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Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, now streaming in Netflix, is incredible. It reimagines the Shirley Jackson novel, and expands it not just to accommodate the book’s themes but also to go beyond them. It’s a slow burn at first, but the later episodes will reward your close and patient watch. It recalls almost every single thing it depicts, and with each recollection, it sheds new light to scenes you’ve seen before. That revelation of who the Bent-Neck Lady really is was an awesome use of time, revealing much the show’s idea of what haunts us the most. And that final revelation of what’s inside the Red Room — that was a feat of storytelling. And it’s scary, but not in the formulaic ways of other horror movies which depend largely on jump scares. It knows that real horror depends on dread and sadness, and the series has those in spades. That I actually cried in the end proves this is no ordinary horror series. When did you last cry in a horror movie? #HalloweenMovieMarathon2018

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For South Korea's first superhero movie, Yeon Sang-ho's Psychokinesis [2018] is absolutely bonkers, a kimchi-styled Hancock with a dash of Batteries Not Included for measure. Which probably is for the best. This is not your superhero movie of the Marvel or DC mold; this is an Average Joe finding out he has telekinesis and can fly, deals haphazardly with his newfound powers, and tries to use it for the good as he fights to save his relationship with his estranged daughter and aid her in her neighbourhood's fight against a mob-controlled developer eager to raze their neighbourhood to make way for a cheap commercial complex geared towards Chinese tourists. (Ha.) It's all bumbling comedy in the execution, and perhaps that's for the film's benefit. I enjoyed it, but it was a little too bumbling for comfort, hitting all the usual predictable dramatic notes I could see the ending from far away. I enjoyed Jung Yu-mi's brutal and ditsy Director Hong, however, a true delight -- which proved a satisfying counterpoint to Shim Eun-kyung's exasperating Shin Roo-mi. Perhaps that's the source of my ambivalence for this latest film by the director of Train to Busan -- Roo-mi's the emotional fulcrum that the story insists we must root for; I couldn't buy her awful, one-note characterisation, hence I could not root for the film's conceit. When you're rooting for the villainess instead of the damsel in distress, there's something wrong with the story.

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What exquisiteness this was. BBC America’s miniseries adaptation of Howards End [2018], written by Kenneth Lonergan and directed by Hettie Macdonald, stays faithful to the class drama of E.M. Forster’s novel, which follows the entangled loves and lives of the rich, conservative Wilcoxes, the intellectual, middle-class Schlegels, and the aspirational, working class Basts but manages to imbue it with a contemporary heartbeat. While Hayley Atwell as Margaret Schlegel is superb and provides the heartbeat of the story, I am astonished to feel so much more for Matthew Macfadyen’s Henry Wilcox. In the novel and in Merchant Ivory’s incomparable 1992 film, Mr. Wilcox had always struck me as too stuffy and distant — but Macfadyen gives him a necessary levity and life, and the story actually becomes his story, his arc becoming the fulcrum with which the novel’s class conundrums finally finds closure.

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The Atlantic is right in calling Francis Lawrence's Red Sparrow (2018) as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as directed by Paul Verhoeven. It is tawdry Cold War drama -- but terrifyingly set in the contemporary -- that follows a former Russian ballerina as she ascends the ranks of the espionage world as a "sparrow," the name for agents who are trained to seduce marks, and it is executed with the panache of a burlesque. As a spy thriller, it lacks the tension of a cat-and-mouse game; instead it substitutes that expectations with vigorous sex and violence that only serve to mildly titillate. But Jennifer Lawrence's commitment to the title role elevates the film somewhat. The most powerful scene in the film -- during a training class where she is made to undress and provoke a fellow trainee to have sex with her in front of everyone else -- illustrates that commitment: this is clearly the actress' way of getting back at all those men who ogled her naked photos when her phone was hacked a few years back. When the classmate, who had earlier tried to rape her, failed to "rise" to the occasion, she finally answers her instructor's question and directive at the start of the class. What does he want? "Power, that's what he wants," she says, and demonstrates that she can take it away from men when she is in-charge of her own body. Alas, the scene has nothing much to do with the rest of the film's story. But good on Jennifer Lawrence.

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Ugh, fine. I was so prepared to hate Will Gluck's all-too-contemporary adaptation of Peter Rabbit (2018) -- I did not want another miscalculation like 2015's horrid The Little Prince -- but there's something about it that eventually won me over. Maybe just the general huggability of the CGI rabbits [with the titular character voiced by James Corden]? Maybe it is just the endless charms of Rose Byrne, and the unexpected pratfalls of Domhnall Gleeson? The movie is a tale about warring neighbours who soon unite for the common good, in this case love, and it can be commended for telling a story where there are really no villains. Which is refreshing. I giggled all throughout, always against my will, and in the end I just surrendered to it. Certainly not a film that will prove to be a classic, but it will do.

