Slingshot.

"It's tempting to deem Slingshot's petty crimes on sweltering shantytown backdrops a Filipino version of City of God," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine. "But where Fernando Meirelles charted the power dynamics within Rio's favela-bound community of drug dealers and thieves, Brillante Mendoza devotes equal time to the larger forces keeping the populace on the run."

"If anything, Slingshot is a political film that doesn't really care for politics," writes Simon Abrams in the New York Press. "Mendoza worms his camera through the church doors and around corrupt politicians as they fail to bribe Quiapo's residents—but only for the sake of touching a raw nerve that he strips right before the viewer's eyes. With its gritty but gorgeous visual style, Slingshot confirms Mendoza's status as a provocateur with talent and ambition to burn."

"Someone appears to be running, crying, stealing, getting beaten up or delivering the blows in every scene, while the cameras seemingly operate themselves," writes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York. "Yet Tirador isn't a gratuitous tour of the abject: Mendoza lightens the tumult with funny bits, including a lost set of dentures and an unfortunate incident with a zipper, and expresses a nonpatronizing admiration for the film's hustlers and thieves.... Mendoza's talents and instincts are unassailable but are most evident when he tempers his tempests."

"Can't-stop-won't-stop Filipino director Brillante Mendoza lets his voluminous storytelling urges run amok in this abject slum roundelay, an ADD cousin to his bustling-with-family but warmer Serbis," writes Nicolas Rapold in the Voice.

Posted by dwhudson at October 27, 2008 1:45 AM