When This Is All Over (Kevin Mayuga) ***1/2 - A young man living in a fancy condo, awaiting for his immigrant visa so he can join his mom and her new family in the U.S. deals drugs to upper-class young people to augment his allowance. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hits, causing some complications. As I was watching this, I just realized how there are so few narrative films that deal with the pandemic directly. This is one of them and it's quite effective. It blends elements of a stoner comedy, a family drama and a satirical look into the lives of the spoiled privileged youth in the context of Filipino society quite seamlessly. It has some nice performances including the lead Juan Karlos Labajo but whoever played the perpetually high drug supplier is hilarious and steals the movie every time he's on-screen. That combined with some trippy cinematography courtesy of Martika Ramirez Escobar (if you know, you know) make this a splendid little film that's worth checking out.
Huling Palabas (Ryan Machado) **1/2 - A teenage boy living in a small provincial town during the early 2000's passes his time watching VHS tapes at his neighbor's house and longs to look for his father. Then two people suddenly arrive in his town that may change the course of his life. This is a queer coming-of-age film which kind of goes into all sorts of directions and personally, I don't think it completely works. There is an excellent film in there somewhere but it's various elements sort of clashes with one another instead of blending with one another. There are elements of magic realism which, in my opinion, are underdeveloped and some left turns in the narrative which I kind of found a bit off-putting. Overall, this is a fine effort but it's personal not one of my favorites of the festival.