Jose Ardivilla

Indy the Retriever is 2025’s unlikely horror star - Manila Standard There’s an old joke in Hollywood: never work with animals because they’re impossible to direct. Yet 2025’s most affecting onscreen performance belongs to

When the trailer first dropped, audiences wondered with genuine anxiety: would the dog survive? Online, dog parents half-joked—and half-threatened—that any harm to Indy would cause riots in theaters.

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Plunder thrives among those who are spineless - Manila Standard But these are not times for detachment. These are times to take sides. This is not the time to be a fence-sitter. Filipinos are riled up online over the

“Saying that all are equally abhorrent is not heroic; it’s pessimism on crack. It pretends to be above it all, yet it directly benefits the violent plunderers.”

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Militant meets militarized - Manila Standard Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’ delivers volatile mix of militancy, militarization, and dark humor Paul Thomas Anderson is hardly the

“One Battle After Another refuses to let its audience settle. It is volatile, outrageous, and, at times, wickedly funny — a collision of militancy and militarization that blurs the line between conviction and control”

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Outrage with a punchline: How humor fuels Philippine protests - Manila Standard There is a persistent critique that Filipinos are too soft when it comes to protest. Commentators often point to Nepal and Indonesia, where spontaneous,

“Duterte’s presidency denigrated rallies as communist plots. Demonstrators were smeared as criminals. This left a heavy residue. The once-revered memory of the 1986 People Power uprising was systematically eroded, recast as irrelevant theater.”

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Aldub Nation returns in a flooded world of plunder and anger - Manila Standard The pabebe is a national curse of perpetual infantilism, constantly looking for short-term kilig rather than putting in the hard work of the long view on

“The pabebe is a national curse of perpetual infantilism, constantly looking for short-term kilig rather than putting in the hard work of the long view on what needs to be done.”

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A body horror twist on romance - Manila Standard It is canonical in Hollywood romantic comedies that Tom Cruise rushes home to Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire, proclaiming his love with “you complete

If anything, the underlying horror in this film is the fear of millennial coupling. This film serves as an analogy for the fear of commitment and the idea of “losing yourself.”

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Ugh. I am so over this era.

A Leviathan of nothing - Manila Standard Jurassic Park Rebirth (2025, directed by Gareth Edwards) is yet another symptom of Hollywood’s addiction to intellectual property in anticipation of the

“it feels like you’re watching a middling video game, with characters merely being led around to be killed and to progress to the next stage. The story is merely a premise for an eventual theme park ride.”

My review for Jurassic Park Rebirth:

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It’s out of this world and still a box office dud - Manila Standard Elio (2025, directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina) suffers under the weight of expectations attached to Pixar. For a generation,

“Some online nimrods have been tearing down the recent Pixar offering with the phrase “go woke, go broke.” This is yet another example of smug ignorance aimed at silencing non-white stories and creators.”

My thoughts on Elio

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And i decided to “invent flowers” like Odillon Redon. And offer them to Ashurbanipal, on of the most notable tyrants in all of human history. I do not know why but i thought of his name and thought it be musical even though i know thousands of people cowered in fear at the mere mention of his name.

Flowers for Ashurbanipal, 2025,
mixed media on rice paper mounted on canvas

I carved some East Asian vases matrixes on my last days in Lubbock. Printed them on recycled paper, specifically, I printed on paper used to cover shoes in shoeboxes. I printer on mulberry paper. Glued With acrylic medium

That, too. Ugh. I quote Green Day’s Longview “When Masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re fucking breaking.” Oh well.

Man. One bad thing about being single is when one is horny.

When monsters return to myth - Manila Standard Zombie films from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially the truly excellent ones, reflect the modern malaise of societal dysfunction.  George

“Boyle returns with 28 Years Later (2025) and, alongside his writing partner Alex Garland, aims to modernize the zombie genre by bringing it back into the realm of myths.”

My review on what seems to be my pick for among 2025’s best:

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It has been such a taxing day but i got this from a friend. I was part of this pictorial for Ladlad for pride. I would have preferred the sobriquet “Gutter Gay” instead of just “gay.” Sounds boring. Pwede rin “becky lou blanco.” Apparently this is part of an exhibit at a café in QC?

“Con asa niadto ang mga nabuang nga iro?”
(Whither have the mad dogs gone?)
2025, serigraphy and pen and ink on illustration board
15” x 20”

Stumbled into a work I did in Texas. It was hidden in an envelope. The original photo showed a destroyed Manila Cathedral after the Philippine-American war. Then i let it engulf by a jungle and the archipelago.

Dapper defiance: What it means to dress up from below - Manila Standard In the recent Met Gala, the theme was Black dandyism. Dandyism is not just dressing up and being seen, but it is also a means of transgression.  In

“Filipinos are very much part of the Black dandyism in the United States. Though they are paid dastardly, many of these young men saved up for them to have bespoke Macintosh suits that go well with their relatively more diminutive stature.”

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When the earthquake hit earlier, i was at the sixth floor of a building typing corrections. People stood up and were tensed up. I thought, as the room rocked from side to side, “welp, how funny if i die in the middle of typing APA citations for a paper.”

And I detest APA

The meaning of Tom Cruise - Manila Standard ‘Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning’ as a reckoning for the best American boomer action star At the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics, Tom

“Sadly, Cruise relies on this franchise for his longevity and productivity because he is a fantastic actor who bravely took on roles that are diametrically opposed to his charm. But action films are what made Cruise into a superstar in his own sky.”

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Presence as defiance - Manila Standard The quiet terror of state repression in ‘I’m Still Here’ In the late 20th century, several nations of the Global South leaned towards military-backed

“The biggest tragedy of I’m Still Here is not just that it is based on a true story, but the disappearances persist well into this century—and even in places where one thought democracy was strong.”

God, I LOVE I’m Still Here.

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God. It sucks to be old, single and then you’re horny

Somebody asked “If you could defeat Batman, how will you do it?”

I answered “Make him live below the poverty line in the Global South.”

‪I stumbled into a stash of photos I have not seen in years.

BEHOLD! My twink death, circa 2003, Hiroshima, Japan!‬

Grievance as a personality - Manila Standard What being outraged over ‘Snow White’ says about you In the wake of the reports that Disney was set to lose 100 million US$ with the latest live-action

“There is a massive blowback from conservatives who think wokeness (…) is a tenet of the decline of their dominant identity. They favor the old ways. After all, that is why they are called “conservatives”; they want to conserve their ways.”

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Garland drops the beat in explosive Iraq battle film - Manila Standard The greatest war movies would know how to use sound as a vital component to punctuate the scenery. Francis Ford Coppola did this with Wagner’s Flight of

“Many war movies rely on a grand adventure. Warfare is not about a journey or a descent into madness but about containment, unease of movement, and extraction.”

My review of “Warfare.”

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Well there IS a Pope in Hell, so this tracks.

Superhero group therapy - Manila Standard ‘Thunderbolts’ breaks Marvel Cinematic Universe mold During the Thunderbolts (2025, directed by Jake Schreier) media blitz, the lead actor, Florence Pugh

“Such a paralyzing state—to be stuck inside your head, which is a hallmark of debilitating depression—is how trauma becomes a villain.”

My thoughts on Thunderbolts*:

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My eyemask tells you my truth.

I love this AI cartoon because it is honest enough to (1) depict Mandarambongbong as a hapless monster figure, and my favorite (2) it is honest enough to depict the DDS as rabid, crazed mobs with pitchforks. Because that is who they really are.