So, uh, that was fun. How about the movies?
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, crowdfunded Blu-ray)
Shipwrecked is an amiable little silent with a very pleasant cast that sort of stumbles a bit when the plot has to matter more than just watching them bounce off each other. That's hardly fatal at its 74-minute length, though even at that scale, one kind of feels like the movie could have done a little bit more.
It starts with ship's cook Larry O'Neil (Joseph Schildkraut) seeming none too excited to set sail again with Captain Klodel (Matthew Betz) and his ragtag crew, but, hey, it's a living. Meanwhile, Lois Austin (Seena Owen) fought back against a prominent man who tried to rape her and attempts to throw herself into the sea, but Larry pulls her out. Larry eventually finds her hiding among his stores after the ship sails, but can't keep her hidden; the captain installs her in the first mate's cabin (and Larry in the brig), expecting sexual favors as he plans to turn her in. A storm leads the crew to abandon ship and Lois to rescue Larry, eventually making landfall on a small island more or less run by a British trader (Lionel Belmore). They carve out a decent life there, but Klodel is returning, blackmail on his mind.
The name of the movie is "Shipwrecked", but the good stuff happens on the ship and before. Well, for certain values of "good", considering that we're talking about Klodel being a gross letch who puts Lois and Larry in very uncomfortable positions after we've had the fun of Larry sneaking around to make sure Lois gets fed without alerting the crew to how their supplies are dwindling a little faster than they should be. They've got nice chemistry, with Larry pushing the boundary of being just a little too eager to be a white knight and Lois being a bit more of a survivor than she initially thought. The storm's a nicely done action scene, too, recalling Buster Keaton's The Navigator even if it's not quite so elaborate.
Ideally, this would either be most of the movie or an exciting first act that sets up the bulk of the film on the island, but that's never quite set up to be truly exciting. There's Laska Winter as island girl Zanda (she seemed to play a lot of "exotic" beauties in her brief career), who is smitten with the handsome newcomer, men with an interest in Lois, and the question of whether Klodel will be able to force the genteel trader to surrender Lois before news reaches them that she's not as wanted for murder as they think, but not much comes of it. Lois and Larry are seemingly not a couple at this point for vague, unsatisfying reasons, but there never seems to be any real threat of them ending up otherwise.
The way they get there, on the other hand, isn't ideal; the last half of the movie hasn't necessarily been leading to much, but Larry jumping from assertive to aggressive doesn't quite seem like the right call, at least from a hundred years later. All the ingredients for a more active finale or there, but the second half just doesn't lead to them.
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
Where to stream it
I wonder just how much trend-chasing was going on when Dream Lovers was made; the filmmakers don't really hide the attempt to draft on how popular the Terra Cotta Soldier exhibit in Hong Kong was at the time even as they don't seem to have much ability to actually include it. In some ways, the way Hong Kong filmmakers turned so many movies around quickly from all sorts of inspiration is what made it so exciting, in that someone with a shotgun is bound to hit something, but it turns out to be more fun in a goofy action movie than this sort of romantic fantasy, despite the star power brought to bear.
Though conductor Song Yu (Chow Yun-fat) has roots in Hong Kong, he has spent much of his career working internationally, but makes sure to visit the exhibition when his latest stop brings him to the Crown Colony. His girlfriend and manager Wah Lei (Cher Yeung Suet-Yee) notes that he bears a striking resemblance to one of the soldiers, which triggers strange, erotic dreams involving a distant age and a beautiful concubine. Jeweler Cheung Yuet-Heung (Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia) has many of the same dreams, from the other perspective, and when their paths cross, they feel a powerful attraction, the sort where even Lei's blind spiritualist grandmother (Wong Man-Lei) warns her that she should probably not just prepare for their relationship to end, but encourage it; this sort of love across incarnations is undeniable.
Dream Lovers often feels like an attempt to build an entire romantic film out of chemistry, and when it reaches its finale, they've almost pulled it off: The final embrace between Chow Yun-fat and Brigitte Lin in the rain is beautiful and sad, the culmination of a ton of scenes where director Tony Au Ting-Ping dials in on the pair's powerful charisma, and the screenplay by Manfred Wong Man-Chun and Chiu Kang-Chien builds up the attendant mythology without making it a puzzle that must be solved to accomplish some sort of task. Cher Yeung leans into the utter thanklessness of her role; Lei is a good person who has put real effort into this relationship and knows she deserves better than being cast aside just because this Yuet-Heung chick has done little more than exist, and Yeung makes this jealousy both righteous and corrosive.
The trouble is, there's not much of a story grappling with what it means. The idea that having a fated lover suddenly appear and turn you on might actually be less romantic than horrifyingly disruptive is buzzed about, but treated as a problem for Lei rather than the reincarnated lovers, who don't really do anything or fret about how these versions of themselves from thousands of years ago are overriding their present selves. There's flashbacks, both to the Qin Dynasty and to the night they were born, and Chow & Lin have the necessary spark, but the eeriness of the start dissipates quickly and there's not a lot to replace it aside from sheer attraction and lust. What makes Yu and Yuet great together besides having this prehistory? I'm open to the idea that, for a culture with a stronger belief in reincarnation than mine, you don't necessarily need more, that a lot of this is assumed and one can see the pairs' reactions in their personalities from the start and the fantasy itself is much more basic and relatable, but, I don't know, it feels like it still needs more.
As an aside: One of the things I do when my mind wanders during a movie is prime factor numbers that get mentioned, and the oft-repeated '2197 years" is 13*13*13. Does that mean something? Is this some powerful Chinese numerology? Not to dismiss numerology - after all, it's kind of fascinating serendipity that my rolling dice paired these two movies, made on opposite sides of the planet and separated by sixty years, but both featuring an intriguing setup and fine casting allowed to fizzle by a back half that knocks around, kind of coasting to an expected ending.
All told, I liked Shipwrecked a little more than Dream Lovers, and when they're expressed in star ratings, it results in the pair pulling even!
Dale Evans: 39¾ stars
Centipede: 39¾ stars
Tight as can be, with more serendipity to come!
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