Ramen Teh (情牽拉麵茶) (aka 'Ramen Shop') (2018)

A Japanese kid, the son of a ramen shop owner, heads to Singapore to investigate his mother's estrangement from her Singaporean-Chinese mother (his grandmother) and in the process, embarks on a culinary tour that equips him with the skills to bridge not just culinary but also familial divides and historically entrenched cultural rifts.

★★★☆☆

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Candleshoe (1977)

There's some dated gender stereotyping and at least one cringeworthy allusion to race, but Disney's Candleshoe is a classic family adventure in which a young Jodie Foster, a year on from her standout Taxi Driver performance, stars as a streetwise kid who inveigles her way into a family mansion by pretending to be a long-lost heir because she wants to get her hands on a hidden treasure.

★★★☆☆

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Parenthood (1989)

 

Steve Martin stars and is perfectly uptight as Gil Buckman, a family man trying not to freak out on the rollercoaster of parenthood, but there's a veritable Love Actually-sized ensemble here too: a single mother (Dianne Wiest) struggles to raise a teenage boy (a young Joaquin Phoenix) while trying to steer an older daughter (Martha Plimpton) away from no-hopers like Tod (Keanu Reeves playing Ted again), and more (Rick Moranis, Tom Hulce, Mary Steenburgen, and Jason Robards) all in Ron Howard's comedy smash hit about the trials and tribulations of the privileged white raising kids in traditional family units.

★★★☆☆

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Still Alice (2014)

A 50-year-old Linguistics professor is diagnosed with a hereditary form of Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease in this tearjerker that is as much a character study of the debilitating disease itself as it is a character study of the unfortunate woman, Alice, and her family - of course no-one's idea of a good time but the movie features such a good performance by Julianne Moore you won't be able to take your eyes off it.

★★★★☆

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