When it comes to silent cinema, I don't have much experience with it. But thanks mostly in part to a friend of mine for introducing me to "Metropolis" about a couple years ago (Now one of my favorite films of all time), I've always wanted to see more.

So I figured after reviewing nothing recent works, I'd take a step back in time to talk about some forms of film I've always wanted to get a better eye on, and what better way to start then with what many would probably call the master of silent cinema, Charlie Chaplin?

"Modern Times" marks my first impressions with the man, and they're fairly good you could say. It follows him as a…

I should start this review with these lines: “A tramp more shining than a lamp – Is all I thought since I was kid – More polite than any kind; more clean and honest and truth than any elegant gentleman dressed with fancy hat and using long canes for his roaring period; a poor man with gentle soul under the light of the cities. A noble man. -- My plan was to write this after watching City Lights. And I DM to my friend and I message to him: “look, what I wrote right now…” and he said to me “great lines” – But, I decided to not review City Lights (I love but I’m not so familiar with it.…

I love animated films, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, but I remember when my daughter exclusively watched only that genre at a very young age and I was thinking to myself, at what point can I show her more? When will she be ready to explore cinema beyond talking animals and snappy songs?

While she has been beyond that point for a while now, something happened the other day while watching the Charlie Chaplin masterpiece Modern Times that I was not anticipating. There I am, lying on the couch mesmerized by the film when I realized I wasn't alone. Not in the literal sense, I knew the soon to be seven year old was sitting across the…

Decades Project: 2/3 of the 30's

Listen, I'll be honest: I don't know much about comedy. I don't know what makes things funny. All I know is that Charlie Chaplin makes me laugh. A lot. And here he's made another masterpiece to go along with City Lights and The Great Dictator.

What makes Chaplin's films so great is that they make you think just as much as they make you laugh. Modern Times is interesting not only for its satire of modern working conditions (the constant stress of the workplace vs. the relaxed paradise of the jail) and the unseen remainder of capitalist excess (floating through the machines), but also for Chaplin's depiction of the voice as object. As a…

What a delightful adventure with The Tramp, one of the most iconic characters ever created in the history of cinema. Charles Chaplin gives life to this factory worker who struggles to adapt to the modern industrial civilization, which is dominated by the intense use of machinery and standardization of work practices. Chaplin does a brilliant satire on the industrialization and modernization of society during the period of the great depression. The film can be truly hilarious and uplifting, but also touching on occasion. Just like in City Lights, Modern Times has several clever gags and they are usually packed with strong social commentary, not being there purely for the laughs. Paulette Goddard is an important companion to The Tramp as…

Modern Times is another one of Charlie's classics. I've been a mixed bag with Chaplin thus far. The Gold Rush was mildly entertaining but largely didn't do much for me. I loved City Lights however and found it quite hilarious and engaging. Modern Times lies somewhere between that for me. While I definitely found it more engrossing than The Gold Rush, there were still some deficiencies that kept me back from loving it.

Chaplin is fantastic as always though. His prowess at physical comedy is readily apparent as he pulls off some great classic bits. The famous "assembly line overwhelming the worker scene" comes from this film and this original incarnation of it is fantastic. Another scene featuring Chaplin stuck…

Grad School Prep 14/34

A little different than the older Chaplin films I've been exposed to, in the sense that there's a much more overt political tilt. Films like, The Circus focused moreso on the vaudeville antics of the Tramp character. I liked that film well enough, but Modern Times is my favorite Chaplin film (as of now) due to the stab at economic disparity and social façades.

- On a side note, I'm low-key annoyed when people claim that these films are "masterpieces" but never truly elaborate. I think that claim that one film is more timeless than another would require some sort of comparison. I mean, I'm sure at times I've described something as "iconic" without giving much…