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What else can one say about Avengers: Infinity War [2018], Anthony Russo and Joe Russo’s ambitious chapter-ender for the second phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It’s long and bloated, for sure, but it’s also grand and dexterous, managing quite well the almost impossible task of juggling so many characters and storylines into a cohesive whole, and gives us a complex villain in Thanos who eclipses all the other half-hearted villains that came before this. The film, a coda in the series, ends everything in the rightful melancholic note that quickly reminds us how much we have actually emotionally invested in all these characters for the past decade. All that came before was build-up and intensive characterisation; this is the reckoning. This is the rare Marvel movie that made me think.

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Is there a TV show of late that has shown the depths of despair and sorrow connected to survival in harsh circumstances and exile from the comforts of humanity? [Don’t talk to me about The Walking Dead.] AMC’s The Terror, a mini-series based on the 2007 book by Dan Simmons, picks up where HBO’s The Leftovers left us with its jarring rumination on tragedy and the human spirit, and is able to equally awe us with its sense of place and its sense of creeping sorrow. That last reveal in its tenth and final episode feels very sad, knowing what we know, but also feels very appropriate — and I have never been devastated by such a revelation of late. The show dramatises the ill-fated exploration of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror who ventured into uncharted territory in the Arctic in 1845 to seek out a viable northwestern passage, but soon got stuck, isolated and frozen, in harsh weather conditions, with the ensuing months illustrating the men’s descent into madness and recrimination — while at the same time dealing with the menace of a stalking monster. Is this show a horror story? Elements of it are, elevating gothic terror into a psychological study of why we leave, why we stay, and why we survive.

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I expected to like Greg Berlanti's Love, Simon [2018], his heart-fluttering adaptation of the YA hit Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, written by Becky Albertalli. I did not expect myself, however, to tear up near the end, to see a gay version of the pivotal moment in Never Been Kissed. Representation counts, and in the movies much more so. But this one had a bit more gravity that it purports to be about an ordinary boy perfectly accepting of the fact that he's gay. No self-hating angst here, no terrors of the closet; the landslide that he has to navigate through is not even about the usual self-pitying refrains about having to hide; it's about the repercussions of having to lose love. During one dramatic highlight in the film, Nick Robinson as the titular hero, upon being outed online to the rest of the school, tells his sister matter-of-factly: "Why should I deny [being gay]? It's not something I'm ashamed of." And that statement felt very revolutionary, indeed, to be uttered in a mainstream teen romantic comedy. Most older gay people I know who have seen this movie has said variations of the same sentence: they wished this movie came out when they were teenagers. I completely understand that sentiment. I wished I saw this when I was younger.

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Marja-Lewis Ryan's 6 Balloons [2018] is one of those small films that thrive quite well in their smallness: without expectations attending it, it manages to surprise, and not just because it is effective filmmaking, it is a film that delves into a difficult topic and limns it well. Two siblings try to get through a day and a night, challenged by the fact that the brother is heroine-addicted, needs a fix, and can't seem to get into rehab, and the sister loves him but has had enough. It is affecting drama, with adequate performances from its two leads, and I liked it.

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The hype is true about John Krasinski's A Quiet Place (2018): this very quiet film -- the sound of popcorn being eaten in the theatre is louder -- is taut and tense from first frame to last, making this the best horror film of the year so far, and simply superb cinema, period. Its horrors start in media res: there are no explanations for why monsters have taken over the world; we learn that they may be blind but they can detect the slightest sound and they attack with such ferocity, within seconds. Into that premise we are introduced to a family who survive by living by their wits (and sign language). We observe them make specific adjustments required by life lived on the edge, which is the film's greatest strength. Add to that the details of a silo, and a nail, and your nerves will become frayed. To say more is to do disservice to this feat of filmmaking by director and actor Krasinski. This needs to be seen on the big screen, however. To see this film in a smaller screen [a laptop, for example], with a minimal hold of its immersive sound design, is to diminish its power. See it, and don't breathe.

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Hello Ian!

My name is Peiying and I am writing from Ethos Books, the publisher of Noelle q de Jesus' Blood Collected Stories. We will be bringing Noelle, as well as 2 other Singapore writers (Yong Shu Hoong and Aaron Lee Soon Yong) to attend the Manila International Book Fair and we have a few extra days to check out the reading and literary scene in Manila. 

Do you have any suggestions for places to visit or things we could do in that line?

We have arranged for a reading at Ateneo University, Solidaridad and still working out with Powerbooks—but we'll love to see the city's literary culture beyond the bookstores!

Looking forward to your reply.

Thanks and have a good day ahead!

