Laura: For When Your Movie Barely Needs to Make Sense

OH! Hi there!

My first exposure to Laura came in a "Music in Film" class I took in college. The professor used it as an example of film makers going to strange lengths to shoe-horn music into their movies. In the scene he showed as an example, Dana Andrews' Det. McPherson walks into the home of the titular Laura (Gene Tierney), whose murder he is investigating. While he looks around and talks about the case, he turns on her phonograph and pipes in music. When watching it yesterday, I especially noticed that he did that again in another scene. It's an odd man who goes around turning on strangers' radios for ten seconds before shutting them off.

But then, Laura is a strange movie. It's a noir that deals with a murder, but its characters are played to a campy effect. Not only that, but its main characters almost all seem to belong in their own separate movies. Yet, they all make sense together and form the cast of a genuine classic. The most interesting of the bunch is Clifton Webb's Waldo Lydecker. The film starts with his narration, but eventually that gets dropped. He also narrates a flashback, which includes scenes that he is not present to witness. It's an odd inconsistency, but it works within the film because the whole thing is so surreal by 1944 standards.

For this reason, I wish I had seen this in tandem with Masked and Anonymous. It accomplishes a lot of that movie's goals with seemingly a lot less effort (and a 579% reduction in plodding monologues). When I wrote about that movie, I noted that the casting was eclectic but predictable. Well, how about this? Webb, an open homosexual (I didn't even know they existed in 1944 America), plays Lydecker as a person who at least carries a prissy narcissism with him at all times. At most, he's a full-blown caricature of homosexuality. At the same time, he's fiercely protective of Laura, his ...what, exactly, is she to him?

Lydecker's relationship with Laura is poorly defined. He's shown to be a mentor to her; it's implied they might be lovers. They at least live together and have a set weekly routine. But the age difference is enough to make it strange. His demeanor is so distant, one wonders what Laura sees in him. From his nastiness during their meet-up to the odd moment where he reminisces about reading his own articles to her, the relationship is somewhat amorphous and vague.

Similarly, McPherson's relationship to Laura is odd, even by the low standards of romantic subplots. He falls for Laura while investigating her murder. Lucky for him, it turns out Laura is alive. The woman who was murdered wasn't Laura after all, but a model having an affair with Laura's fiance. Still, the characters lack any chemistry, so when they kiss near the climax, it's a forced moment, like the characters are doing things out of some kind of obligation. Up to that point, Laura showed no interest in the detective. It becomes another odd detail in a movie full of them.

Laura herself is an odd character, so perhaps it isn't so strange that her relationships are a little off, too. Played with detachment by Gene Tierney, she is hailed by Waldo, and her fiance as being a kind and radiant person. Her housekeeper is so grief-stricken at her "death" that she comes off as a nervous wreck. She's so wonderful, remember, that the detective falls for her a little while he still thinks she's dead. Later, the maid is absolutely terrified at the apparently alive Laura. Laura's reaction? About a minute of comforting words and a request for eggs. When Laura shows up midway through the movie, she's a curiosity precisely because she doesn't live up to the hype.

There apparently was a scrapped studio-mandated ending where the whole thing was a dream. This ending was scrapped because it was hard to understand. What's interesting is that the movie itself very much has its own internal logic, much like a dream. So many little things fall apart under scrutiny, whether it's the characters, their motivations, etc. To nitpick a movie like this ("Why didn't McPherson try harder to find the woman who was with Laura's fiance once he found out about her?") is to miss the point. It's a tightly-wound, pulpy little mystery that casts suspicion on everyone. When a movie has me wondering if the most minor of characters are the criminal, it's doing something right.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance: The Art of Waiting to Slice a Dude

o hello

Before watching Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance, I had been watching The Incredible Hulk (AKA Hulk: Ed Norton remix). In few ways are the movies similar. Yet, they build on the same foundation of a guy who destroys opponents with ease taking his time to be coaxed out of his shell by others doing wrong. What I mean is that the plot of each is pretty much the protagonist getting treated badly and then RRAAAAWWRRRGGGHHH (or in Lone Wolf and Cub's case: SWOOOOSH SWISH!): instant gratification and justice. It's a comparison that can be made to the westerns by Sergio Leone, where gunfights are not drawn out; it's Rainbow Six rules: one shot kills. This probably doesn't last for The Incredible Hulk (I only saw the first half; it's in my Netflix now to finish at some other date), but Lone Wolf and Cub never creates a villain who is able to equal its protagonist, Ogami Itto.

