The best horror movie to come out of Philippine cinema does not employ ghosts or creatures from the bowels of lower mythology. But it has a monster in its midst — the gimlet-eyed father whose Machismo proves murderous — and it is even scarier because it has all the trappings of reality many of us in the Philippines breathe.

We know severe fathers like Dadong Carandang, blustering machos whose harsh words are the laws of the family, whose withering glance…

When Nora Ephron died in 2012, I had no idea I would be so devastated — and still continue to be so until now. Her body of work [all those movies, all those books...] and her life [all that love for cooking, for reading in bed, and for friends...] were seriously aspirational for me. Even how she chose to lead the last years of her life knowing that she had leukemia [she wrote books and a play, she directed Julie…

The Thais know something about longing. They capture it well on film. The mad surging, the illusion of nobility in denial, the perfect — if short-lived — happiness of catching a glance, a smile, or a touch from the beloved. Which is to say I have finally managed to catch Puttipong Pormsaka Na-Sakonnakorn and Wasin Pokpong’s สิ่งเล็กเล็ก ที่เรียกว่า..รัก [A Little Thing Called Love, 2010] … egged on by the sheer popularity of the film among girls (and women) around me…