Chaplin Movie Review

The problem that plagues most biographical films is the way they try to encompass far too much. In my experience, the best films about historical figures have honed their stories to focus on one period in their lives or on one particular aspect. It’s nearly impossible to depict an accurate sense of a person’s life in the space of a feature film. How do you distill what usually fills several hundred pages of printed words to a story that fits into so short a time span? Richard Attenborough tried it with Gandhi and though the result is a well-regarded film, it is also remembered by most people (myself included) as more than a bit boring. Several of Attenborough’s films focus on real historical figures, but his next straight biographical film was Chaplin in 1992.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon Movie Review

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is one of the great movie mysteries. It poses seemingly impossible conundrums and then refuses to solve them. Some of them include such questions as: Why is it called “Dark of the Moon?” What happened to the word “side?” Was it too long for the movie posters? Other riddles to behold are whether or not action screenwriters actually know what the word “triangulate” means and how can a screenplay so irreparably dumb know how to use “whom” correctly? Also, is there a book of action movie dialogue clichés from which Ehren Kruger took about 33 percent of the lines? Is it possible to release a Hollywood mega-budget film that isn’t overflowing with expository dialogue? Did director Michael Bay and his visual effects teams understand the action sequences? Did they actually try to make them coherent and fail miserably or is it just pure laziness. This movie is wondrous to behold. I’ve never seen its equal.