That's notable, in looking at so many superhero adaptations. John Favreau's Ironman and Ang Lee's Hulk both struggled to create a suitable villain in their final act. One of the flaws of the (still good) Tim Burton Batman movie was that they spent more time on the villains than the hero. The villain of the series has no fighting prowess in this Lone Wolf and Cub movie. He's an old man running a "shadow" clan, an elderly man played in an overdramatic way, like a Noh theater character. His strength is in the number of men he commands, and while his villainy sets off the movie's narrative, he is not seen for the last third.

The movie is almost strictly an origin story for is first two acts; it's a story of betrayal and corruption that ends with Itto vowing to be an assassin for hire as he travels with his son. It establishes his skill with a sword, and the aesthetic of its fights. The fights tend to be bloody - individual swordsmen are slashed and killed in single swipes, while Itto is untouched. No one, not the officers come to arrest him, nor the army trying to stop him after he refuses to commit seppuku for his crimes, can touch him. Throughout, we see him wronged until he unleashes the awesome power of slicing the fuck outta someone with a really sharp blade. Then, he fights the odds in self-defense until he uses his cunning to get into a duel. Then, he uses his cunning again combined with his ability to decapitate motherfuckers to win the duel.

The action is handled with vigor, handling special effects for the various severed limbs and campy spraying blood smoothly. Yes, it's all cartoonish, but it's also fun in a B-movie way. Of course, the movie saves the best for last, with Itto taken captive in a town taken over by an evil chamberlain and his men. Upon first sight, they threaten to cut down a bridge while he is on it. They rape a woman. Then kill her father. One guy demands to challenge him because he is insulted. They force him to have sex with a prostitute while they watch. They even wipe a bloody sword clean on the robe he's wearing. The movie pushes them to cartoonish levels of depravity, not even feigning a chance that Itto could be beaten by them. Instead, we get a violent bloodbath of righteous vigilante justice (AKA justice in its purest form).

Anyway, I can't labor over this entry because the movie is both simple and short (82 minutes! When was the last time anyone produced a movie that was 82 minutes? Freaking Cars was nearly two hours!). Also, the entire series is on my Netflix queue now, and I fully intend on doing an entry for each. It's just that sometimes it's the simplest things that are great pleasures. Like when a dude gets pushed too far and winds up he can cut your sword in half and then jam the loose half through your throat with blood sprouting out of the top of your head somehow. Or when Bruce Banner's got some spanish dude and his posse kicking his ass for no reason while the government's on his back, and he's been running, and his Portuguese isn't so good and RRAAAWWRGGH HULK SMASH. Of course, in the case of Lone Wolf and Cub, it helps that it's a straight-up well-made movie, with great cinematography and some extremely well-chosen set pieces. But, in the end, how much of the audience is gonna care about that really gorgeous waterfall with a wood bridge overlooking it?

Masked and Anonymous: No, Your Song Is Not a Screenplay

Oh, HELLO there?

Can you name a song turned into a movie? Not counting rock operas or full albums? I can't, at least off the top of my head. I suppose it's possible; if Spike Jonze can turn Where the Wild Things Are into a movie, it follows that some songs can become movies. If you have an interest in doing this, see Masked and Anonymous. It's very much an illustration of why you should probably put that screenplay of yours in the shredder. While not based on a specific song, it was penned by Bob Dylan and its director, Larry Charles. It's more a curiosity than a movie, featuring the same kind of impenetrable imagery one might find in Dylan's songs. Charles admits as much:

When I made the Bob Dylan movie [Masked and Anonymous], I wanted to make a Bob Dylan movie that was like a Bob Dylan song. One with a lot of layers, that had a lot of poetry, that had a lot of surrealism and was ambiguous and hard to figure out, like a puzzle.

