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Connie Macatuno’s “Guilty Pleasure” (2024) swirls around love and deception, spite and muffled desire. It’s an ugly vortex yearning for closure, confrontation, but its actors can’t rise above the unsure, insipid screenplay, even though they infuse the material with some heat passingly. Lovi Poe and Jm De Guzman essay as once-lovers now slugging through vicious betrayal and repressed desire. There’s power in the equation, a lack of necessary coming to terms with actions and consequence waiting to strike through.

Guilty Pleasure (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis: How Do You Rebuild After Betrayal?

Alexis (Lovi Poe) is in a relationship with her senior, Adam (Jm De Guzman), at the Atticus legal firm. She had all these dreams of being married to him, honeymooning in Florence. Little does she know the heartbreak that awaits her. There’s a sudden discovery she makes of the engagement announced between Adam and their boss’ daughter.

What If, the latest Filipino romance movie on Netflix, uses a very familiar narrative trope. It starts with a woman, visibly sad, walking alone on a deserted beach while contemplating a life-altering decision that she has made. She has left the man, she loves, because she feels, she is not good enough for him. That’s what we get from her inner monologue. The story then goes back to a time when things were much happier; everything was bright and sunny. Even the Color Grade changes from vibrant to morbid. There are both Advantages and Disadvantages to using this narrative style. The audience keeps wondering, how the situation changed so drastically for the character, which effectively keeps them glued to the movie till the end. The downside of this is the burden of delivering something substantial and making sense of the opening scene simultaneously. What If does try to pull it off,...

CinemaIncidentally, ‘U Turn’ was the first Kannada film to be remade in all the south Indian languages and in Sinhalese.Digital NativeDigital NativeDirector Pawan Kumar recently confirmed that his hit Kannada movie U Turn will be remade in Filipino. He shared the news through his social media page, “Just got to know – Kim Chiu, Jm De Guzman and Tony Labrusca are teaming up for a Filipino adaptation of Indian box-office hit U Turn, a mystery thriller film that first came out in theatres in 2016.” U Turn will be the first ever Kannada movie to be remade in Filipino. According to the director, it is possible that the film will be remade in Chinese and Thai too as filmmakers from those countries have shown interest. We can expect an official word on it soon. It may be mentioned here that U Turn was remade in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu and in the Sinhalese language.

Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank), directed by Marlon Rivera from a screenplay written by Chris Martinez, earns most of its laughs from the misadventures of director Rainer (Kean Cipriano), producer Bingbong (Jm de Guzman), and production assistant Jocelyn (Cai Cortez), an overly ambitious troop of filmmakers who are out to make their dream film entitled Walang Wala by exploiting the picturesque poverty of Manila. As they brainstorm on the casting, the look, the story, the poster design, and down to the English translation of the title of their precious project, the film takes shape inside the mind of perennially quiet Jocelyn (perhaps Rivera and Martinez's homage to the production crew rendered voiceless by noisy auteurs and capitalists), showcasing...