Some celebrations and festivals are a pop culture genre on their own. Think Halloween’s slasher flicks, Valentine day’s rom-coms or Christmas feel-good movies. In comparison, there is no clear mould for Lunar New Year movies. Granted, movies with family drama and precocious kids always make for good viewing after a day of feasting, but so are movies with mystery, intrigue and choreographed fights.
This year, make your own rules for what constitutes a good Lunar New Year movie with these offerings from SBS On Demand. Here are some recommendations to cater for both young and mature audiences.
Lucky Grandma (USA)
Grandmas in movies are often depicted as either warm or crotchety, with not much in between. Hence the antics of Grandma Wong (Tsai Chin), an 80-year-old chain-smoking gambler in New York are both delicious and inspiring in this crime caper. Who doesn’t want to cheer on an octogenarian as she dodges the law?
The adventures start when Wong loses her money in a gambling streak. On the way home from the casino, she unexpectedly finds herself with a bag of money thanks to a local mafia. She has no qualms about taking it (‘the mafia never worked a day in their life’) but if she wants to keep it, she needs to hire a bodyguard and outrun criminals while dealing with her son’s nagging and grandson’s dance routines. Much like the grandma in Minari (played by award-winning actress Youn Yuh-jung), these ladies refuse to be mollycoddled or ‘act their age’. As a result, we have a new template for grandmas in movies.
Tsai commands the movie while everyone else is clearly a supporting act. Fun fact, she was once a Bond girl in the 1967 movie You Only Live Twice.
Lucky Grandma is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
The Kid From The Big Apple (Malaysia)
This is a story about an American kid with Malaysian roots, but the storyline of strained family relationships, cultural difference and fish-out-of-water protagonist makes it universal.
12-year-old Sarah (Tan Qin-Lin) moves from New York to Kuala Lumpur to live with her grandfather (Ti Lung) while her mother deals with work commitments in China. Sarah has trouble adapting to Malaysia. She doesn’t like the local food, preferring instead to subsist on her American chips. She feels alienated as she neither speaks the local language nor understands her grandfather’s lifestyle. It also does not help that she acts like an entitled brat the first half of the movie.
Over time, Sarah builds befriends the people around her and builds a touching relationship with her grandfather. She also takes it upon herself to mend the relationship between him and her mother. These are heavy themes for a young actress, but Tan plays the role of an annoying yet concerned granddaughter effortlessly. For those who enjoyed this movie, you’ll be happy to know there’s a featuring a more mature Tan and an ailing grandfather, titled The Kid From The Big Apple: Before We Forget.
The Kid From The Big Apple is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
The Royal Bride (Vietnam)
This 2020 Vietnamese movie about a moneyed family, a potential daughter-in-law and family heirlooms bears strong resemblances to one of the most famous movies of this genre: Crazy Rich Asians. The slight difference is that The Royal Bride veers more into comedy and camp.
Quyen (Ninh Duong Lan Ngoc) is an over-the-top media personality who is living it up with her fame, posse of girlfriends and younger boyfriend, Le Khoi Nguyen (Le Xuan Tien). When he proposes, she takes a trip to his hometown in Hue and realises there are elements of his life that he never mentioned to her, such as his family fortune and standing in the community. Quyen now must deal with his overbearing mother who tells her that she does not have the right pedigree for their family, a social media-crazy grandma and back-stabbing cousins. Hilarity and heartbreaks ensue.
The movie deals with cultural clashes while also allowing the characters to be flawed. There are no clear heroes and villains, but a group of people who drive away the people they love the most.
The Royal Bride is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Detective Chinatown 3 (China)
This movie is the third instalment in the popular Detective Chinatown series but rest assured, even if you never watched the previous movies, you can follow this show. It features a tried-and-tested formula of mismatched detectives who need to solve a murder mystery with their sleuthing skills and slightly bumbling personalities.
In this edition, book-smart detective Qin Feng (Liu Haoran) and his brawny partner Tang Ren (Wang Baoqiang) head to Tokyo. Their client is Masaru Watanabe (Miura Tomokazu), a yakuza boss who is charged with the murder of his rival but insists he is innocent. This mystery is in our duo’s wheelhouse, but they must outsmart not just the killer but other local law enforcers and detectives if they want to maintain their reputation as top-notch detectives. This sets them up for a madcap adventure with adjacent mysteries, convoluted tasks and full-on brawls. The movie makes full use of its Japanese location too, with notable sites playing a prominent role in some scenes.
Younger audiences (if they are allowed to watch) might get a laugh from the slapstick comedy while older audiences will likely appreciate the opportunity to solve the mystery before the big reveal.
Detective Chinatown 3 is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Drive My Car (Japan)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s movie gained numerous accolades when it was first released in 2021 and it is easy to understand why. It is complex, beautifully shot and an ode to sorrow. Be warned though, with almost three hours of running time, it requires dedicated attention as opposed to ambient viewing.
There are four central characters in this sprawling drama. Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theatre director whose new lead actor, Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) once had an affair with his wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima). This less-than-ideal situation provides one half of the emotional gravitas for the movie. The fourth character is Misaki (Toko Miura), a young driver hired to drive Yusuke to and from work to satisfy insurance requirements. This annoys him immensely because the solo car ride is when he thinks about and refines his work. Eventually both driver and passenger become each other’s confidant and the source of the other half of the movie’s emotional arch.
The decisions that Yusuke makes propels everyone around him towards a journey of self-discovery and finding a nuanced way to process rage, grief and guilt. It also shows how people who seemingly have nothing in common can still build connections. Sometimes all it takes is an hour-long car ride.
Drive My Car is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
The Witness (South Korea)
This crime thriller is a good, albeit fictional study of effect. Han Sang-soon (Lee Sung-min) comes home from work and witnesses the brutal murder of a young woman from his apartment window. To make matters worse, the murderer sees him. Our protagonist now has the opportunity to be a hero, but he is weak, cowardly and has no desire to out the murderer. He assumes that his silence will keep him and his family safe but the killer stalks him anyway, which has a flow-on effect on the people around him.
The movie’s intrigue is not in identifying the murderer or motive. Instead, as the title suggests, it is a social commentary of how people react in difficult situations and whether they are willing to stick their neck out for a stranger. It also provides a good understanding of South Korean law where an individual for damaging another’s reputation by revealing facts. In other words, if witnesses speak up, they can become liable if the accused is later found not guilty.
It is a well-paced movie, carried by an unlikely character. His choices are divisive, but who is to say we wouldn’t do the same?
The Witness is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
