Lucy Liu Shines in the Devastating True Story ‘Rosemead’

December 2, 2025

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Lucy Liu in Rosemead (CREDIT: Vertical/Screenshot)

Starring: Lucy Liu, Lawrence Shou, Orion Lee, Jennifer Lim, Madison Hu, James Chen

Director: Eric Lin

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R for Language and Mature Themes

Release Date: December 5, 2025 (New York)/December 12, 2025 (Los Angeles)

What’s It About?: In an urgent tale based on unsettling true events, Lucy Liu plays a mother named Irene who’s very worried about her schizophrenic teenage son Joe (Lawrence Shou) and his increasingly erratic behavior. When she discovers that he’s been looking up information about infamous mass shootings, she starts to suspect that he’s planning to pull off the same thing at his school. Unfortunately, she cannot devote all of the energy that she would need to prevent this, because she is also dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis. As Irene feels Joe drifting further and further out of her grasp and she becomes more and more isolated from the rest of the world, irreversibly drastic action starts to seem like the only possible solution.

What Made an Impression?: Praying That It Doesn’t End This Way: After reading that synopsis, perhaps you’re scared that Rosemead is running headlong in the most tragic direction. Of course, you could look up the real story to find out if those suspicions are warranted. But in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’ll leave that resolution to the theater. However, I’ll also make sure to note that whether or not the worst does indeed happen, the dread hanging over that possibility is unbearably palpable throughout the entire movie. This definitely isn’t the sort of film you should be watching at your most emotionally vulnerable. Conversely, it is the kind of movie that makes you question if it’s even worth putting absolutely devastating stories like this up on the big screen. Hopefully they can foster understanding and play at least some small part towards preventing further tragedies.

That’ll Do: To redirect things over to a more technical discussion, Rosemead didn’t exactly thrill me with its daring or bowl me over with its aesthetic choices. Above all else, I’m glad that Lucy Liu really got the opportunity to flex her dramatic chops. She’s been putting in consistently great work for more than three decades, and I can’t remember her ever getting a spotlight quite like this one. It would just be nice if it were in a movie I could rave about more breathlessly. As it is, though, this is a perfectly fine cinematic contribution that everyone involved should be appropriately proud of.

Rosemead is Recommended If: “Lucy Liu’s Career-Best  Performance” was on your 2025 Bingo Card

Grade: 3 out of 5 Diagnoses

‘First Cow’ is a Quirky Western About Pop-Up Food Peddling

March 2, 2020

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CREDIT: Allyson Riggs/A24

Starring: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd, Lily Gladstone, René Auberjonois

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Running Time: 121 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for “Brief Strong Language,” according to the MPAA

Release Date: March 6, 2020 (Limited)

I’m sure there were other cows before the cow in First Cow, but she brings so much sweet satisfaction that she’s sure just as lovely as any actual first cow.

Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) and King Lu (Orion Lee) meet up and become fast friends on the 19th century Oregon frontier. Their backgrounds are vastly different (Cookie’s originally from Maryland, King’s a Chinese immigrant), but they are nevertheless kindred spirits, bonded by shared drives to make something fulfilling out of their rough terrain. The first third or so of First Cow is rather sleepy, as it mostly consists of Cookie and King wandering through the dark woods. But then they chance upon a bit of a piping-hot business, and suddenly their story is working like gangbusters.

If you’re like me, you might spend a good portion of First Cow wondering, “Where is this cow? I was promised a cow. Let’s get a move on, Mr. Plot!” But patience is a virtue, and if you can indeed be patient, you will be rewarded handsomely, just as Cookie and King are, by writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s steady approach. C and K find the milk-producer just hanging out in a field, and they gather up her cream for all it’s worth. They then slot it in as the key ingredient for a batch of biscuits that they hawk in the middle of town. It tastes unlike anything their customers have ever tasted before, yet it also takes them right back to their childhood kitchen memories. The biscuits sell out immediately day after day the same way that a cupcake pop-up burns through its supply in the hippest part of the neighborhood in 2020.

Cookie and King are always hustling, so I guess we now know what it looked like when you were hustling while stuck out in the woods one hundred-some-odd years ago, or at least we have a satisfying cinematic approximation of what it was like. They certainly have to summon all their wits when they realize that their cow belongs to a wealthy landowner played by Toby Jones who’s been one of their loyal customers. When the jig is up, they find themselves once again out there floating through the coarse landscape. I’m not too experientially familiar with this harsh environment, but I recognize this strain of human existence. Reichardt takes on an interesting, untraditional journey of frustration, satisfaction, and worry bumping against each other. It’s a weird rhythm that I daresay is worth getting in tune with.

First Cow is Recommended If You Like: Toby Jones licking his lips

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Biscuits