FilipiÃąana
Rafael Manuelâs extraordinary debut is a razor-sharp satire of wealth and exploitation in the Philippines, every shot perfectly manicured as the fairways in the elite country club where itâs set.
Isabel, a 17-year-old from the rural north, gets a new job pampering powerful men, but soon uncovers the ugly truths behind the veneer of luxury as she encounters the patriarchal director of the club and uncovers her countryâs history of violence.
This is a decent new entry in the documenting-gross-inequality subgenre. I very much liked the quote from the director about golf courses being a silent violence committed against a land.
There are parts of this that are lovely. It has an episodic, Greek epic feel about it â we encounter different characters going about their lives, absurd little vignettes of life amongst the servants of the country club.
Unfortunately, itâs incredibly slow and the dramatic tension only really ramps up at the very end of the film. I donât want to spoil anything, but I felt it pulled its punches rather: it had the chance to explode from its reserved, mannered start into something quite cutting but never quite does. Still a very enjoyable watch.
Oh, but the pine trees are not happy.
Daughters of the Forest
Show, donât tell. Itâs easier said than done, especially in documentary cinema, which so often feels like an extended news report. Iâm all for an essay film, but Daughters of the Forest was far from it and much the better for it.
The film revolves around two indigenous women in different Mexican states, both balancing between their communities and the call of academia. Theyâre keen to write down the knowledge of their ancestors and parents, but wary of perpetuating a cycle of exploitation â academic strip mining of local knowledge that moves on without even paying its way with so much as a bottle of mezcal.
Oh. And the mushrooms. So many mushrooms. Some edible. Some loco. Some white. Some blue. The footage of fungi is astonishing.
Itâs a powerful film with a strong message that manages to never feel preachy. (Although I guess Iâm already in the choir.) Add in a very nice soundtrack by Hannah Peel and Iâve got my first five stars of the festival.
Black Box Recorder
There are quite a lot of bands I had no real expectation of seeing. These tend to be the ones that had split up either before I’d heard of them or before I could reliably go to gigs. Over the years, a good number of these have played special anniversary gigs - one off shows to celebrate the passing of a large number of years since their albums. Though these shows always come with a hint of “Oh God I’m old now”, it has meant the opportunity to see a whole bunch of bands I narrowly missed first time round. The Research! Camera Obscura! (And booked in the next year both The Sunshine Underground AND Forward, Russia - very excited!). But Black Box Recorder? They remained firmly in the list of bands I never expected to see.
Unlike most of the others mentioned, who I read about in the NME when slightly-too-young to get to gigs - especially the many indie-friendly 18+ venues - Black Box Recorder had pretty much stopped in 2003. I’d never heard of them at that point. Instead, I got into them from the soundtrack of the fabulous Monkey Dust animation. As well as being rude, clever and wickedly funny, Monkey Dust had an absolutely incredible soundtrack. From the opening tune, Eels’ That’s Not Really Funny to melancholy chunks of Goldfrapp, there was a lot of great music in there, but it was a haunting female vocal that really stuck with me, murmuring “It’s only the end of the world…”. I looked them up. Black Box Recorder.
They did 3 albums. They’re all great. There are some top B-sides too. Sarah Nixey’s “opiated debutante tones” (thanks Wikipedia) carry a whole bunch of songs about cruelty, greed and turn-of-the-century life in England. It was an absolute joy to discover that being liked by Billie Eilish (!) has brought them renewed attention and got them a big London show, for which the Brudenell, Leeds was the warm-up gig. It also meant the crowd was a weird mix of ages - with a large part of it in their 40s and a significant number of children (OK, OK, they were probably late teens, but they looked like children)
I don’t really do gig reviews. It was great. Of course it was.
Reading in 2025
2025 was a better year for reading than many a recent one. Though I didn’t get through as many as I’d have liked to, I think I have to accept that I literally never will! I did manage 24 novels or non-fiction. Not quite one-every-two-weeks but for fairly arbitrary reasons I didn’t include graphic novels. They’d have definitely bumped up my score.
I also read more books by women than men. This shouldn’t really feel like a massive achievement but I was surpised by how it did take a bit of effort - deliberately pushing a book to the front of the queue here and there.
The full list is available over here. What follows are a few of my favourite discoveries of the year. There were a few re-reads (JG Ballard’s Cocaine Nights, Susanna Clark’s Piranesi) which I love, but don’t feel the need to feature here. These are new-to-me books and authors that I really enjoyed.
Benjamin Myers - Beastings
I read The Perfect Golden Circle right at the start of the year and really enjoyed it, but Beastings was something else. It’s brutal, bleak, gruesome. Described as a frontier Western set in Cumbria, it’s an astonishing short book. You can almost feel the lashing rain and smell the animals. Fantastic.
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Just about as close to the League of Gentlemen as a novel can get. Without the jokes. Deeply weird, gothic vibes and a tale of murder and suspicion. Would recommend to anyone.
Elspeth Barker - O Caledonia
It really was a year for the brooding and weird. In the same vein, this is a small and powerful story, of a creepy house and some creepy family. Full of gloom but with a real sense of humour too.
Queens of the Dead
A zombie romp set around a drag club night in Brooklyn. It’s a well made, well paced one. Having been very into zombie films for a long time its a while since I’ve seen one, and this is knowing, funny and silly, but places the zombie element with sincerity.
There are some very funny set pieces, weapons you might not expect, and it’s all round a decent little zombie film. Nice.
