If you’re going to watch short films by Buster Keaton, you should do a marathon if possible. Watching four in a row, as I did, allows you to truly appreciate the comedic talent he was—writing and directing with Edward F. Cline, choreographing his own insane stunts, and creating laughter without ever breaking into a smile. Far better, in my opinion, than his contemporary Charlie Chaplin, Keaton utilizes a brand of intelligent slapstick to earn the physical laughs received as well as the cerebral ones with shrewd filmmaking, smart writing, and…
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REVIEW: My Dad is 100 Years Old [2005]
“Like is not the measure of right” I have caught the Guy Maddin bug. And it is all My Dad is 100 Years Old’s fault. Is Isabella Rossellini’s love letter to her father overdone, pretentious, and unnecessary? Probably yes on all counts, however, none of that detracts from the achievement it also creates. Why film an interview, static and uninteresting, when you can hire an auteur to use his eye and add a flair for the dramatic? Cinema is about drawing the viewer in, right—to cause the audience to think,…
Read MoreREVIEW: Modern Times [1936]
“These are but a few delightful features of the Billows Feeding Machine” Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is a wonderful little film. It is in effect a series of shorts strung together and connected by the two leads, Chaplin’s tramp and Paulette Goddard’s gamin. The tale is about how the machine age has taken over industry, throwing men on the streets with no jobs or money to keep their families afloat. In a brilliant stroke of ingenuity, Chaplin decides to scrap the idea of making this a “talkie” and allows only…
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