Rating: 
Summary: Clowntime is over
Review: To this day, the audiences don't know whether to laugh or cry when encountering this long-winded melodrama about an aged performer and a troubled young ballerina. Director Bernardo Bertolucci is among those who consider "Limelight" Charles Chaplin's masterpiece. When the tramp clown breathes his last, "Who is dying here is not Calvaro, but Charlie Chaplin," Bertolucci says in the DVD documentary. "With 'Limelight,' tears flow very easily." The MK2 documentary for "Limelight" is the Chaplin Collection's best so far. It covers the period in which Chaplin left the United States, only to return once, reluctantly, for his honorary Oscar. The docu doesn't address the old charges that Chaplin spiked Buster Keaton's best work in the film. Regardless, the extended Keaton-Chaplin slapstick sequence remains the highlight for many viewers. The DVD photo gallery includes W. Eugene Smith's terrific stills of the men at work. The film enjoy across-the-board improvements in video and audio, including digital transfers from Chaplin family elements and Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes. Imaginative bonus features inform and entertain without wearing out their welcome. "Limelight" extras include footage of Chaplin getting a hero's welcome in London and revisiting the places of his youth. Home movies from the 1950s show Geraldine Chaplin as a child and teenager. (The great Chaplin comes across like any other proud goofy dad, playing with his kids.) A hilarious 1919 short shows Chaplin on the loose as a flea-circus wrangler. Chaplin and his collaborators' luscious score, which won a belated Oscar in 1972 -- once the film finally qualified by screening in L.A. -- can be enjoyed separately, as an extra. The music sounds fine in mono or in the 5.1, but the surround seems to introduce some boominess. The film has an intro by Chaplin biographer David Robinson, rendered pretty much useless by placement on disc 2 (almost all of his information is repeated in the docus anyway).
Rating:
Summary: a classic classic!
Review: when he is best known for comedy, chaplin does what he does best. He makes us laugh and then he makes us cry! And what makes this even more incredible is that this great flik is his last and it strikes close to home. Also, he wins an oscar (20 yrs belated) for the music score. I wasn't really into charlie until I saw this and "the great Dictator". I know they are classic classic's when I watch them over & over & over again! This is the classic tragi-comedy w/romance. An old has been clown with a bad heart helps a suicidal ballerina and rediscovers his dreams in the meantime, while sacraficing LOVE. As she becomes the big star that he once used to be.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great
Review: While this is a good movie, it's certainly not great, and not among Chaplin's best efforts (that is of course a very high standard). Some funny parts, but many dull spots, from a dramatic as well as a comedic point of view. Seeing Chaplin and Keaton together is of course wonderful, but in earlier years Chaplin would have made even more of such an opportunity. For really top drawer Chaplin see City Lights, The Gold Rush and The Kid (and follow those up with Modern Times, Great Dictator and the great Mutuals).
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