Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Kel Boyce How wrong can you get it? Not much more wrong than in this film. It goes no way to depicting the real Chaplin. Chaplin's early life is fairly well treated, although we don't know when or where he was born. He had no birth certificate! UK and US intelligence services concluded he originated in Eastern Europe. Butte, Montana, where does this come from? Chaplin was in Oil City Pa. when he got 'the call'. A railroad running outside Keystone Studio? Attenborough was thinking of Essanay studio in Niles, surely. Keystone Studio with a Spanish mission frontage? Not when Charlie first went there, Mr A. Chaplin too young for Sennett? Well yes, but the film doesn't give the reason, which is that Charlie was too close in years to starlet / girlfriend Mabel Normand for white- haired Mack Sennett to tolerate. Mabel screeching like a demented Lucille Ball when the egotistical Charlie refused to follow her direction? Read Charlie's autobiog – it never happened that way. The wedding scene – what wedding scene? Charlie first used the tramp in Mabel's Strange Predicament, and the character first went public in Kid Auto Races in Venice. Syd Chaplin negotiating Charlie's contract with Keystone? Syd wasn't even in the U.S. at the time negotiating began. He became a Keystone actor soon after, and would not have jeopardized his $200 per week by having a go at his paymaster. Fred Karno with a north country accent? I doubt it, he came from the west country.Let's end Charlie's time at Keystone there shall we? Whoaa, hold on a minute Mr Attenborough, didn't you know Charlie made his movie bones at Keystone, and Mabel Normand was instrumental in honing his skills AND the tramp character? The original cruel tramp was toned down during discussions with Mabel and pathos had been added to the tramp's character in post-'Mabel At The Wheel' movies. In Mabel's Busy Day, Mabel becomes the tramp, while Charlie is a kind of dude with feelings. We can also add that Mabel regularly bought Charlie new shirts, as Chaplin's were never washed, and he was too cheap to buy new ones (Minta Arbuckle).The most important period in Chaplin's movie career occurred between January and December 1914, yet Attenborough dismisses it in a few minutes. It seems odd that of all movie folk, only Attenborough thinks Mabel ceased acting in 1922. In fact, she starred in Sennett's 'Extra Girl', released 1923, and starred in a series of movies for Hal Roach up until 1927.When Chaplin went to Essanay he ran into Edna Purviance who was lying in wait for him. Wrong!! Edna was a regular at a certain cafe pointed out to Chas. He had already used Gloria Swanson, who objected to Chaplin's manner and slapstick comedy. Of course Charlie could have signed Mabel Normand, but he did not want an actress with a big price tag, nor one that had a mind of her own, that could not be molded the way control-freak Chas wanted. On occasions Mabel would spot Charlie in a restaurant and shout to him, 'Charlie I'll be your leading lady yet!' Poor naive Mabel just didn't get it. Charlie had a cockney accent, as pointed out by the film's Mary Pickford. Wrong again! Chas had developed an aristocratic way of speaking, long before 1914, and had been a dude in his time, even if he was dirty and smelly. The film depicts some low-level angst between Pickford and Chaplin, but does not go into the reasons. Unfortunately for Mary, she became involved in business with Chas. She was also involved socially with him via her husband, and the 'tramp' would often turn up at their house on Sundays. The boys would head off to the hills, while Mary was left to amuse whichever dumb, empty-headed wife Chas had brought with him. Whilst Robert Downey Jr makes a good stab at Chaplin's physical characteristics, the film falls at the first hurdle, as Attenborough has failed to depict the disparity between the Charlie that walked onto the Keystone lot, and the one that exited the gate a year later. Apart from everything else, the wistful and brooding Mabel had taught similarly endowed Charlie how to create allies in Hollywood, by being the life and soul of the party and of the lot. Without these acquired skills, introverted Charlie would have fallen flat on his face, and disappeared back into the vaudeville ether. If we ignore Attenborough's early failings, then we can say this is a well-crafted film, which makes for good entertainment. He leaves the nuances of Chaplin's character to be explained during discussions between Chaplin and his (fictitious) biographer. A similar ploy was used in Alexander the Great (2004) where the director used biographer Ptolemy to explain the intricacies of Alexander's otherwise unfathomable character. If you want a summary of Chaplin, then Mary Pickford's words will suffice: '…that obstinate, suspicious, egocentric, maddening and lovable genius of a problem child, Charlie Chaplin'. Biographical film unnecessary.

