Sandra Ng Capsule Reviews

Golden Chicken (Samson Chiu, 2002) — July 25, 2014

Life of Oharu, but as the kind of Hong Kong comedy where Andy Lau walks out of a TV and teaches Sandra Ng how to properly fake an orgasm.

25 years of Hong Kong history and popular entertainment as seen in the life of a prostitute. It’s some kind of a masterpiece.

Golden Chickensss (Matt Chow, 2014) — December 11, 2014

Sandra Ng’s third film as the prostitute analogue for Hong Kong, but the first in a decade. It starts with a cartoon-y history of prostitution then throws us into the ultra-modern world of the contemporary brothel. Like the other films in the series, it’s an episodic story, going from the speedy intro to a funny bit about a Louis Koo impersonator. From there things slow down in a draggy middle section that ups the vulgarity (relaxed censorship laws, apparently) without being particularly funny. The turn from slapstick to poignancy that the first two films handled so well is rather clumsy here, as the film ends with a lengthy story about Nick Cheung as a triad boss imprisoned in 1996 (right before the Handover, of course) and only recently freed. Cheung and Ng are good enough to pull it off, but this is still the weakest of the series.

“The Grandmaster visits brothels. Ip Man is a faithful husband.” — Donnie Yen