Mission accomplished, I say. It truly is a movie that's "ambiguous" and "hard to figure out," but to what end? A Dylan song can be densely packed, full of small details, contradictions, literary and historical characters. His "Desolation Row" is an example of this, but I would not want it as a movie.

The problems with the idea itself are numerous, and they undercut some okay acting, a great cast and interesting direction. Dylan himself is cast as Jack Fate, one of many unfortunate names that would probably sound fine as a character in a song (others include: Tom Friend, Pagan Lace, Uncle Sweetheart... aw, fuck it. Look at imdb's page). As characters in a movie, though, they are all one-dimensional creations. Fate is much like the singer in a song: an observer, which is unfortunate because Dylan is not much of an actor. If the canonization of his music and persona has sealed him into an almost inhuman figure, his flat line readings and evasive maneuvers when questioned by the press aren't helping. His physical appearance - so small and thin - makes him a worrisome presence (and it doesn't help that he spends much of the movie standing next to John Goodman). He would not be out of place in the background of a diner in a David Lynch movie. Of course, he is based on Dylan: Jeff Bridges' journalist questions him about not being at Woodstock; the songs by "Jack Fate" are old Dylan songs.

Aside from those details, though, he is an observer to the events around him, passively listening as Jeff Bridges berates him with questions, or as Val Kilmer waxes philosophical about God-knows-what. That's a problem for a movie, because the viewer is already an observer to the action. If a song is like a story being relayed (via its singer), a film is like a memory being shared. You don't need the passive figure to hang up your decorative crazy characters. It frees up the cast to do a whole lot of "ACTING" around him in monologues, which, unfortunately, are not as full of insight as they (the actors, writers, directors, characters) may think. They all riff on the nature of revolutions, war, the world, whatever. It's all related to the plot, which is just window dressing for Dylan and Charles to congratulate themselves on their ability to write a good comeback ("If you had to kill a man, what would you use? A knife or a gun?" "My bare hands," and so the conversations in this movie goes). One of the problems of the movie is the sheer normality of its characters, despite its attempts at strangeness. Of course John Goodman's a blowhard. Of course Luke Wilson's a really nice guy. Of course Mickey Rourke's a bit of a bastard. Part of the problem with loading the cast with such big names is that you can't get past the types of characters these actors generally play. It robs the movie of its attempted weirdness to typecast everyone in roles we've seen before.

One could argue that maybe that's another layer to the movie, like, maybe the "movie" is commenting on how we "perceive" these "people" as "characters," maaan. But even if that was intentional, doesn't that seem like an awful burden to load onto a movie that already ruminates on the nature of war, man, the role of the protest singer, journalism and whatever the hell else Dylan and Charles were getting at? A Dylan song's lyrics can run into wild, surreal directions, but they're always much more focused than this movie. Even something that twists and turns like "Tangled Up in Blue" or "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" are focused on one subject or mood.

Masked and Anonymous struggles to share the dense detail of a Dylan song, too. Every frame is packed with little decorations, but to what purpose? The lighting has a greenish hue. John Goodman wears an atrocious powder blue suit. Penelope Cruz wears a Metallica T-shirt (to his credit, Mickey Rourke probably just showed up on set looking like that), but why? People exist and say things that don't matter. It's like a dream, but in a bad way. A song can coast on its melody; if the lyrics are merely evocative (and Dylan's often can be), it's merely for the mood or the idea that's being expressed. Feature length films don't generally have this luxury because they're at least 90 minutes long. An exception might be David Lynch films, but his inventions are more outrageous than anything here.

Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point much. In the end, as an attempt to make a movie out of a song (or some kind of "movie song"), it's proof that maybe this isn't a great idea. To leave on a positive note, though, the reworkings, remakes and covers of Dylan songs are pretty interesting. Also, near the end of this movie, you do get a chance to see the (estimating from this movie: 4'7"/27 lbs/205 y.o.) Bob Dylan beat up the (estimating from this movie: 6'1"/250 lbs/47 y.o.) Jeff Bridges without any effort (or acting) whatsoever. This won't be a Great-Bad Hall of Fame entry ever (too boring), but that scene on its own certainly deserves a mention.