ted-mcwhirter It's notable that the best bits of this are when they play excerpts from the classics as a preamble to the "We're Sorry" episode at the Oscars in 1972. It's only then do you sense the genius of the man which rarely comes across from the episodic excerpts that form the rest of the film. Downey is good enough and the rest of the cast do their stuff but it never captures anything but a ghost of the real man for the meat and potatoes are inside the pants and the heart of the tramp. The synthesis of ballet dancer, acrobat and comedian that endear us to the tramp barely comes across although you get a sense of his driven and obsessive nature as he strove to improve on the art form that had defined him. It's become fashionable to deride the sentimentality and pathos of his later films and to elevate others, notably Keaton, above him. But the bedrock of his genius lies in the 100 or so one and two-reelers that innovated and developed the history of cinema and the classic features of his maturity. The film doesn't ever come close to capturing that.

isadoradestri When people think about Silent Movies, the first name – if not the only one – that pops into mind is 'Charlie Chaplin'. The hat, the toothbrush moustache, the twirling cane and the awkwardly funny walk are unmistakable elements of his character. You might have seen a few of his productions, some clips shown randomly, but that is generally it. Everything most people know about Charlie Chaplin is restricted to his movie performances – or at least it was so for me. I knew he was a British silent movie actor, and about his film Modern Times. I knew of his peculiar ways of acting, and dressing, and walking – and that was it. We only know Chaplin, the character – not Chaplin, the man – and we often mistake one for the other. After watching this movie, we can paint a clearer picture of who he was. We learn about his difficult childhood, in a poor neighbourhood with a mentally ill mother; about his many love interests and troubled relationships; about his juridical problems; that he was persecuted by McCarthyism and banish from the United States accused of communism. We get to see Chaplin building his career, the background to his movie ideas and the many accomplishments he made in different areas inside film making. Taking all that into consideration, I still see Chaplin as the funny persona with the peculiar ways, but a completely new layer was added to him. I can see now how he had a troubled life, and how he could be a serious, grave men in reality – nothing like his roles is his movies. Now, I personally see his movies as an escape to the troubled times he and the world were going through – an alternative to all the tension and seriousness life dumped at him. For me, the reason he is so famous still to this day is because of the capacity his movies had to transmit the values and the events of his time in an accurate and critic way – but without losing their funny and entertaining touch. He could capture both the spirit of his time and the public's undivided attention with such mastery that his movies have lasted a century and will last many more. He had such great accomplishments in the movie industry, and gained so much recognition that his name was not forgotten to this day. Adding to the biographical aspects of the movie, was also the way it was presented that got my attention. Even though it is a current movie, and filmed in such way, there were scenes in which you could see the memory of a Silent Movie. Incorporating those scenes was a great way of honouring the work of Chaplin, and of balancing the seriousness of his life with the lightness of his movies – for when those kinds of scenes were presented, the heavy tone of the movie would dissipate, giving place to a lighter, funnier atmosphere. They did to his biography the same thing his own movies did to his life. All these aspects make this a worth-watching movie. The production gives us background to understanding more deeply Chaplin's work, and allows us to know a little bit more about the man behind the ideas and funny scenes. It contributes to honouring Chaplin's memory and to allowing it to live on for as long as it possibly can.

nicholls_les Richard Attenborough does a brilliant job of bringing Charlie Chaplin to the screen in a wonderful biopic. It captures the genius of Chaplain and sets the right tone for the time it was depicting.Robert Downey Jr really deserved an Oscar for this.Apart from Jamie Foxx' near perfect depiction of Ray Charles in Ray, Robert Downey Jr does one of the best acting jobs portraying such a well known person.All the ing cast are also excellent and although this is a long movie I never once get bored while watching it.It is rare to find a fairly recent movie that could be termed a classic, but Chaplin is one of those films.