Fewer Puppets than You'd Guess

Film: Xi Meng Ren Sheng (Hsimeng Jensheng; The Puppetmaster; In the Hands of a Puppetmaster)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Biopics are a strange bird, lingering in that odd place between documentary and fiction. In the case of Xi Meng Ren Sheng, the subject of the film takes a part in the proceedings as a narrator. This is another of those films in which converting from one language to another is problematic. The Book lists this as Hsimeng Jensheng and gives the English title as The Puppetmaster, but I’ve also seen it as In the Hands of a Puppetmaster. In other words, there’s no real consensus of what this film should be called, let alone how it should be classified.

Part of the Title is Appropriate

Film: Ivan Groznyj 1 (Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen

Strap in, folks. This one is rough. I don’t expect them all to be winners, and when the film was listed in “The 50 Worst Films of All Time,” I expect even less. But this one is really, really rough.

Ivan Groznyj 1 (Ivan the Terrible, Part 1, although this review will cover the secondpart as well) is, no surprises here, the story of Ivan the Terrible. It’s not the whole story, though, because this was originally thought of as a trilogy. Part 2 was suppressed, though, and Sergei Eisenstein died before he could get to the conclusion.