Let the Right One In: How to Make an American Remake

"It's funny, but is it going to get them off their tractors?"
-Gammabot (of Futurama) evaluating a TV show

Oh, Hi there!

So, Let the Right One In, right? Like, fuck Twilight, right?

That's got to be the first thing lots of people in America thought upon seeing this movie. Unfortunately, that's only 5 words, not counting titles. I don't have any word limit, but, you know... Let the Right One In was a sweet movie. It's deliberately paced and has some wonderful acting and cinematography. But I do wonder if the movie would be so critically acclaimed if Twilight wasn't playing at the local multiplex down the road from it, its siren song like the world's loudest brown note.

Anyway, apparently an American remake is in the works, under the title Let Me In. From what I gather from interviews and shit (read: wikipedia), it's going to be based on the novel on which the original movie was based, but I don't know how different it will wind up. Obviously, it would be slicker in terms of production. Could they go for the Twilight crowd and tone down the gore? They could also make it gorier, too. Make its pace faster? Probably. This is all speculation on my part. It's being directed by the guy who helmed Cloverfield, so maybe they're going for more horror than Twilight-esque romance. All kinds of things can be done with this plot. It'll be interesting. They're at least changing the names of the names of the characters (instead of American-izing the spelling. Because why the fuck not, right?). But then, from wikipedia, I see this:

Producer Simon Oakes has made it clear that the plot of Let Me In will closely resemble that of the original, except that it will be made "very accessible to a wider audience".

Well, of course. Because this movie was so freaking impossible to understand. Let's see if you can make sense of it: a lonely boy (Oskar) is a social outcast, picked on by bullies. A girl (Eli) is lonely because she's a vampire. The two meet and strike up a friendship. Yadda yadda yadda, Eli's vampirism puts her in danger of being discovered and she must flee the town, but her mutual love with Oskar is deepening.

Sorry if I went too fast - those tweens get into so many complications! (Also, I yadda yadda yadda'd over some pretty cool shit.) But all joking aside, I understand why Hollywood insists on remaking any foreign film that isn't a European historical drama. A lot of America is averse to reading subtitles, and in other cases some places lack smaller cinemas that will show independent movies or indie flicks. I get that. For awhile, the trend of remaking Asian horror movies made some good bank, too. It makes total business sense, so I can't blame Hollywood for going to that well so often. (I actually think it's too bad the Battle Royale remake never came to fruition, because I would love to see how any American studio would handle that particular movie.)

So, with that in mind, here are some more ways that Let me In can changes things for an American audience:

• More slow-mo. Emotions are too fleeting - I need time to register my sadness
  
• One-liners. Eli should be making bad vampire puns every 3-4 lines in her scenes (Oskar: Would you like Twizzlers? Eli: No fang-k you!)
• Oskar should get into a kung-fu fight scene within the first 30 seconds of Let Me In, just to get your attention. He should lose, though, because his character's a wimp
• It takes place in the early 1980s. Each scene should be devised around a pop culture reference from the 80s - the failest decade! lmao!
• All of Eli's vampiric attacks should be more gory than anyone would imagine
  
• The amount of body glitter is indirectly proportional to how much your plot needs to make sense. (Not a suggestion, just some math to keep in mind)
• Can Oskar have a wisecracking (ethnic?) best friend to provide comedic moments? You damn well right he can!
  

With these suggestions in mind, I think America will get a Let the Right One In remake that plays to its sensibilities. Let the rest of the world have their subtitles or lips that don't match the words! This is America! We deserve better than that!

...this pretty much damns me into having to watch Let Me In to give it a fair chance, doesn't it?

Jan Svenkmajer's Alice: The Only Film I Like Dubbed

Oh hi there...

