetheless: a town circumciser (played by Bembol Roco, who I haven't seen on the big screen in ages), his daughter, and her best friend, and the relationship between the three. (The copy I saw at the SF Film Fest, probably not really meant to be projected on a huge screen, was in not-so-great DV.) The screenplay is a little schematic in the way it sets up indigenous traditions versus Catholic practices (and the enforcement of morality wielded by the latter) -- quite in contrast to the slowly-unfolding, delicious ambiguities of Solito's first film.
Posted by the wily filipino at June 19, 2007 08:57 PM