‘How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’
The Thai director Pat Boonnitipat’s first feature was a box-office sensation across Asia when it came out in theaters last year. It’s easy to see why. “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” is the rare feel-good family drama that tugs at the heartstrings, but with a warm and gentle naturalism that never tips into cloying melodrama.
M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) is a slacker with futile dreams of becoming a big-time gamer who lives off his mother. When M’s cousin inherits a fortune after taking care of their dying grandpa, M realizes there might be a moneymaking opportunity on the horizon for him, too: His grandma (Usha Seamkhum) has just been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Suddenly, he inserts himself into her life, much to her surprise and initial skepticism.
As you might predict, M’s pretense of care eventually becomes palpably real, but there are no contrivances in this patient, attentive film. Assaratanakul and Seamkhum bring an understated wit and sensitivity to their characters’ fumbling interactions (like when M awkwardly bathes his grandma and mistakes her mole for a nipple) so that by the end, their emotional journey feels wholly earned.
In this gorgeous animated drama, the Iranian director Sepideh Farsi spins a grand, tragic fairy tale out of a little-known slice of history: the siege of Abadan, a major oil port in the South of Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Rendered by Farsi and her art director, Zaven Najjar, in a fluid, two-dimensional style, the film follows the 14-year-old Omid, who stays behind with his grandfather after his mother and younger siblings flee the town; his older brother has joined the war, and Omid refuses to leave without him.