Couch surfing

The sudden announcement that Hong Kong’s cinemas would close for two weeks from Jan 7 — in an effort to arrest the spread of the omicron variant — was met with a certain amount of stoicism from local film buffs, who well remember the 2021 cinema closure spanning both New Year and the Lunar New Year. And so we find ourselves, once again, depending on the ever-evolving streaming landscape for our nightly diversions.

Still riding high on the buzz generated by South Korean series Squid Game, Netflix is also where you’ll find The Power of the Dog (see Pick of the Flicks). Regional offerings are currently thin on the ground on the world’s dominant streaming platform, however. Meantime, HBO Max — led by Warner Bros content including DC and Harry Potter — has yet to launch in Hong Kong, while Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ remain hit and miss when it comes to international content. But there is a new player on the board for 2022: Disney+.

With pockets as deep as, if not deeper than, anyone else’s, Disney+ is entering the fray with a good dose of local fare on its slate. Among its initial offerings is Anita (Director’s Cut), a reedit of Longman Leung’s Anita Mui biopic, which was still playing in theaters when they shut down. The new version will feature a full hour of fresh content, and starting in early February, it will run on Disney+ as a miniseries consisting of five 45-minute installments. Leung includes a deeper dive into Mui’s (played by newcomer Louise Wong) personal life and friendship with fellow superstar Leslie Cheung, and adds more of the music that made Mui famous.

And if we want to cheat just a bit, the Mouse will be premiering A Lifelong Journey, an epic drama series adapted from author Liang Xiaosheng’s Mao Dun Literature Prize-winning novel of the same name. The multigenerational story chronicles the lives of three siblings from a working-class family across 50 years of Chinese history, from the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) through to the present day. Director Li Lu’s series features Lei Jiayin, Xin Baiqing, Song Jia and Yin Tao.

For those who want to be done with their screen in a couple of hours, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero (Amazon) and Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple) are two of your best bets in January. Farhadi returns to the Oscar-winning form he demonstrated with A Separation (2011) — following the misguided detour of Everybody Knows (2018) — with a nuanced, incredibly dense drama. Black comedy? Tragedy? All of the above. In the film incarcerated Rahim (Amir Jadidi) spends his two-day prison leave trying to get the creditor he owes to drop the complaint that’s landed him in jail. The film demonstrates Farhadi’s uncanny ability to see the layers in human behavior and find empathy amid the complexity.

Finally, Coen flies solo for the first time with his spin on Shakespeare’s classic tale of ambition and guilt. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand play the central couple in this stripped-down, intensely visual telling of the play, in which Bruno Delbonnel’s glorious black-and-white cinematography does a great deal of the work. It’s a slow-burning, ideal blend of cinema and theater that will remind viewers why the “Scottish Play” is so timeless and universal. Too bad you can’t watch it on a bigger screen.