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Reviews
Still Lives (1999)
A Very Southeast Asian Story
This is the story of a man who works for a drug dealer - the abuse hurled by his boss and co-workers, the intrigues of the work, rejections and finally, revenge. It is a low-budget movie with just one camera set up in a fixed position throughout where we follow the man as he interacts with the people in his life.
Worth noting is the occasional mock 'narcotics advertisements' throughout the movie as fillers which tells us why people want to use narcotics, with songs presumably if not all by Juan Dela Cruz Band.
The movie has a very Southeast Asian appeal in that it could be adapted into Thai or Malay or Indonesian without much modifications needed because it is very representative of the struggles facing the region - the fight against drugs, discrimination against lady-boy and/or LGBTQI and the structure of power (which breeds oligarchies & cronyism while those at the bottom struggle to survive & to improve their positions in life).
Not my favourite Filipino movie but it's still entertaining.
Mammon (2014)
No Longer Nordic Noir, But Rather Nordic Action
The first season of this series is good although by no mean easy to digest at one go nor is it one of my favourite Nordic series. Still, I would give it a 7 out of 10. The second season, however, tries too hard to replicate the success of the first season. And fails. Terribly.
Things change. Peter turns out to be a womaniser perhaps due to circumstances in his life. Inger Marie is divorced yet again and is in an affair with her colleague. In the first season, I feel that the writer(s) successfully combined mystery and conspiracy into the story line. The second season, on the other hand, consists of pure conspiracy that just doesn't build up my curiosity simply due to the lack of 'mysteriousness' - if that's a word. It feels like they are trying to compress so much into so little that the outcome is all over the place.
A colleague (and an office bully) is killed in his car while leaving the office. The Prime Minister badmouths his minister in a planned video leaking to push the minister further. Then the PM is murdered and his daughter poisoned while meeting Peter. Then waffles happened.
I'm not saying the plot of the second season is ludicrous but it is getting there. They might as well add a natural disaster scene to the story line and it still won't help save the show. The acting is also noticeably more wooden than the first with no strong characters in the lineup.
I have to admit though that this series is very brave in killing its protagonists - Peter's ex-girlfriend in the first season and Mathiesen in the second.
Overall: sorry, it's a flop