Cheers,

Peiying

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hello po i read the Pepe Report for my english class and i think it's an amazing story!! i was wondering, though, what made you think of jose rizal as the epitome of manliness?? also, what did Dr Lamco symbolize in the story?? (btw. after i finish the literary critique for this i'm definitely going to read more of your stuff)

Oh, hi. Just read this. Jose Rizal was such a ladies’ man, and he loved to exercise, so it was just a good jumping off point to assume he thought himself manly. Lamco, if I remember correctly, was Rizal’s teacher.

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I just marathoned all of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Part 1 Millennium Approaches [3 hours and 30 minutes] and Part 2 Perestroika [4 hours and 15 minutes], the 2017 National Theatre production in London. I couldn't stop. It was just so riveting -- and funny. I've read this play in class before, and I've seen the HBO mini-series, but this British production, directed by the great Marianne Elliott, seemed able to limn the humor of the text more than usual with such fantastic line-readings. [Andrew Garfield is a fantastic comic actor, I had no idea.] The production also features a better revision of Perestroika, streamlining many of its historic muddled-ness; but it is actually the funnier play while Millennium Approaches has the better structure. It seems such a feat for these actors, to commit themselves to doing an eight-hour long masterwork with all of those monologues and such. But ultimately, there are those words, the poetry of Tony Kushner, tumbling through difficult themes with such nimbleness but also gravity. They just opened in Broadway last month; I envy those who are watching this live.

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Somewhere near the end of Adam Rifkin's The Last Movie Star [2018], Vic Edwards, the former movie star played with autobiographical undertone by Burt Reynolds, provides an interesting insight about life, correlating it to a film's narrative arc: "People will forgive a shitty second act if the third act moves them." Truth to tell, the first and second acts of this movie are quite shitty and banal, but something about the third act moved me. In Rifkin's film -- a sophomoric effort that needed a better screenplay -- Reynolds is offered a chance to examine his own film persona, that of box office king, sex icon, and famously assholic actor, and what results is a searing reckoning of a life either well-lived or squandered. That the film does this by pitting the old and greying Reynolds in actual "conversation" with his famous [and younger] movie roles in Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance adds a certain gravity to the effort. It's easy to dismiss this film as being too minor, too much wastage of the stature of the actual movie star starring in this, but if we're generous enough to accept this as Reynold's confession, we will see that perhaps we have been given a privilege of a movie star baring his soul.

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Sometimes you come across a BL webseries of such draw and deceptive power -- remember our 2017 craze for Addicted/Heroine? -- that you are astounded by just how much you are taken by it. You giggle like a schoolboy in love for the first time. I will officially deny I ever giggled over HIStory 2: Crossing the Line, a Taiwanese webseries of the BL variety, but there were times when... Never mind. Part of the webseries’ charm is the convincing embodiment of character of its leads and the simplicity of its story: a volleyball jock [played by a bespectacled Zach Lu] tries to convince the school miscreant [played with aplomb by Fandy Fan, whose eyebrows deserve their own fan club, to be honest] to become part of the team after a knee injury has sidelined him, leaving him to become the team’s manager and trainer. The eight-episode story is an arc details their rocky relationship and eventual mentorship, which soon blossoms into appreciation, which soon blossoms into... Never mind, find out for yourself. I was happy that the webseries is perfectly contained within short 20-minutes episodes, and only eight of them in total, because the effect is that of a dense concentration, like molasses, like the spark of unbearable sexual tension that pervades the entire show. If you’re into this type of thing, I dare you not to giggle. 

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Guillermo Del Toro's touch that made the first Pacific Rim film fun and idiosyncratic essentially is absent in this Hollywoodized update on the robots vs. monsters story, directed by Steven S. DeKnight. Forget Mako Mori -- the character from the first film, whose character arc defined a new way to view female roles in film [the so-called Mako Mori Test is an adjustment of the more famous Bechdel Test] becomes practically inessential fodder in this cinematic effort to sell merchandise. That very thing, Mori's irrelevance, becomes the new film's gaping hole where its heart used to be. For the regular popcorn crowd though, I doubt that would matter: Pacific Rom Uprising [2018] -- which centers on a sneak appropriation by kaijus on jaeggers -- delivers on the action and the spectacle, and alas that seems enough for almost everyone. I enjoyed the film, frankly speaking, but I had to readjust my expectations to that of unthinking audience member, which spells "forgettable" for this latest entry in a franchise that could have been the epitome of being the "anti-Transformers."

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I am not fond of the earnest political shade that has made the career of Armando Iannucci, having puzzled over the critical acclaim for his film In the Loop (2009) or his television series Veep. But The Death of Stalin [2018] I get very much, and I appreciate the precarious balance it achieves in its examination of the murderous macabre and its deployment of the the mischievous madcapness. Could one create a comedy out of the bloodthirst of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and the chaos and betrayals that followed his death in 1953? It shouldn't be possible, but Iannucci goes on a limb, jumps from it, and lands and achieves comic impossibility. It had me cringing and laughing at the same time.