Lots of attention given to Jan Svankmajer's Alice is given to its visuals. As a stop-motion retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, they should be. Here's a plot summary for the uninitiated: Alice encounters a White Rabbit and chases him. A bunch of shit happens, and the shit that happens is fucking crazy. This movie's dark, haunting, maybe not disturbing, but definitely strange and uncomfortable. When I first saw it, it was the first for a college film class, in an auditorium with booming loud speakers. At the time, I thought that was just the auditorium. Now, after rewatching it via Netflix on my computer, it definitely does not seem that way. This movie is loud, and that does so much for the movie's ability to get under your skin, it almost outdoes the visual aspects. Almost.

Remember how cute Disney's Alice in Wonderland is? And how distorted but still kinda cute (or at least "wow look at the bright colors!") Tim Burton's looks (from the trailers)? Svankmajer's version includes stop-motion, which is an inherently creepy form of animation. Objects are more dimensional than traditional animation, but are given an unnatural jerkiness that can be used to great effect, as it is here. It helps that there's so much death in this retelling. Not that characters die, but in their design. The white rabbit is a stuffed rabbit that comes to life; his friends are all made of bird and fish bones and doll parts. It's a combined creepy effect, with everything being somewhat jerky, yet remarkably smooth, like everything is played at only a couple frames per minute slower.

So, you get Alice in Wonderland, but told with dead animals. If that doesn't seal the creepiness, the narration will. All dialogue is delivered by Alice, with a closeup of her mouth ending each phrase (sample: "'I'm going to be late!' SAID THE WHITE RABBIT"). At first, the effect is intriguing. Then annoying. Then strangely unsettling. The version I've seen is dubbed in English, this intensifies this effect greatly. The lips in closeup clearly don't match what's being said, and it become surreal because you're forced to read her lips. This causes a mental dissonance, at least for me. It's the exact reason I can't stand dubbing. (and I've heard people insist that the only way to watch bad martial arts movies is dubbed. Can't do it. Sorry.) It magnifies how strange the film's world is.

This extends to the sound effects, too. The majority of the film takes place with clearly puppets, either among Alice or occasionally when she becomes a doll. Every crash and clang is mixed far louder than would be natural for the dolls. There's a dissonance with comes with these little objects causing such a racket. For example, there's the scene with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, which is driven by repetition of the Hatter ("'I want a clean cup!' SAID THE HATTER"), the sounds of the hare's cart, chairs scraping against the floor, butter slathering over clocks. In its extended repetition, the scene grates partially because of its sound.

In the end,talking about the sound of the thing is mostly just me trying to find a unique perspective on this movie, though. The striking animation of it - alive, yet unnatural, much like the White Rabbit who bleeds and eats sawdust constantly - is the real star here.

Still, I don't want to give too little credit to Kristyna Kohoutova, who plays Alice. She plays the role with the perfect mix of curiosity and bratty determination. The latter trait is probably magnified by her refusal to be intimidated by anything she sees throughout her journey, but it makes her reactions fascinating. She deadpans her way through being turned into a doll, being trapped inside a doll, being attacked by a bunch of dead animals, having her socks come alive, being nearly submerged in her tears, among other strangeness. In some ways, this is a dark comedy, and she is its straight man.

Overall, Alice is an interesting trip down some surrealist stop-motion animation. It's more a showcase of technique than a narrative film, given that there isn't a real plot to it. It's unforgettable, though, for its design and style, which deftly walks the line between horror and nonsense. There isn't much wonder here, just unending madness falling into itself.

SAID THE FILM BLOGGER

The Great-Bad Hall of Fame: Rocky IV

Oh! Hi there!

For years, I've been saying that there should be a hall of fame for movies that are so bad they're good. Then I realized I have a blog! I can be proactive and make this happen! So with that, I am going to write about Rocky IV. If you don't know which Rocky that is from the title, let me summarize it for you: Rocky ends the fucking Cold War -nay, the very USSR itself- via boxing.

