Manila in the Claws of Light Uses Restraint To Vividly Capture Its Characters Agony

Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco) is on a mission, though he isn't exactly upfront about it. He has come from his home in Marinduque to the city of Manila seemingly just for the purpose of finding construction work. It's a job he's able to eventually procure and while on this job he makes a handful of friends, some of whom gradually learn why Julio has come to Manila in the first place. The love of Julio's life, Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), has been kidnapped and brought to the city of Manila and he's on a mission to find her and bring her home, even though he has very little in the way of information on where she could be beyond knowing the identity of the woman who lured her to Manila in the first place.

Lynne Ramsay Kicked Off Her Directorial Career In A Masterful Fashion With Ratcatcher

Sometimes, a director debuts with a film that manages to totally capture the elements that would come to define their work as a filmmaker. In the case of Lynne Ramsay, her recurring exploration of the internal mental perspectives of her lead characters is evident not just somewhere within her first feature film, Ratcatcher, but in its very first opening scene! Ratcatcher opens with its lead characters, James Gillespie (William Eadie), twirling round and round with a curtain covering his face. Noises of idyllic sounds of children laughing and playing emanating from within the mind of James are heard as he continues to play with the curtain until they're abruptly cut off by his mother ripping the curtain off of James and warning him of the dangers of wrapping his head up in a curtain.

Hotel Mumbai Has A Grim Tone & Tons of Gunfire But Little Else To Its Name

In late November 2008, the Indian city of Mumbai found itself under attack by armed gunmen who proceeded to go into random places like gas stations and train stations and just shoot whatever poor souls were inside. There was a terrifying element of randomness to their already horrifying actions, nobody was safe from their rampage. These gunmen eventually found their way to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a lavish location where both guests and staff now found themselves under attack. The movie Hotel Mumbai follows a number of individuals, including employee Arjun (Dav Patel) and newly minted father David (Armie Hammer), as they try to survive all the bloodshed occuring in the middle of this real-life tragedy.

Mortal Engines Is Nonsense But More Often Than Not, It's Enjoyable Nonsense

Mortal Engines is as imaginative as it is messy. Based on a series of books by Phillip Reeves, this story goes for broke in all the weirdness it can imagine occuring in a post-apocalyptic fantasy landscape where cities move around on wheels. You've got a giant vehicle that looks and moves like centipedes, the wardrobe's visual aesthetic seems like a collision of all kinds of different time-periods and an undead robot warrior all inhabiting the same story, which makes for a plot that doesn't hold together at all but at least it's usually different enough to be passably entertaining while it's unfolding in front of your eyes.

White Dog Is an Unflinching And Powerful Look At Racist Violent Behavior

Back in the early 1980's, Paramount Pictures financed a fully completed $7 million budgeted feature film that they proceeded to tuck on a shelf and not release. Such a bold move rarely ever occurs to major movies in Hollywood but then again, White Dog was not a typical motion picture. Hailing from writer/director Samuel Fuller, White Dog was a movie entirely focused on a dog who had been trained by a racist human being to specifically attack black people and such a premise had executives worried about reactions from all kinds of groups ranging from members of the NAACP to charters of the Klu Klux Klan. Thus, the studio behind Monster Trucks canceled its original 1982 theatrical release and the film would not see the light of day (save for a handful of TV airings) until 1991.

You Were Never Really Here Will Haunt You With Its Incredible Filmmaking (SPOILERS)

MASSIVE SPOILERS WITHIN