John Lui Film Correspondent and Alison de Souza recommend

Film & TV Picks

TIGERTAIL (PG)
Tzi Ma (left, with Christine Ko) -TIGERTAIL (PG) PHOTO: NETFLIX,
 Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, 2009 to 2015) and Domhnall Gleeson (science-fiction thriller Ex Machina, 2014; both above)-RUN
Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, 2009 to 2015) and Domhnall Gleeson (science-fiction thriller Ex Machina, 2014; both above) - RUN PHOTO: HBO
Ricky (Kris Hitchen, above) -SORRY WE MISSED YOU (NC16)
Ricky (Kris Hitchen, above) -SORRY WE MISSED YOU (NC16) PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR/ JOSS BARRATT

TIGERTAIL (PG)

91 minutes/Streaming on Netflix

4 stars

Taiwanese-American film-maker Alan Yang's family history inspires what appears on screen, but he aims to make this a universal story of inter-generational conflict.

One of the most popular themes in American cinema has been that of immigrant women throwing off the tyranny of "old country" patriarchy. That idea is seen in Joy Luck Club (1993), the last work of Asian-American storytelling to find mainstream acceptance until the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) came along.

Instead of taking the side of the victims of male domination, Yang has opted for the harder task of telling the story from the point of the villain: the Chinese father with high expectations, played with remarkable delicacy by Tzi Ma (with Christine Ko), a veteran enjoying a career renaissance (the delayed Disney project Mulan, 2020; and Lulu Wang's drama-comedy The Farewell, 2019).

In a series of flashbacks, one comes to understand how the emotional adaptations that have made him a "model minority" success story have also crippled him inside.

Yang's eye for beauty and composition sometimes gets in the way - poverty in Taiwan is more picturesque than painful, and New York's grime is also given a romantic sheen - but he makes a convincing case for everyone to forgive his or her bottled-up dad.

John Lui


RUN

Showing on HBO Go and HBO (StarHub TV Channel 601 and Singtel TV Channel 420)

3 stars

The excellent Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, 2009 to 2015) and Domhnall Gleeson (science-fiction thriller Ex Machina, 2014) play former college sweethearts who made a pact 17 years ago: If one of them texts the word ''run'' and the other replies with the same, they will drop everything, meet on a train in New York and run away together.

After a few thwarted connections, they do. Wever's Ruby ditches a humdrum existence with a husband and two kids, and Gleeson's Billy leaves behind a career as a self-help guru. But after a version of the classic ''meet-cute'' - that initial romantic encounter or, in this case, reunion - things do not go as imagined.

The marquee names on the new series Run, a romantic comedy thriller about a woman who runs away with an old flame, belong not to the actors but the producers: Vicky Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Jones, who created the series, directed Fleabag, Waller-Bridge's 2013 one-woman stage show, which the actress later turned into the singular television comedy of the same name (2016 to 2019).

Waller-Bridge is the meteoric star behind the sexy assassin thriller Killing Eve (2018 to present) and the script doctor tasked with shaking the cobwebs off the James Bond franchise.

Alison de Souza


SORRY WE MISSED YOU (NC16)

100 minutes/Streaming on Vimeo.com

4 stars

Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a builder seduced into doing parcel delivery work for a gig economy company that has replaced old-fashioned words like ''employer'' and ''employee'' with jazzy new ones, such as ''owner-driver franchisee'' and ''onboarding''.

British film-maker Ken Loach has made a name pointing out the hypocrisy of institutions. In films such as the Palme d'Or-winning drama I, Daniel Blake (2016), poverty alleviation agencies are shown to be too underfunded and overwhelmed to do anything except shuffle paper and offer empty promises.

In this drama about a family seduced by promises of freedom and financial independence, Loach makes the point that the gig economy does not offer employment as people know it, but that does not mean it is better - beneath the buzzwords and app-driven statistics is old-fashioned exploitation.

John Lui


• To rent Sorry We Missed You, go to theprojector.sg or anticipatepictures.com. The rental fee is $9.99 for a 24-hour viewing window. Half the proceeds will go to independent cinema The Projector, now closed temporarily as part of the island-wide coronavirus containment measures

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 17, 2020, with the headline Film & TV Picks. Subscribe