The thing that makes Rocky IV stand out as a great bad movie, for me, is that it's the continuation of a film series that began with a great film. It's a perversion of all the things that made the first one great. The Hollywood rule for sequels is "like the last one, but more of it!" Much like a game of Jenga, though, the base erodes until it is unstable as you add sequel after sequel. So, eventually, you get a series of events that reads like this:

Rocky: Rocky, a fighter around 30, is drafted to fight the Heavyweight Champion, an undefeated Ali-esque character. He doesn't win, but his ability to stand toe-to-toe with the champ inspires the nation.
Rocky IV: Rocky, a multimillionaire who must be nearing 40 now, must avenge the death of his best friend who was killed in a boxing match against a hulking Soviet, a probable steroid user with double the punching power of an average professional boxer. He wins against the Russian, and also inspires the all-Russian audience to look at themselves and realize their government is wrong. The audience includes the government.

Of course, Rocky wins the fight. That's fine. This movie was produced in America, after all. But who would have guessed that Rocky would end the movie with a rousing speech about about, well:

During this fight, I've seen a lot of changing, in the way you feel about me, and in the way I feel about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that's better than twenty million. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

Because when it comes down to it, wasn't the Cold War just a bunch of pansy-ass "feelings?" The thing is, this speech barely makes sense in the script's dramatic continuity as "change" appears as a theme multiple times. Apollo and Rocky talk about "changing," with Creed claiming that he and Rock are always fighters and will never change. Meanwhile, Rocky says things can never be the way they were before. Later, Rocky insists that he can't change, which is why he has to fight Drago. Which makes him a hypocrite. But then Rocky wins - as a fighter, without changing his core nature - and insists that the entire USSR can just switch over and we'll find world peace. Even on its emotional axis, it's an astounding, hilarious failure.

Speaking of emotional axes, how about that Adrian? In every movie, she goes from "Rocky, you can't fight!" to "Go get 'em, tiger!" Except in this one, it literally happens over the course of two laughably perfunctory scenes.

Really, it's an abomination against everything that was good about the original movie. From the opening shot in this movie - an American flag-decorated glove punching a Soviet flag-marked glove and EXPLODING - you can tell something's amiss (and not just the fact that the Russian glove falls down before the explosion happens. Or was that symbolism?). At 91 minutes, it's the shortest Rocky movie. Let's look at that running time a little more closely, though.

• After the gloves go off, the movie spends the duration of "Eye of the Tiger" summarizing Rocky III. Then, we see the last scene of Rocky III in whole. So it's probably about seven minutes until we get to the actual movie.
  
• Later, Apollo Creed fights Drago, and his entrance is an entire James Brown song and performance ("Living in America," the "Batdance" of the James Brown discography). That takes up another six minutes.
  
• After Creed dies, Rocky drives in his car to reflect on life and friendship, or love, or something. The movie switches here to another montage. This one summarizes the entire Rocky series up to that point. And when I say "up to that point," I mean from the original Rocky to the the events of Rocky IV as of a minute ago. This also includes Rocky III, which you just saw in a montage that started this movie.

So this movie is actually less than 80 minutes long, which is the perfect length for a good bad movie. Then you have the obligatory training montage, where Drago trains with the latest technological advances (and implied steroids). Because using technology is cheating, and if you're going to use computerized gym equipment, you might as well be on steroids to boot. Meanwhile, Rocky is outrunning a KGB car and running up a mountain in the snow. Because all Americans need is some elbow grease and good old-fashioned (and revenge-driven!) determination. It's an impossibly heavy-handed moment that winds up being hilarious. Again, if you keep stacking the odds, you're gonna get Jenga'd. And Jenga is at its most fun when the thing falls down.



Can I just mention that this movie also has a robot? In 1985? And it has some advanced AI, even by today's standards? Did you ever notice that Rocky's kid watches the fight (the one with a high likelihood of his father dying live on international TV on Christmas) from home, and in the background, the Robot is in a Santa outfit, with beard? Just thought I'd mention it.

