Not all the titles Netflix premieres on its platform gets a fair promo or even a spot on the Coming Soon list, which is a shame. With that said, Ricky Ko’s dark comedy crime thriller, Time, and Chan Kin Long’s celebrated feature debut, Hand Rolled Cigarette, would fair nicely as discoveries for just about anyone stumbling upon them.
Still, I guess I’m happy to stan these titles for a bit with a post here. Both have been on the streamer for a while already, so I at least hope folks out there are still catching on. They each screened last year for the twentieth edition of the New York Asian Film Festival, and so I was able to lend my fair share of thoughts which you can catch here as well as here.
Ko’s Time centers on an aging trio of ex-gangland enforcers who manage to rediscover themselves once more when providing end-of-life services to the elderly and terminally ill segues to the goings-on of an orphaned teenage girl. The film features celebrated actors Patrick Tse, Fung Bo-Bo and Lam Suet and introduces actress Chung Suet-Ying. You can check out a trailer below, and also feel free to dive into a small raft of behind-the-scenes clips here, here and here.
Chan’s Hand Rolled Cigarette tells of an ex-soldier and a marginalized southeast Asian immigrant, both faced with the plight of societal abandonment and forced to partner-up in order to survive the onslaught of the Hong Kong underworld when a bag of drugs gets stolen. NYAFF’s 2021 Variety Star Asia Award recipient, actor Gordon Lam stars alongside Hong Kong-based Nepali actor Bipin Karma, with Ben Yuen, To Yin Gor, Michael Ning, Tony Ho, Chu Pak Hong and Chin Siu Ho also starring.
[‘Streaming Sleepers’ is a sub-column in which I or other contributors on this site partake in discussing otherwise obscure films or shows we like and recommend that are available on streaming platforms.]