A series of murders takes place in the Metropolis in a span of three weeks, the latest of which happens on the night Junior, a taxi driver, makes love to a prostitute...
A series of murders takes place in the Metropolis in a span of three weeks, the latest of which happens on the night Junior, a taxi driver, makes love to a prostitute...
2006-12-25
1
An ugly ducking attempts to become desirable.
Sarah is a nurse at a Public Maternity Hospital. The hospital is abuzz with pregnant mothers of all shapes and sizes in different stages of labor. The hospital is short on staff on Christmas Day so Sarah is forced to put in a double shift. Sarah observes the women coming and going in her ward, noting who is a first-timer and who is a veteran. Meanwhile, the wards are overcrowded : two women and their babies sharing single beds while those in labor are spilling unto the hallways. Sarah takes these all in stride, her heart and mind laboring over her own personal pains.
A coming of age story about Isabel’s lessons and realizations on life and death as a funeral videography intern. Due to her family situation, Isabel is cynical and skeptical of everything that comes her way. When she enters the I-libings for her required college internship, she sees it as the worst internship her college adviser could suggest to her. Later as she accumulates her required hours, she realizes that the company is not just a place where videographers make money out of other people’s misfortunes but is a place where the dead and the grieving receive special attention. It all comes full circle when Isabel is faced with an unusual family tragedy. Isabel realizes that her internship might have been just 200 hours, but the lessons that the I-libings left her would last a lifetime.
Boses (Voices) is the story of a musician named Ariel who offers violin lessons to a child of the slums. Through the violin, the abused child Onyok is able to get back his voice from a mute, desensitized existence. A violin teacher and his student, a mute 7-year old abused child in a shelter, develop a friendship stemming from their love of music. Ariel discovers the immense talent of Onyok hiding behind a veneer of silence and pain caused by an unhappy and cruel father. In the developing relationship of teacher and student, both characters reveal more of themselves that otherwise may have remained unspoken. They discover each other's strengths and failures through the violin lessons.
A erotic drama chronicles the amorous exploits of a winsome young bride. When her affluent but crippled spouse fails to fulfill her physical desires, she seeks sexual satisfaction outside her marriage by taking a lover. Sunshine Cruz delivers a standout performance in a supporting role.
The death of Mariel was met with such hurt by her three closest friends. But it was her best friend, Carla that she leaves a most special gift, a box full of her diaries through the years. Carla has been Mariel’s friend since their high school years; they have practically shared everything in their lives together. Their two other girl friends, Sandra and Olive formed the quartet who would get together ever so often and served as a mutual support system. Despite warnings from Sandra and Olive not to read the diaries left behind by Mariel, Carla could not help herself to find out what was written on those volumes of handwritten materials. True enough, what she discovered completely shattered all her perceptions and beliefs of the friendship shared by the four women through the years.
A retired police sergeant has an unnatural stranglehold over his wife and daughter. His claustrophobically enclosed world is threatened when his daughter Mila finds herself pregnant and was forced to marry Noel. He attempts to extend his influence over his son-in-law, who resists; there is a confrontation.
It is the time of El Niño, a season ruled by superstition and fear. The rain is long in coming, the ground has cracked up dry. The ricestalks are thin and sickly. Villagers go hungry. And a boy dies from a snakebite. The adults splinter. Some pray. Others join a cult to appease earth spirits and wait for the ada, the ricefield spirit goddess of bountiful harvest who dances naked on moonlit nights and signals the need for a virgin’s sacrifice. There are fence sitters, equally pro-church and pro-cult. A landlord’s steward enforces his master’s usury on hapless farmers. A self-righteous priest says rain must first be deserved. Two young women fight for the right to do with their bodies as they please. A bastard boy and a blind girl come of age. Yesterday, they were children.
Due to a delayed flight a group of German flight passengers have to wait in the hall of the airport of Manila. The crowd is quite mixed, ranging from an cultivated east German teacher couple up to sleazy sex tourists. As the waiting prolongs, more and more aggressions and long repressed behaviors shed their way to the surface.
It's the story of a young woman, whose husband, is arrested by the soldiers of a Japanese garrison, on the suspicion that he is a guerilla. Dizon pleads her case to the garrison's commander, who sympathizes and lets Yllana go; when the commander's wife dies and leaves their son motherless, Dizon, is hired to feed the baby from her own breast.
Four high school friends hatch a plan for a farcical heist that sends them spiraling into a series of surreal events littered with clowns, fast food, and ‘rakenrol’, in an even more absurd nation of squalor and entertainment.
A young woman recalls how her father (a fallen priest), her mother (a woman with a secret past) and her teenage sister returned with her to live in their ancestral home after the family business failed. She was plagued with mysterious problems of sleepwalking and began a romance with a young man who tried to cure her.
When a Filipino teenager is shot to death in New Jersey, a probe takes place and reveals the struggles of the Filipino community in the USA and the horrifying effects of methamphetamine on its youth.
Orphan Carding befriends Army Captain Samuel Corazon, who’s stationed in his town to root out the remaining Huk guerrillas. At the dance hall, Corazon woos dancer Lauriana, and they soon move in together. The two become sort of surrogate parents for the orphan Carding, with Corazon teaching him the ways of men. But the soldier has a dark side, and Carding becomes witness to the violence occurring in their home, and a heinous act committed by the soldier on his common-law wife.
The film splits itself between two timelines. In 2006, Ada is basing her thesis on a massacre that occurred twenty years prior in a village called Acacia. Her mother Cecilia was part of a fact-finding mission into a massacre, and Ada’s inquiries bring up her history as a member of the NPA. The other timeline traces the relationship of Ka Felix and Ka Jimmy, two rebels who fall in love, despite the movement’s laws against such a pairing.
Teresa (Rustica Carpio) has worked for the Bautista family since she was seventeen. She was the nanny of siblings Stella, Vince and Andre (Jackie Lou Blanco, Bobby Andrews and Ryan Agoncillo), and their mother. The three have all moved abroad in their adulthood, but all reunite back at home with the passing of their mother. With no one left to stay in the country, it is decided that all of their properties will be sold, including the house they grew up in. But they are faced with the problem of what to do with the elderly Teresa, who has no money saved, and little contact with her relatives.
In a quiet, rural Filipino village, sibling rivalry continues through adulthood for two sisters and finally tears their family apart.
A 12-year old Anita falls in love with the new woman in town; years later, a girlhood crush blossoms during the Fiesta of Santa Clara in Obando, Bulacan.
Charlotte is from a family of beauty queens, but she has yet to win a title of her own. Her final chance is the Hiyas ng Dalampasigan Pageant, and her mother has taken steps to make sure that she wins. But her chances are dashed when the mysterious Samantha suddenly joins the contest. The two become bitter enemies following the contest, but they are soon forced by destiny to team up. It turns out the two have a hidden connection to a mystical past, and must work together to discover the truth about their heritage.