So yes, Rocky IV is the first entry of the Great-Bad Hall of Fame. I can't think of another sequel that does so much to piss all over a great film. Even the Rambo sequels have the benefit of First Blood being only okay. What's one more thing that's definitive about Rocky? The theme. You know it. This one scraps that for pop songs. So fuck you if you liked the original. The thing is, I love the original. When I worked at Hollywood Video, before opening the store, I'd pop it in while I counted the money and did all the opening duties. Damn near every week, I'd half-watch and listen to it. So this movie holds a special place in my heart as the most wrong-headed sequel possible, even compared to the much-maligned Rocky V, which is just a depressing mess. No, this one is deserving of being in the Good-Bad Hall of Fame.

Chaplin: A King in New York (and very nice guy)

Hello there!

It's probably fortunate that Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York did not get released in the USA until 1973 because of accusations that its maker was a communist. It wouldn't have been well-received at the time, anyway, with a key character being a child (played by Chaplin's son) who's unusually well-versed in Anarchist and Communist teachings. As it is, it's cult item for enthusiasts of the silent film greats, who, at this point, are probably a pretty small group. It's not even given much respect as a DVD: In the The Chaplin Collection Vol. 2 box set, it's packaged together with A Woman of Paris, while the rest of the movies in the set are given the double-disc treatment. Once you get past the feeling that Chaplin then looks like Mel Brooks five years ago, though, it's a worthy addition to the man's canon, especially among his underrated later works.

The vibe that I get most from A King in New York is that Chaplin must have been a really, really nice guy. Here's a guy who is exiled from a country without trial, based on rumors (truthful or not). He's making a movie about a foreigner who finds himself lost in America, culturally. Yet the movie doesn't strike me as bitter at all; everything is taken with the same light, comedic tone of his more famous works, parodying American film, music and especially commercialism. But, all of the gags are light teasing, rather than barbed swipes. Or maybe not. Offhand, I can't think of anything comparable from the time period with a similar anti-advertising bent.

The majority of it follows a pattern one would expect from a director whose work began in the silent film era. There isn't much of a plot to speak of; the king needs money and winds up doing commercials. This leads to the episodic structure that Chaplin did so well in his prime, and  even during his last starring role, showed a great amount of inventive spark. A scene featuring the king with a heinous amount of plastic surgery goes off perfectly: he attends a comedy show, unable to laugh in order to avoid "stretching it too much." The show he observes is an homage to his own silent comedies, and Chaplin's lone face, struggling not to smile amid a sea of laughter, is hysterical.

Then Chaplin's character, King Shadow, meets a young boy, Rupert at a school (long story). Shadow tries to engage in a conversation with Rupert, who fires off on a long tirade about the futility of all forms of government. The gag is that kids off-screen fool with the king, flinging soup at him while he tries to offer a rebuttal to the kid. It's not a great joke, but it shows a conscious decision to stand up to the accusations that banned him from America. Rupert also gets another showcase later in the movie, and troubles with his parents (staunch Communists) become the emotional center of the movie. Most telling, though, is when Rupert declares himself a communist after previously being an anarchist. Shadow asks him why; Rupert replies: "I'm so sick of people asking me if I'm this, if I'm that! So if it pleases everybody, I'm a Communist!" That's the sound of Chaplin throwing his hands up, and likely his reason for summarizing Marxist screeds in his comedy film about America that he made from Europe.

These moments really deaden the momentum of the movie, and they'd be a confusing choice without knowing the director's personal issues. At the same time, so much of the movie is joyfully sublime. The king performing the angriest "To be or not to be" speech in recorded history is a standout. Similarly, a (surprisingly spry!) 68 year-old Chaplin and his assistant peeping through a keyhole to see a woman bathing is some inspired silliness. Also, while many sometimes deride Chaplin for being mawkishly sentimental, this is probably the least sentimental movie I've seen with his name attached (except maybe Monsieur Verdoux, but I need to rewatch that to remember it better). It seems like he found freedom in his exile, to poke fun at his contemporaries (jokes specifically referencing Ed Wood and the declining western genre). Its energy buoys is well, and it's not nearly as slight as I'd expected. It's a little slower than City Lights and not a Great Film, but if you ever wonder if man who was once The Tramp ever lost it, this movie answers "No."