Welcome to my 2026 project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.
Today’s feature is from the year 2022, we are headed to the Philippines to finish the script for a movie in…
Movie: Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago [Leonor Will Never Die]
Year: 2022
Director: Martika Ramirez Escobar
Country: Philippines
The Elevator Pitch: In the course of finishing up an old script, former screenwriter Leonor is hit on the head and slips into a coma where she finds herself in the action movie she was writing.
How Was the Movie?:
As a person who has only ever seen two movies from the Philippines, this one and ZsaZsa Zaturnnah: Ze Moveeh, I can confidently say that the Philippines has the best movies.
This movie absolutely rocked on my socks. I was just expecting it to be goofy and twee with its premise of a writer becoming part of their writing material (a well worn path for movies, TV shows, and all forms of written media) but this movie absolutely blew me away.
Making the most of its premise the movie flips between the “real world” and the movie Leonor is writing, Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago (“Return of the Owl”) in every conceivable way. The audio changes, the acting changes, the costuming and even the screen ratio flips as we navigate between the two worlds trying to make sense of Leonor’s dreams, ideas, and disappointments through the screenplay she is writing.
I’m always a sucker for a movie starring a older woman who actually looks like an older woman and Sheila Francisco is an absolute delight in the part where in the real life portion she plays a charming, if clearly depressed mother whose one son has passed and her son is leaving the country and unsure how to break the heart of his mother. The movie gets down to some of the gritty difficulties of cultural friction around your children leaving and those feelings dredging up the past difficulties in their family.
The action movie portion of the movie instead plays out like a reverse Last Action Hero with all of the subtly and cheesiness of the 80s including a scene where the main action star seems to just go through an idle motion where the music plays and then he does a dance when Leonor cannot think of how to end a scene.
The movie has so many wonderful moments and the ending is such a perfect love letter to cinema that I’m eagerly awaiting the directors next film.
Overall the movie has the perfect blend of heart and humor and while it has some rough edges to it I think it would be really loved by the right people. In the end the movie is about the ways that we use stories to help us cope, process, and transmit information to other people and personally I just love that. 10/10, probably going to watch this again in the future.
What was for Dinner?:
For dinner I made Filipino-Style Spaghetti which is basically a sweet version of spaghetti bolognese with some grilled hot dogs in it. Happily I was able to find a bunch of types of banana ketchup at the local Asian store (and yet I can’t find any of the Japanese ingredients I want grumble grumble). This is actually a really good dish that reminds me pretty much of Spaghetti-Os from the US. The problem really came when I tried to have a second bowl and leftovers because I really do find it clawingly sweet even though I didn’t even add the extra sugar it really thought I should put it in. However that first bowl was delicious magic and it’s not hard to figure out why this is a Filipino childhood favorite.
I might try this again in the future with less banana ketchup and even more spice and acid but I would switch out the hot dogs for either tofu smoked hot dogs or just tofu slices because it was also very meat heavy (in my case chicken but in most cases it would be pork). It was pretty good though and if you’re a person who likes sweet food this will be a huge winner.
That’s it for 2022, see you in the future year of 2023!