Recent movies

海角七號 Cape No. 7 (2008)
Suggested this as a groupwatch because I'd just come from the Taiwan Pop Music Exhibit (highly recommend, would go again if I had the means + time) which instilled in me such a longing for film and music... And groupwatch is always an excuse to go through my movie to-watch (or to-rewatch) list. :P

Cape No. 7 was a massive domestic hit that came out a year after Jay Chou's Secret and outsold it... And I can see why.

PLOT: Former rock musician Aga leaves Taipei and moves back to Hengchun. He gets hired as a postman through the strings pulled by his estranged stepfather, who works for the local government—and through the same strings, he is tasked to perform as the opening act of a famous Japanese singer's beach concert.

Aga, who has a lot of authority, emotional, and personality issues, in a characteristically unprofessional move, opens the mail. Among it, he finds seven sixty-year-old love letters written in Japanese addressed to a certain Tomoko in Cape No. 7, which is now no longer to be found.

By day, the mystery of these letters slowly unravels, and by night, a band is assembled for rehearsals, comprised of a ten-year-old church pianist, an eighty-year-old yueqin player, an indigenous Taiwanese policeman who was jilted by his wife, a sad drummer who longs for a married woman, a Hakka Malasun salesman, and Aga himself, so... yay representation! Both the story and the movie are all about promoting and supporting local, and most of it is in Taiwanese, so I think it speaks a lot to the domestic audience. Overseas, the language aspects might not be as clear, apart from present-day Tomoko's brief outburst as the outsider who could only communicate in Mandarin or Japanese.

I thought it was an okay movie... I sought music and I got music, culminating in three musical numbers at the end. It has a low-stakes atmosphere that focused on the lives of ordinary people in a small town, which I like. But the protagonists themselves AND the romantic storyline are hard to connect to—in part because I don't really understand Aga or Tomoko's motivations, but also because the most natural ending for me would have been for their relationship to be a beautiful summer fling—one that represented a turning point in their lives, rather than this sort of, idk, past lives reparation.

That said, I'm not the target audience for this movie and I tend to be cynical of indigenous rep... I'm also disconcerted, though unsurprised, over TW pop culture's goodwill for imperial Japan... but I should stop complaining because I have great fondness for an actor who is a product of TW and JP relations. XD I still got emotional closure at the end of it, though! So I'd give it a 3/5.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)

Sons inherit assets. Daughter inherit cancer.

Huge Thai movie that came out just this year, starring Bilkin as an unscrupulous grandson vying for a slice of his ailing grandmother's inheritance. (The English title is quite misleading.)

It's emotionally driven and M(Bilkin)'s character arc is mainly there to depict the grief of his grandmother, who has lost all familial support from the generations that came before and after her... and I suppose to critique, to some extent, son-first upbringings. The parts where it touches on daughters doing all the caregiving while entitled sons reaped all the favor and rewards felt pointed and realistic, though this was not fully addressed due to the main character being the grandson. (There is an interesting granddaughter character, M's cousin Mui, who is similarly pragmatic and sweet, but she appears only briefly.)

Overall I loved the slice-of-life depictions of a Chinese-Thai family (with the language being lost on M's generation), and I enjoyed M as a selfish but sweet grandson who undergoes character development. But the concluding family-friendly messaging is not for me and my cynical heart, even when I could follow it emotionally. I still cried at the right places, and skipped over the scenes that would have been too hard for me (mainly cancer and elderly care bits), so there's that!

Definite CWs for: death of the elderly, terminal illness / cancer, family inheritance drama that i found had realistic (though low-key) tropes...

Would give this a 3.5/5.