The exhuberant vitality of Lucky Grandma is a delight, with a wonderfully droll performance by Tsai Chin.

| Nov 3, 2021

In this incandescent and utterly delightful debut, director Sasie Sealy delivers a sparkling movie that centers the story of an elderly woman of color with the agency, care, and attention it deserves.

| Feb 15, 2021

She and she alone makes the movie worth your time.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 15, 2021

Lucky Grandma has all the hallmarks of an old-school cult favourite.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2020

A film that's people-pleasing in inverse proportion to its grouchy heroine.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2020

The fusion of Andrew Orkin's score and Eduardo Enrique Mayén's cinematography, which coats everything in the grimy yellow of a lifelong smoker's room, tips the hat towards noir, but Sealy balances that with a deft wit and charm

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 29, 2020

Rarely turning her camera's gaze away from the formidable Wong, director Sealy situates her protagonist in a Chinatown brimming with inviting cultural and social details.

| May 27, 2020

What ultimately makes it all work so well is Tsai Chin's endearingly gruff performance.

| May 27, 2020

"Lucky Grandma" is a wickedly entertaining dark comedy, steeped in the colors and characters of New York City's Chinatown.

| Original Score: B+ | May 26, 2020

This is such a stylish and sharp movie with such a strong sense of the setting... I had so much fun with this.

| May 22, 2020

It exemplifies the potential of a more inclusive cinematic landscape, one that is guaranteed to alter the predominant Hollywood beliefs regarding what constitutes a mainstream appetite.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 22, 2020

"Lucky Grandma" puts an older Asian woman center stage without infantilizing her or rendering her pitiful.

| May 21, 2020

"Lucky Grandma" affords Chin a leading role she clearly relishes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2020

This isn't a movie about money at all, but is instead a search for the dignity and respect the elderly deserve in a world that too often chooses not to afford it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2020

Chin is plainly the film's greatest asset, a terrific actor with great comic timing and a tendency to underplay her character's reactions, which helps to offset the relatively broad performances that surround her.

| Jan 15, 2020

The film wryly captures the flavours of the insular community of first generation Chinese immigrants to America, while also exploring a theme with universal resonance - that of an older woman fighting to retain her agency and independence.

| Dec 7, 2019

A crowd-pleaser with a slyly magnetic lead performance.

| Apr 29, 2019