Some Movies & Dramas watched during the Plague Year

My first Chinese drama. The prettiest (supposedly) smartest girl on campus hits it off with the smartest handsomest guy on campus. Whenever he wants to express his affection for her, he  jams her up against a wall and chews her face off. Nobody else on campus gets to pair up. That's elitisim for you. At least the online RPG scenes were fun, but then I've never actually played one. The movie version uses the same story, but the ML and FL were likeable rather than weird like in the drama. And I couldn't get over how huge the rooms were and how everyone drove brand-new SRVs and BMWs. I thought China was supposed to be crowded with people and bicycles.

I was amused by Zhou Dong Yu in This Is Not What I Expected and searched for her other work. This was her first movie and in which she plays a serious role. This tragic love story is set during the cultural revolution when students were sent to the countryside to learn about life from the peasants.

A tense story of a Hong Kong student who tries to earn some money by getting involved with a gang smuggling iphones across the HK border into China, finds herself in deep trouble, and narrowly escapes in the end.

Finally a more grown-up Chinese drama about five rather different woman, some rich, some poor, who come together on the same floor of a Shanghai apartment block and gradually become steadfast friends, supporting each other through the ups and downs of work, romance, and family problems. The second season was as enjoyable and apparently a third season is on the way.

Thrilling, intelligent, historical drama of carefully plotted and gradually executed revenge. The villains are one by one brought down and a rightful and just ruler put in place. The second season is a separate story set many years later with all-new characters and almost as good.

This excellent Taiwanese drama's redemptive story explores themes of media responsibility and mental illness risk.

My favorite Chinese actress Zhou Dong Yu has earned her dues playing rom-coms and is now playing serious roles. She stars in this movie which is an excellent exploration of bullying and victimisation, but too harrowing to watch more than once.

An occasional break from my Chinese theme so as to maintain my Korean. Kim Go-Eun is adorable here, the bromance/bickering amusing. And I don't see why we can't enjoy love stories between characters of different ages.

48 episodes covering 24 hours. Every episode has the budget, scenery and costumes, and special effects of a whole Hollywood movie. This is a thrilling story full of action, intrigue, and the slow burning developing relationships between the disparate lead characters.

 This was my first Sion Sono movie, and Hikari Mitsushima and Sakura Ando are both fascinating actresses, but no matter how wacky and sexy this movie, I couldn't suspend my discomfort about the theme of surreptitious panty shots. Sorry, that's sexual assault in my book, and no joking matter.

After watching the documentary, I sought and watched this movie covering the same story: a shameful incident early in the Korean war when a newbie poorly-trained USA army unit massacred a group of Korean villagers, assuming they were North Korean infiltrators.

In this laid-back Taiwanese slice-of-life drama a city boy returns to the small town of his childhood  to take over the grocery store his father ran until he died. 

The original Japanese movie and the Korean remake of this magic-realism back-from-the-dead romantic story were both enjoyable, and then I discovered that at the same time as the Japanese movie, a drama serial was also made of the same story. Just as good, with a bit more story development.

I admit I find Yang Zi cute (previously seen in Ode to Joy), but the network-hacking competitions were ridiculous, clearly government-funded propoganda, and I have no patience for stony-faced male leads. Clearly I don't understand the Chinese female mind's taste in guys.

Interesting to see what ordinary Chinese life apparently looked like in the mid-twentieth century, and a gentle message about valuing females in a country that has favored males so severely that there is now a drastic shortage of brides for young men. And some glimpses of the traditional art of Sichuan Face-changing.

Other reviews don't mention this, but this one made me laugh out loud several times every episode. I seem to recall the uncool but devoted step-father was responsible for a lot of the humour. Another extremely stony-faced ML, but at least he had a dry sense of humour to go with it.

I needed another fix of Korean amidst my Chinese year, took a punt on this and loved it. The bitchy FL and the theme of people trying to work through unresolved issues around death, reminded me of Hotel de Luna, but Wol Joo had a big heart under her peevish facade and I enjoyed this one much more. Could hardly stop myself from bingeing all the way through.

This engaging family saga is centred around the romance and devoted marriage of a communist officer and a woman from a bourgeous family. While politics and history are not heavy in the script, they colour the background, and this drama gives the flavour of the changes in Chinese society beginning soon after the revolution until the late 20th century and how they effected ordinary people.

A series of entertaining and though-provoking short web-drama episodes, showing how young women suffer frequent sexual harrassment and gradually learn to empower and assert themselves, supported by some sensitive and considerate young men.

Another gentle Taiwanese slice-of-life drama, in which a young woman seeks her birth mother across Taiwan (and in the course of the series we see much scenery and places of interest), all the while guided by memories of her wise and loving deceased foster-father.

This is so obviously government-sponsored patriotic propaganda portraying the brave citizens of Wuhan battling the onset of the corovirus epidemic, so it has to be watched as an artificial myth rather than history, but I still wanted to watch it for some indication of what it was like there in early 2020, including the rapid construction of the hospital and quarantine facility. The twenty episodes are in pairs, each telling a story about one of various citizens: a doctor, a nurse, an engineer, a scooter delivery man, etc.

Beautiful Japanese movie about a young woman with cerebral palsy, determined to live as an adult, escapes her anxiously overprotective mother, recklessly ventures into the city, where the unlikeliest people in the sleezy part of town, are touched by her bravery and help her find dignity. A reviewer here on mydramalist accused this of being a ripoff of Margarita with a Straw, so I watched that and disagreed. The theme of a disabled person finding empowerment is hardly unique, and both movies tell quite different stories and are both worthy in their own right.

Relaxing light drama about a young woman interested in architecture, meets an older man with similar interests, and they visit various historical buildings in Tokyo, then lunch together.

The Chinese remake of the original Japanese "mother" and the Korean remake (one of my all-time favorite dramas). This uses many of the original ingredients (adopted woman searching for her birth mother, rescues a child from neglectful mother and abusive stepfather, and in the course of various thrilling events, they gradually heal each other), but this Chinese version is an original script with many distinct elements. It has a darker tone and I found it hard to warm to any of the characters (unlike the Korean version). 

I watched this is because I was able to find Chinese subtitles (softsubs are useful for my language studies). The story is about a young novelist who finds herself within the novel she was writing, or something similar to it, it's lightweight and rather silly, and all of the characters have complexions like porcelain dolls, but I find Rosy Zhao's face expressive and her mannerisms amusing, also the jokes when she uses modern slang and jargon to the consternation of the ancient characters . Apart from the mother/"city owner", there is a strange absence of anyone over about 25 in this city.

This is the drama series version of the novel which was also made into the movie This Is Not What I Expected (an amusing rom-com starring the elfin Zhou Dong Yu). Rosy Zhao's comic acting and frequent cooking scenes and food porn make it lots of fun. The story gets laboured in the second half, which continues long after the events of the movie.

Fascinating biopic about the three Western educated sisters of the Soong family, one who married Sun Yat Sen, father of modern China revered both on the Mainland and Taiwan, one married Chiang-Kai Shek, Nationalist General who founded Taiwan, and one married a wealth businessman. These woman were at the centre of the great events of Asian in the mid-20th century, that have consequences into the present day.

A postman who has been away from most of family life, delivering mail on foot to rural communities, on his last trip takes his young adult son to teach him the trade. At last they have a chance to get to know each other as they hike through gorgeous lush mountainous scenery. This is the sort of China I was expecting to see, and apparently the majority of the population still lives like this, although there is a huge movement underway of rural people to the cities.