Film theory & criticism
October 2019
Break It to Me Gently
by Richard Bolisay
As a film critic at large, Richard Bolisay has never been interested in the rigid dichotomy between good and bad, not letting movies off easy with a mere pointing of the thumb in either direction. Rather, as borne out by the reviews and festival dispatches in this collection, he burrows into each movie, teasing its furrows and breaking its codes with a forensic exhilaration in defiance of the limited purview and shallow agency typically accorded to so-called film criticism. Break It to Me Gently is a collection of essays as much as it is a collection of times, people, experiences, thoughts, sensations, places, and stories, that finds its center on Filipino film but, like most displays of youthful ambition, tries to hem in histories, tall tales, politics, memoirs, foresights, and journalism, to mimic the raptures and tensions of the period.
