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Film & TV

15 stories

An older Filipina in a floral dress sits among teddy bears at a flower-filled window, a lamp glowing beside her in soft painterly light

Shadows fall and I try

Grief tech, Black Mirror bots, and memories of Nanay: she murdered the English language but was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul rolled into one.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 12, 2024
Retro VHS-box artwork, “D’Videohaus presents”: Brando’s Godfather above a Taxi Driver sticker, a Scarface figure, jukebox, barber chair, family Polaroids and a flaming red sports car, ’80s Action Classics

The Art of War in the House of the Rising Sons

De Niro, Pacino, and a neighborhood video store ran by a balding guy we called the Caterpillar. Notes on a boyhood measured in VHS tape.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 11, 2019
Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in dark suits at The Irishman premiere in Hollywood

‘The Irishman’ Cometh: Robert De Niro & Al Pacino star in the last great mob epic

Martin Scorsese’s latest film traces the rise and fall of wiseguys and made men in a subtler, more sober, and contemplative manner.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 10, 2019
Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in dark suits in a moody promotional still from The Irishman

Robert De Niro & Al Pacino: An afternoon with the kings of New York

First of two parts: an afternoon in New York with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the kings of New York on Scorsese, mortality and the last great mob epic.

By Igan D'Bayan · October 13, 2019
Jun and Menchu Lopez beside a home coffee bar built like a Starbucks counter, with a life-size Predator figure standing guard at the right

At home with Jun & Menchu Lopez: Where every wall is a door and the Force is always brewing

A house tour where every wall turns out to be a door, the coffee is always brewing, and the Force runs through a home in a galaxy not so far away.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 10, 2019
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker in a dark blazer over a charcoal polo, hands on hips with a wry half-smile, lit against a grey studio backdrop

Charlie Brooker: On designing dystopia

The Black Mirror creator on robot dogs, dark timelines, and holding an Emmy like ‘a medieval soldier clutching the severed head of an enemy.’

By Igan D'Bayan · January 5, 2019
Netflix menu screen for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, a spiral-etched head beside the Play button

Through the looking glass of doom

‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ has five main endings and a trillion permutations. Charlie Brooker: ‘It’s all a bit like a bloody Rubik’s Cube.’

By Igan D'Bayan · December 29, 2018
Hands hold a tablet showing a dark circular interface ringed with images and menu icons for saved, moments and recent

‘Black Mirror,’ mirror on the wall

Charlie Brooker returns with the year’s scariest monster already in your pocket: selfies, the Cloud, and technology gone clumsily, inadvertently evil.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 1, 2018
A sepia spaghetti-western movie poster titled ‘Once Upon a Time in the East: The Adobo Western,’ with a poncho-clad gunslinger flanked by Filipino actors across a desert backdrop

Moviemov’s homage to Sergio Leone: How the East was won

Sergio Leone turned the tired cowboy movie into the Spaghetti Western, and its poncho-wearing ghost rode all the way to our own “Adobo Western.”

By Igan D'Bayan · December 19, 2012
Illuminated theater marquee glowing outside a dark movie palace at night

Cinema Purgatorio

An AB Lit student who snuck out of class returns to the dark: art films, a lost girl named Joy, and a professor finally answered.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 23, 2009
Graphic poster art for the Lino Brocka film retrospective in Vienna

Brocka’s brain

Nora Aunor carries her cross of water containers to Vienna: a Lino Brocka retrospective at the Künstlerhaus, unexpected and overdue.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 16, 2009
Viennale poster graphic with festival typography and Lino Brocka film retrospective card

Vienna International Film Festival pays tribute to Brocka: V for Viennale

Autumn in Vienna for the Viennale: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Tilda Swinton retrospectives, and Nora Aunor on screen in Lino Brocka’s Bona.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 16, 2009
Illustration of a snarling Wolverine in a white tank top with adamantium claws crossed, in a dim caged room with rain on the windows and the yellow cowl and costume laid out on a workbench behind him

The return of the claw daddy

Hugh Jackman comes down a steel cable onto Cockatoo Island, an entrance only Stan Lee could have written, for the Wolverine press junket.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 24, 2009
Illustration of a Sydney DVD store front and autumn streetscape with movie poster art

Black is the color and none is the number

Autumn in Sydney, the bluest skies, and a DVD-store crawl through gallows comedy, Cheech and Chong, and documentaries about dictators.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 20, 2009
Little Baritan parody scene in a Malabon alley, a blonde figure in a Union Jack dress in a wheelchair beside a grinning man in a white sando, a small dog looking on

Little Baritan

Little Britain’s grotesques summon a cast much closer to home: the jokers and one-pair-of-trousers eccentrics of a Malabon boyhood.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 12, 2005