Up the Yangtze (**3/4)

The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, and a visit to the land of his grandfather, was the impetus for Canadian Yung Chang’s documentary. An unrealized dream of Mao Zedong, this largest of hydroelectric power generators was realized in a China the communist leader might scarcely recognize. Yet some people still live in ways barely touched by modernity, and it was these people who were most represented among some two million Chinese displaced by waters that would rise 175 meters.

Sumptuously depicting the mighty river and the massive construction project in the early going, the film seems to promise a more-encompassing journey than what follows. The history of the project, the particulars of its construction, and discussion of both environmental and economic issues connected to it, are largely absent. A tantalizing time-lapse shot of the river rising to cover a ramshackle hut, then trees, is more along the lines of what I expected. But mostly, Chang primarily follows one soon-to-be-displaced family as they make the agonizing decision to send their daughter off to work on a cruise ship rather than go off to high school. By way of contrast is a rich boy who also gets a job, but the girl is the focus. We watch her struggle with homesickness, learn how to please the American and European tourists (never use the word “fat” is one edict), and get her first taste of a different kind of life. It’s unfortunate that Chang didn’t extend the time scale of the movie so we could find out how she and her family fare in the new China. Presenting China’s wrenching changes in microcosm, the film’s a decent time-passer, but would benefit from a wider perspective. With only sparse narration by Chang, it has more the feel of an unusual TV reality show than a feature film. (In fact, the movie will air on PBS’s P.O.V. series.)

IMDB link

viewed 7/24/08 at Ritz Bourse; reviewed 7/26/08

Poseidon (**3/4)

Few will accuse Wolfgang Peterson’s remake of the 1972 box-office smash of  being cheesy, but few will remember the new characters who try to escape the doomed ship, even if some of the individual scenes are suspenseful.

Well, the 1972 adaptation of Paul Gallico’s novel The Poseidon Adventure (there was also an NBC-TV version in 2005) is one of my favorite movies, only partly because I first saw it when I was 7 (my first PG rating!). Was I bound to be disappointed by the remake? Probably, but I’ll compare anyway. In each case, a big wave causes a New Year’s Eve cruise ship to flip over, leaving the brightest among the passengers to figure out they better start heading up to the ship’s hull. In each case, an improbably convenient plot device—that most of the passengers don’t figure this out—is used to whittle the cast to a manageable size. In version one, studly preacher Gene Hackman and his brain-dead (the rest soon to follow) counterpart, who wants to stay put, each try to persuade the passengers to go or not. In what might be the single best scene, the majority realize they’ve chosen unwisely when the water starts coming in; they scramble en masse onto the Christmas tree being used as a makeshift ladder, only to see it fall under their collective weight.

The remake inexplicably dispenses with all of this. The group here, led by cocky gambler Josh Lucas and overprotective dad/ex-New York mayor Kurt Russell, merely shuffle off after a brief tiff with the captain. A rough counterpart to Hackman’s preacher, Russell’s is the best of these new characters, who are mostly different from the old ones. (The one I could have done without, the scaredy-girl, is preserved intact.) One thing that’s gone is all of the women over 30. Emmy Rossum, playing Russell’s daughter, is the default female lead. So there are no married couples. No Shelley Winters saying, “Give this to Manny!” to her husband as she keels over. No macho Ernest Borgnine breaking down upon losing his tart wife. All very campy in the original, but also effective, in the same way, really, that Titanic would be 25 years later. In terms of the basic plot, there are certain different obstacles the group face, but it’s roughly similar, and roughly as good, although there are too many scenes where you basically know that no one is going to die. (For example, when you put a child in jeopardy, there’s little true suspense.) There is one very good addition in which one character is essentially forced to kill another to save himself. It’s a little more honest, maybe, than the all the selflessness you see in the rest of the movie. Even the gambler, who wants to go it alone at first, becomes a swell guy in the course of an hour and a half. The effects are solid, but, for all the $150 million dollars spent, not obviously superior to the $5 million original. So this seems destined to pass as another big-budget disaster movie that will be good enough for genre fans, but no better.

IMDb link

posted 8/20/13