11 best Hong Kong films on Netflix to stream this Lunar New Year: from Jackie Chan action movies to romance with Andy Lau and classic Chow Yun-fat comedies

Feb 11 , 2021

Andy Lau (left) and Stephen Chow in Hong Kong comedy Tricky Brains. Photo: Instagram (@celestialmovies)

The Year of the Ox is nearly upon us. There are a number of traditions that you might be observing over the Lunar New Year holiday, from visiting family, and giving and receiving red packets (hongbao) to simply savouring traditional Lunar New Year foods such as poon choi.

Another unofficial Hong Kong tradition is sitting around at home with the relatives and watching a film or two on TV. In more ordinary years, when a lethal pandemic hadn’t enforced social distancing and shut down public facilities, families would also go to the cinema and watch one of the special Lunar New Year movies, which were often the biggest hits of the year.

Unfortunately, that is not an option in 2021. You can still count on Netflix, though, for there’s more to the streaming service than just viral hits like The Queen’s Gambit or Tiger King. Over the years, Netflix has added an array of local Hong Kong films, many of which make are perfect for a Lunar New Year family gathering.

Here are 11 of the best Hong Kong classics currently streaming on Netflix.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World

A traditional LNY classic, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World looks at the life of the Pui family. An assortment of everyday Hongkongers, the Puis get by but money is tight. The family patriarch, played by Bill Tung, works a respectable television job but his on-air gaffs earn him the wrath of his boss. Then there’s the trouble with the family’s three daughters, one deeply in love with her boyfriend, one who dreams of going to Japan, and the youngest who is an academic prodigy. All these fun storylines get turned inside out when the family wins the lottery and becomes rich overnight.

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The Magnificent Scoundrels

This is one of Stephen Chow’s earliest hits and still one of his funniest. A great comedy, perfect for family gatherings, The Magnificent Scoundrels pairs Chow with Teresa Mo as a couple of con artists badly in debt. Separately, the pair come up with a scheme to pay off the loan sharks hounding them. However, Chow and Mo continually get in each other’s way, to much hilarity. The humour isn’t always sophisticated – there are plenty of jokes about people’s appearance and at least one gag involving vomit – but overall this is still one of Chow’s most consistently amusing films.

The Thirty Million Dollar Rush

A young Stephen Chow is all well and good, but what about a young Brigitte Lin? You won’t find any of the brooding that made her so memorable in films like Ashes of Time or The Bride with White Hair in this rare lighthearted role. For this heist movie – about a worker at the Hong Kong mint who decides that HK$30 million (US$3.87 million) sitting around waiting to be incinerated ought to be put to better use – Lin plays a nun determined to save the souls of the film’s motley crew of wannabe robbers.

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An Autumn’s Tale

If tender romance is more your family’s thing, stream this Hong Kong classic. Hugely popular to this day, and one of star Chow Yun-fat’s own favourite films, An Autumn’s Tale is another international offering, set in the grimy New York of the 1980s. Jennifer (Cherie Chung) moves there from Hong Kong to meet her boyfriend who is studying at university. Her family arrange for her to stay with a distant cousin, Samuel (Chow), but she soon learns that her partner has found someone else. Jennifer and Samuel establish a moving friendship that’s all the more touching for the scenes it shows of Hongkongers struggling to make a life abroad.

Wheels on Meals

Want a little more action in your Lunar New Year streaming? Opt for Wheels on Meals, one of the finest collaborations between “the three brothers” Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, who together made some of the 80s’ finest action films like this, Project A and Dragons Forever. A rare international affair for a Hong Kong film, the setting is Barcelona, where Thomas (Chan) and his business partner David (Biao) run a mobile fast food operation. Hung is a private detective keeping tabs on Sylvia (Lola Forner), a beauty who, inevitably, involves the three men in all sorts of trouble.

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Fat Choi Spirit

A more modern Lunar New Year classic, Fat Choi Spirit has all the essential ingredients required of a LNY movie – money, gambling, family, romance and a dash of superstition. The stars are all here too, including Andy Lau, Gigi Leung, Louis Koo and Sean Lau, among others. Andy Lau plays a mahjong player who never seems to lose – at least until his long-suffering girlfriend puts a curse on him in frustration. What will it take for him to appease his girlfriend and regain the favour of the mahjong gods? Such a story doesn’t promise much, but in these sorts of films, the plot is often secondary to watching an array of stars get up to wacky high jinks. All of them go for it, making this an incredibly enjoyable, if silly, film.

From Beijing with Love

For more laughs, try Stephen Chow’s comic take on James Bond movies. The story here is that a valuable dinosaur’s skull has been stolen from China and the only man who can solve the mystery is Ling Ling Chat (Zero Zero Seven). One of Chow’s finest screwball comedies, From Beijing with Love predates the likes of Austin Powers and is arguably funnier and more inventive. Some of Chow’s films can lose their impact for anyone not fluent in Cantonese slang or the Hong Kong popular culture of the time, but, given the well-known tropes associated with James Bond, there’s plenty in this effort to appeal to a wide audience.

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The Diary of a Big Man

Chow Yun-fat is on fine form in this one, one of many popular comic roles he have rarely received attention in the West where he has always been considered an action star. The comic situation here is that he meets two women and falls in love with both of them. Unable to decide between the two, he does the natural thing and chooses to secretly marry them both and lead a double life. Of course, all sorts of comedy ensues as he tries to juggle two lives and two wives.

Tricky Brains

No film directed by Wong Jing can be considered highbrow – Jing being the man responsible for trashy flicks like Naked Killer, Kung Fu Mahjong and Raped By An Angel 4: The Raper’s Union – but the man does know how to make an entertaining piece of work. Tricky Brains is exactly that. The basic plot isn’t much – girl comes back from a trip abroad to work incognito at her father’s company and falls in love with one of his lowly workers – but there are plenty of good gags and Stephen Chow is on fine form as a professional trickster up to all sorts of mischief.

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God of Gamblers

You can’t go wrong with any classic Chow Yun-fat film around Lunar New Year. God of Gamblers once again shows Chow’s comic sensibilities, as well his action moves and general all-round coolness. He plays a famous master gambler, with lady luck in the palm of his hand, who never loses. All is well until an accident, which causes him to lose his memory and revert to a childlike state. Equal parts silly and dramatic, God of Gamblers never gets old, no matter how many times you’ve seen it.

Fantasia

A LNY hit from 2004, Fantasia is a homage to Cantonese comedies of the 1970s – the kind popularised by the Hui brothers, Michael, Ricky and Sam. Fans of that era will love this. Sean Lau plays a parody of Michael Hui’s Mr Boo, while Louis Koo also brings the laughs as a lame Bruce Lee wannabe. If that doesn’t sound silly enough there’s Cecilia Cheung as Harmy Bobo (aka Harry Potter), the wish-granting genie of a magic lamp. It’s unlikely you’ll get all the old school references, like The Twins parodying 60s singers The Chopsticks, but this is still guaranteed to brighten any day you’re stuck at home around the TV.

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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Gathering around the TV is an unofficial LNY holiday tradition, but forget The Queen’s Gambit or K-drama – Netflix also hosts a raft of Hong Kong classics
From God of Gamblers to An Autumn’s Tale or a classic Stephen Chow comedy, these now-streaming picks are sure to get the family together