Overall, the story of Leon Le’s ‘Ky Nam Inn’ is beautifully executed with such care for Vietnam's culture and history.

Sana Sinabi Mo’ proves that love and religion are a game of tug-of-war. Even when faith tests loyalty, love persists across time and distance.

Pelikultura: The CALABARZON Film Festival returns for its 2025 run with new stories and forms of storytelling about Southern Tagalog. The festival is more than a celebration of Southern Tagalog’s pride and diversity, but also a reminder of how cinema is a form of resistance that mirrors the lived realities of the people living in the region. ST Shorts Premiere and #BuhayElbi are the festival's main highlights, highlighting stories about the region as well as homegrown storytellers from Los Baños, where the festival started. Pelikultura continues to become a platform for regional filmmakers and a catalyst for driving regional cinema representation.

Kelly Reichardt’s ‘The Mastermind’ is a quiet, subversive take on an art heist film that never feels tensionless, anchored by a stellar performance from Josh O’Connor.

The 5th Oroquieta Film Festival made an impactful comeback after a three-year hiatus, providing the big screen to stories from Misamis Occidental and nearby regions. The Lumayagan and Habagatan shorts became the highlight of the festival, projecting films about pressing social issues, the rich culture of Misamis Occidental, Mindanao, and Visayas, and the power of transformative media education, and the dreams of the young filmmakers.

The 15th run of the Binisaya Film Festival continues to pride itself as a cultural hotspot for both Bisaya and global cinema. With a roster of films that are at once surreal, sociopolitically aware, and deeply tender, the festival highlights a talented community of filmmakers and a Bisaya movement that is truly alive.

In one of 2025’s best films, ‘Sentimental Value’ illuminates the unseen costs of creating art and the debt it owes to lived experience. At the same time, it reveals how much of what we hope to express is often suppressed, either in favor of grander gestures or in service of our fears. Some things are simply too difficult to talk about, let alone explain in different languages.

‘The Treasure Hunter’ is an out of touch documentary about a British man trying to live out his imperial fantasies in the Philippines. He wants to find Yamashita’s gold so he can ‘live the high life,’ suspiciously sounding like a 16th century conquistador.

‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ may not be a home run for Jarmusch’s return to feature films, but it still offers his own thoughtful take on estranged families from different parts of the world, even if it could have achieved more.

While ‘Keeper’ isn’t a bad frightfest of a time at the cinema, containing a potent mix of intriguing visual ideas and commanding atmosphere, it’s also a signifier that Osgood Perkins has further ways to go in expanding the breadth of his elusivity in this more ‘pop’ framework.

‘Showgirls’ leans hard into Verhoeven’s excess, satire, and sharp camp. Its neon world runs on illusion, and that noise turns into a strange pulse. The film pushes forward, slipping between critique and absurdity, and still leaves a mark that sticks.

‘Meet, Greet & Bye’ genuinely adds up to the important discussions of morality, love, and our decisions. When we make the most difficult choices of our lives for our loved ones, it is important to ask, “Is this what they would want, or a personal bearing?”

Even with structural and pacing stumbles, ‘Once Upon a Time in Gaza’ deftly navigates both genre and filmic metanarratives. All to explore the performance of violence to reflect revenge on all oppressors to Palestine.

If you come to this movie expecting to be filled with emotions, it is guaranteed to deliver. If you can look past its flaws, you will surely have a wicked time. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are marvelous as always, and while their performances are not award-worthy as some people are saying in exaggeration, they all gave their very best in a lacklusterly directed film.

‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ may very well be made out of solidarity; its respectable effort to tackle humanity at the core of its subjects is even noteworthy. But solidarity does not erase power. And we cannot ignore the elephant in the room simply because the filmmaker’s intentions are noble.

‘Human Resource’ is a crushingly cold experience on how capitalism has utterly broken our humanity, where even the miracle of birth is more a financial investment than a human being.

‘Amoeba’s’ mere existence is a protest in itself. A bold artistic expression wherein the personal expresses the political. And the film only asks one question: What is the DNA of Singapore?

‘Predator: Badlands’ is a wholly different kind of film for the franchise, a brisk, Saturday-morning cartoon level action-packed adventure that’s all killer no filler, delivering on the promise of its title and then some.

If, like me, you’re an Edgar Wright fan, and you come to ‘The Running Man’ looking for the filmmaker that you know and love, you’ll probably walk away ready to file a missing person’s report.

‘Bugonia’ is a masterful dive into absurdity, with Yorgos Lanthimos’ signature style. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, even for the faithful, but it succeeds as a pseudo–alien invasion film that toys with viewers.