DVDs: The Tramp Redux

With last year's release of digitally restored editions of Modern Times, The Great Dictator, The Gold Rush and Limelight, generations of movie-lovers could enjoy the works of Charlie Chaplin, absent the degradation of time and neglect. As promised, the distributors of The Chaplin Collection, Volume 1 have delivered a second multi-disc collection, even more illuminating than the first.

Among the gems in Volume II are: City Lights, The Circus, The Kid, A King in New York, A Woman of Paris, Monsieur Verdoux, The Chaplin Revue (several shorts, including A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim, which were edited into a single picture) and Richard Schickel's Oscar-nominated documentary, Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin. Together, these titles represent the breadth of Chaplin's magnificent career, from revelatory silent shorts, through beloved feature comedies, and on to the dark humor and social commentaries that would distinguish his later creative period and anticipate his European exile.

Anyone who has yet to experience City Lights is missing one of the great cinematic treasures of all time. In it, the Tramp finds work in a factory to earn money for an operation to restore sight to a blind flower seller. The climax is as powerful as any in the 100-year history of movies. In the little-seen Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin plays against type as a bluebeard who wins the love of wealthy spinsters, then murders them to support his family.

Not surprisingly, given the success of Volume 1, this seven-disc boxed set overflows with informative and entertaining bonus material, including home movies and commentary by Chaplin's daughter, Geraldine. Even better news comes in knowing that next year will bring yet another box of classics.

Two more boxes chock-full o' comedy arrive next week in the form of Koch Vision's four-volume Funny Ladies and the six-disc Best of the Improv. The lists of performers in both sets, representing 540 minutes of laughs, read like a who's-who of stand-up comedy over the past couple of decades. It only seems as if every single one of the men and women included here has had a TV sitcoms to call their own. In fact, though, one or two of them haven't … yet.

There was no more pleasant surprise in 2003 than Richard Linklater and Mike White's delightful twist on an old formula, School of Rock, in which an over-amped guitarist for a heavy metal band finds inspiration, and a new calling, as a substitute teacher at a private elementary school. Just as Jack Black was a perfect choice to play one of the trivia-obsessed record-store clerks in High Fidelity, picking Black to star as Dewey Finn, a true fish out of water in the classroom until he discovers how to exploit the musical talent of his class of fifth-graders, was equally inspired. The rapport that slowly develops between Finn and the kids never feels phony or forced; nor is it played for the cheap sentimentality that typically ruins these sorts of movies. It's a must-see for boomer parents who share a love of rock music with their Gen-Y kids.

Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore and Danny DeVito have enjoyed a great success working in comedy, so it was a stunning disappointment to discover how lifeless and unambitious was their recent collaboration, Duplex. Stiller and Barrymore play a young New York couple whose dream home turns out to be a nightmare, thanks to a monstrous, elderly tenant upstairs. Sounds like a couple dozen other movies released in the last 30 years, doesn't it? Combine that cliché with the too-ornery-to-die old lady in DeVito's much funnier Throw Momma From the Train, and the result is a movie whose biggest laughs derive from such cheap sight gags as forcing Stiller to watch his ancient tenant play with herself while enjoying a bubble bath.

Hard to imagine that Paramount was anticipating the overheated debate surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ when it decided to release its "collector's edition" of Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic, The Ten Commandments. Nonetheless, it will probably benefit from all the publicity. True, it covers a different time and testament than Gibson's opus, and for that matter, Martin Scorsese's far more righteously provocative The Last Temptation of Christ, but both pictures fit easily within the boundaries of the same genre. Light years less violent than Passion, DeMille's 1956 film (made 33 years after his first, silent take on the story of Moses) still retains much of the magic that made it such a sensation in the formative years of special effects. Bonus material includes commentary by historian Katherine Orrison, period newsreel footage and trailers, and a making-of documentary.